6679We are focussing our efforts on doing everything we can to get results for our vendors.
As a result, from last Saturday our sms/text alerts are completely free.
You may have noticed on the Dashboard where it used to display your credit balance it now says "SMS Credit Balance: Unlimited". There's a link there that takes you through to a blog post we made about the change.
How Job Text Alerts Now Work
Your alert radius is still used, but we will not necessarily send an SMS alert about every job inside your alert radius (although the closer you are the more likely you'll get something).
When a job is placed on mtvan we build a list of drivers who have chosen to receive alerts where the job is within their radius (home or empty) and the vehicle types is one they're interested in. We look at all sorts of attributes such as reputation, insurance upload, proximity to job pickup, whether we've seen you online to decide who the best people are to alert about this job.
A really important attribute is whether a courier is trusted by the vendor. If you are trusted by the vendor and a suitable job falls within your radius you're pretty much guaranteed to receive an alert. When you have done work with a vendor, get them to trust you!
To summarise: The more engaged in the site you are (higher reputation, have quoted for work, have insurance, are trusted, etc) the more likely you are to receive free SMS alerts.
P.S. Our email alerts and iPhone App are unaffected. You will receive free alerts for everything within your radius by email or App.