Question

Jake activated his cell phone account and a week later received a “text” message saying “text to stop”. The text message came from a company that Jake never heard of, so he ignored it. Two months later, he noticed on his cell phone bill that there was an extra charge for a ring tone service. He phoned his cell phone service provider to inquire. He was told that he had subscribed to the ring tone service because he did not text a reply telling them to stop the agreement, and that the service provider paid the ring tone service on his behalf, and he would have to reimburse his service provider for the extra charge. In these circumstances
a. Jake is not legally bound to pay for the extra charge, because there is no contract between Jake and the ringtone service provider
b. Jake is legally bound to pay for the extra charge because his cell phone service provider had paid for the ringtone service on his behalf
c. Jake is legally bound to pay for the extra charge because the ringtone service offer was a unilateral offer, and Jake’s silence is legally acceptance of the contract

Answer 1

Part (a):

In the above situation, Jake activated his cellphone account and got a message asking to stop, which did not convey anything meaningful as it was totally unrelated to the service provider and was from an unknown source. Legally, Jake had no binding contract with the ringtone service provider as he was neither informed on the subscription nor did he opt himself for it. Also, the only information related to the subscription was a message asking to stop which was very ambiguous and nothing can be clearly derived from it. Jake did not respond to that message as neither did he know the sender nor he knew the purpose, so the silence on this topic can not be taken as acceptance as the offeree had no clue about anything and was also not willing to take this offer. Looking at the above arguments, there is clearly no contract between Jake and the ringtone service provider and hence he is not legally bound to pay for the extra charge.