Orange/EE overcharging

highbar

Can you believe this. I pay for my daughters contract with
orange at tariff of £36 / month.
Over last few months she has been attatching 'emoticons'
to texts with her friends such as a smiley face icon.
When I looked at my bank statement for July 14, I noticed
a DD payment to Orange for £493. I phoned the bank to
ask if this was a legitimate amount and not a mistake.
I searched for my previous monthly statement and found
the DD to Orange for June was in fact £297. Of course I
phoned customer services at Orange immediately and after
a long period of talking to numerous employees of their
overseas call centre finally spoke to the billing department
who explained the charges, at £0.33 per text were for
photo messaging generated by using the smiley face
in the text messages. At the moment I am getting nowhere
with them but plan to fight for my money back at all cost.
Can anybody advise me how to go about this?
How can a little smiley face be classed as a photo message.
As far as I know, no other mobile providers are charging
for the latter, how can they justify their actions.
My daughter monitors data usage on her phone and has
never gone near her allowance.
Would like to hear from anybody who is having similar
problems or could give advice.

grumbler

highbar wrote: »

...
How can a little smiley face be classed as a photo message.

The size of the smiley/image doesn't matter.
I think all depends on the phone and it's settings. If the phone sends the smiley as

:)

and the recipient's phone converts it into , then it's a normal text. If the sending phone sends a graphic image then it's a picture message.