SEATTLE -- The battle over profits from text-messaging is being fought in Seattle, and we've learned a lot of cell phone customers are angry they're paying for a service they don't want.

KIRO 7 Consumer Investigator Amy Clancy has uncovered that some of those angry customers are now taking legal action.

We started this investigation months ago based on just two complaints e-mailed to us by KIRO 7 viewers. Both are T-Mobile customers who brought up an issue we hadn't heard raised by customers from the other major cell phone companies.

We soon learned a lawsuit, filed in Seattle late last year, raises the same issues.

Then, within just the past few days, a new lawsuit was filed on behalf of one of those KIRO 7 viewers who e-mailed us: Joe Calloway of Seattle.

Joe Calloway feels deceived.

The Seattle man says he's being charged for a cell phone service he never wanted in the first place: text messaging.

In fact, he says, when he signed his contract, he was told by the salesman at a T-Mobile mall kiosk that he could opt out.

"They asked me if there was text messaging, if I wanted it, and I said no."
Clancy: "So the salesperson asked you if you wanted it?"
"Oh, they certainly did."

Chris Courtright, also of Seattle, says she was told the same thing when she bought her cell phone from a different T-Mobile mall kiosk.

"I said, 'I don't want text messaging. I want nothing to do with it,' and he says, 'Oh, you don't have to hook it up,'" Courtright said.

Both Calloway and Courtright thought the matter was over -- until they looked more closely at their bills and noticed that they were being charged 15 cents for each incoming text message.

"It doesn't matter if you open them or not, you're going to get charged for them regardless. Anybody that text messages you, whether it's someone you know or someone you don't, whether it's an advertisement or not, they're going to charge you for it," Calloway said.

"Somebody could get mad at me and send me a bunch of text messages, and my bill could be horrendous."

Both tried to get out of their T-Mobile contracts, because they say the salespeople lied.

Both were denied.

"I was very upset. One, because they don't stand behind the people that sell their services, and I asked, 'Well, just release me from my contract,' and they absolutely would not, they couldn't, they would offer no solution," Courtright said.

"Yeah, it's a minimal charge, but when somebody's taking this out of your pocket for something you've never subscribed for …"

"It's not the amount of money. It's the fact that you're doing this," said Calloway.

Calloway says he's been billed about $40 for incoming texts over the past two years, Courtright, only 30 cents.

"If you don't have a special text messaging plan with T-Mobile, then you are billed for every text message you receive," said Kristin Alexander of the Washington State Attorney General's Office.

But all those nickels and dimes add up, not only because millions of people now text instead of talk, but because texting spam is on the rise.

Cell phone customers throughout the United States received more than 1 billion spam texts in 2007.

Even though all major carriers -- including T-Mobile -- say they work hard to block spam, that could add up to hundreds of millions of dollars for cell phone companies.

"That's a big money-maker for T-Mobile and other cell phone companies."

J. Paul Gignac and Robert Curtis are attorneys from California. They represent a Florida woman who filed a civil lawsuit against T-Mobile in U.S. District court in Seattle.

The main complaints -- that T-Mobile's practice of charging customers not on a texting plan 15 cents for each incoming message is "a wrongful business scheme -- to deliberately cheat a large number of consumers out of individually small sums of money."

The other main complaint is that customers do not have the option to block all incoming text messages.

"We've found that all carriers, all major carriers, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, allow for the ability to turn off text messaging service. T-Mobile at this time seems to be the only major carrier who prohibits you from being able to turn off that service," Curtis said.

When Calloway, Courtright and the Florida plaintiff tried to opt out of texting, they were told by T-Mobile they could not.

"They told me it wasn't possible, they couldn't take it off my phone," Courtright said.

All were told texting is how the company communicates with its customers.

"I got a text message from T-Mobile (that) stating to stick with T-Mobile while travelling abroad," said Calloway.

Despite the fact T-Mobile has an internal communications department and employs an outside public relations firm, the company, based in Bellevue, would not make anyone available on-camera to answer KIRO 7's questions.

Instead the company released a written statement. In it, T-Mobile maintains deceptive sales practices like the ones Calloway and Courtright allege and described in the lawsuit as failure "to disclose" are not tolerated by the company.

When asked why T-Mobile will not allow customers to opt out of text messaging completely, as the other major cell phone companies do, the statement reads: "T-Mobile is not currently able to block mobile-to-mobile text messages from being sent or received -- without disabling critical network functions."

But the lawsuit -- and the plaintiff's attorneys -- claim otherwise.

"The technology is such that they could, if they wanted to, block all messages," Curtis said.

"It's a matter of just writing a couple lines of computer code and it could be done," said Curtis.
Clancy: "They just don't want to?"
"Exactly. They want people to ultimately sign up for a package where they're going to be paying $15, $14.99 a month for unlimited text messaging. And if you get each one of your customers to sign up for one of those plans, that's 14 times millions and millions of customers. That's a lot of revenue every month. that's what it's all about," said Gignac.

Many T-Mobile customers in Washington are angry about the company's texting policies.

KIRO 7 combed through the more than 850 complaints filed against T-Mobile with the Washington State Attorney General's office over the past three years.

So far, the A.G.'s office is not tackling this issue.

But 40 complaints specifically address customers' inability to opt out of incoming text messaging.

Some also reveal the online options T-Mobile provides for customers to block specific incoming texts don't always work.

And that when customers complain about having to pay for unwanted texts -- including ads and spam --the charges are not always removed, complaints also revealed by the Florida plaintiff.

According to the lawsuit and the A.G. documents, customers are told by T-Mobile representatives that the best option is to sign up for a texting plan.

"The only person that wins is T-Mobile," said Calloway.

Just look at the numbers. T-Mobile has nearly 29 million customers. If each one of them signed up for the unlimited text messaging plan at $14.99 a month, that would generate more than $430 million for T-Mobile per month, more than $5 billion dollars a year.

"That's the goal. Get all their customers on a text messaging plan that generates the revenue for the company," Gignac said.

Joe Calloway and Chris Courtright believe it's more sinister than that.

"This is just thievery. You're stealing. This is just absolutely ridiculous."

"I think that in the long run I'm going to be buying people nice yachts and second homes," Courtright said.

Just this afternoon, a T-Mobile spokesman e-mailed Clancy to say the company is working toward offering customers the ability to block all incoming e-mails by this summer.

As for the lawsuits, the Florida one has been sent to arbitration, which may slow down the process, but the plaintiff's attorneys tell Clancy they will not settle.

They're hoping the one just filed here in Seattle on behalf of Joe Calloway will go class-action and recoup the losses of all T-Mobile customers in Washington state who pay for text messages they don't want.

T-Mobile would not comment on the pending litigation, but issued this statement.