This is actually more of a reminder to me than anything else, because no matter how many times I try, I simply can’t remember how to send one of these damn things from my phone when it matters (not that I ever do of course – but they do come in handy when you are testing SMS response systems for example!)

Way back in 2000 Vodacom launched this money-making scheme… urm service, which essentially allows a vodacom client to send a free SMS to another person asking them to phone back (like in the instance when you have no money but you really want to talk to your stripper girlfriend.)

Vodacom pushes the request to the person (they do about 20 million a day) and attaches advertising to the Please Call Me request, which in other words has the potential to bring in a huge chunk of advertising revenue per month for the buggers – just saying.

Anyway, back to the ‘how to’ at hand, because I’m getting a little off the track here. In order to send a Please Call Me to another person, you simply need to dial *140*phonenumber# where phonenumber is the number of the person that you wish to make contact with. (And don’t forget the control character # at the end.)

And that’s that. Pretty simple after all. You’d think someone like me would remember that, now wouldn’t you? O.o

(Oh, and as an added feature, if you dial *140# from your phone and follow the relevant menu options, you can actually set a name that is to be added after each Please Call Me request – meaning now at least the recipient knows who is trying to get him to spend some money by asking him to give a call back in the first place!)

Related Link: http://www.vodacom.co.za/services/callme_how.jsp