Now, I’m not a huge fan of ringtones. Just because I personally like to spend all day blasting Weird Al Yankovic’s “Eat It” at top volume does not necessarily mean my friends want it blaring in their ears every time I get a phone call, and I’d appreciate the same consideration from them. That said, I did decide that the muted “ring, ring” I’d been using was a tad bit boring, and set about to find something at least a little more lively. It didn’t go well.
Most, if not all, carriers offer interfaces for buying ringtones somewhere on their site, but those are incredibly easy to use and don’t require any help, so I decided to go off-carrier and see what I could find on the big scary Internet. Acting on a whim, I checked out ringtones.com as my first stop. ringtones.com is a trap designed to trick the unwary; it wants your phone number before you even get a chance to see what they offer, and the fine print mentions something about meeting “hot singles in my area.” After reading that I clicked the close button so hard I broke my mouse.
Then, after a straight hour of Google searches, I… gave up. As far as I am able to determine — and I’m actually pretty good at this Internet thing — there is no off-carrier site that will allow you to purchase single ringtones. All of them require a $9.99/month fee or more to subscribe to their service and get “unlimited free ringtones,” which A) is not really what I need, as I just want one ringtone, and B) is almost certainly a scam. There are some sites which offer free ringtones, but these are either scams themselves — they mean “free, unlimited downloads after you subscribe for $9.99/month!” — or they require you to download an MP3 and install it on your phone yourself, something which we’ll be covering another time.
At the end of the day, if you want ringtones, you’re best off buying from your carrier (which is a simple process of a selecting ringtone, entering phone number, receiving text message, enjoying new ringtone). Even if these sites aren’t scams, $9.99/month is a ridiculous amount to pay for something most people are going to rarely use. As an extra bonus, and if you needed more incentive, after my adventures in ringtones I am now receiving spam text messages.
Joy.
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