What is the Vendor Babysitting Tax?

Most texting platforms advertise a price per message. Almost none of them advertise the second price: the time your firm spends making the platform actually work. Chasing send confirmations. Re-explaining your campaign to a new support rep. Assigning a staffer to operate software you're already paying for.

That second price is the Vendor Babysitting Tax. It never appears on an invoice — it appears on your calendar, in your Slack, and in your team's overtime. And because it's invisible on paper, most consulting firms have never actually calculated what it costs them.

How to know you're paying it

• → You chase status updates. "Did the send go out?" shouldn't be a question you ask three times a day. If you follow up more often than your vendor reports in, you're doing their job.
• → Crises go to a ticket queue. Election-week problems get a support ticket and a 24-hour SLA. Your race doesn't have 24 hours — and neither does your client.
• → A staffer runs the platform. You hired for strategy and ended up with a full-time platform operator. That salary is the tax — paid by you, collected by your vendor.

What it costs a consulting firm

The math varies by firm, but the pattern is consistent:

Illustrative figures. A free Texting Audit will put your firm's real numbers to it.

Eliminating the tax

Since the letter ran, plenty of vendors have started borrowing the language. The distinction that matters isn't who says "white glove" — it's whether full service is included in the price or sold back to you as a premium tier.

Texting for Less was built around removing the tax entirely: a US-based team that sends for you at no extra cost, real people available during all legal texting hours, and 10DLC compliance handled end to end — so your firm can take on more clients without more operational burden.