Three charging for Texts smileys on Sony phones

mutley74

I am on a Three contract for 1 year now. I have a Sony Ericisson Arc S phone.

past 2-3 months i notice i am getting charged for some text message even though i have a 5000/m allowance.

I ask Three twitter support they tell me its a fault with the phone, if i use a smiley face the phone converts the text to a MMS message which are chargeable.
Three overeseas call centre tell me no its my fault and smiley faces usage are chargeable in T&Cs.

Apparently its how the phone is setup with Three network and the APN setting for MMS cannot be disabled.
Anyone else experienced this problem?

grumbler

mutley74 wrote: »

Apparently its how the phone is setup with Three network and the APN setting for MMS cannot be disabled.

I am no expert, but I think you can do this. Have you tried?
I mean disabling MMS altogether. However, I think in this case the phone will just fail to send a text with smileys.

mutley74

grumbler wrote: »

I am no expert, but I think you can do this. Have you tried?

yes i have tried doing this with Three CS help but the options for MMS in APN folder are all greyed out so cannot be changed or deleted.

Rusty!

They're wrong. When you use emoji on an Android phone, it is done with ASCII and the phone renders it graphically in the messaging app.

Earthworm

I thought smileys in a text made it into an MMS if it was the image version and not just a text version but I might be wrong, and open to correction. I would just say don't use smileys or instead use IM services such as Whatsap, Kik Messenger etc.

mutley74

Earthworm wrote: »

I thought smileys in a text made it into an MMS if it was the image version and not just a text version but I might be wrong, and open to correction. I would just say don't use smileys or instead use IM services such as Whatsap, Kik Messenger etc.

all my friends dont use the app, so its easier for me to use texts, afterall i have 5000 text allowance.
now Sony forums say if i write a large text which rolls into more than 1 message, this is converted to a mms! so far no luck with three, although have been promised a refund but does not solve future problems.

Kernel_Sanders

Earthworm wrote: »

I thought smileys in a text made it into an MMS if it was the image version and not just a text version but I might be wrong, and open to correction. I would just say don't use smileys or instead use IM services such as Whatsap, Kik Messenger etc.

If they are surcharging you for typing a : followed by a ) then that is outrageous.
You could always use :-) instead.

mutley74

a reply from Three customer services:

---

I'm sorry you'd to write to us about the out of bundle charges applied on your bills. I understand it's important for us to sort this out. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused to you.

We've investigated the charges and we've found that you are charged for MMS as your text has a picture (smiley is also considered as a picture).

Just so you know if a SMS includes smiley or pictures it convert itself into MMS and we can't change the MMS setting as it is saved by default. Hence the charges are valid.

---

so they are still adamant Three main customer servcies that my charging for use of smileys is chargeable...whereas the Three store still say it should be free. Some of my texts still get charges with or without smileys some not despite my allowance of 5000 per month (i only use ~200 per month!)

Rusty!

Unless this smiley was an attached image rather than a simply colon and a bracket, they're talking !!!!.

Buzby

The use of punctuation itself should not create a MMS, however, the phone firmware MAY do this automatically, so you might wan to track this feature down and disable it.

As far as it goes, 3 are simply charging for the type of service you are using so if the phone is the culprit and you can't find how to switch it off, ask in the manufacturers support site how to!

sillygoose

Would the greyed out settings not become available if you got it unlocked? you could then knobble the mms settings? just a thought.