Orange - multiple texts on New Years Eve/ Day

kiwikaz

Has anyone had this problem ?

On New Years Eve / Day my OH sent multiple texts to friends and family wishing them a Happy New Year.

Apparently if more than 3 ( ? ) texts are sent at the same time then they're sent as a multi media message therefore not being part of unlimited texts but charged as a multi media message at a cost of 25p a time and obviously + VAT.

Unfortunately the problem didn't end there.I was shocked to spot a DD from our account for way above the norm. On closer inspection of OH's bill for almost 3 hours these texts were resent at 2 minute / 4 minute / 6 minute / 8 minute intervals etc.. Not a chance.
Having searched it appears that a similar problem occurred in France in 2011.
Currently Orange / EE are looking into it.
At the time of posting he's not heard back from Orange/ EE.

I'm hoping that we'll have the excess refunded.

I'm posting because having been foolish in not checking bank statements and bills in the past then perhaps others could have fallen foul to this too.
Please check your statements and bills.

Karen.:mad:

NFH

kiwikaz wrote: »

Apparently if more than 3 ( ? ) texts are sent at the same time then they're sent as a multi media message therefore not being part of unlimited texts but charged as a multi media message at a cost of 25p a time and obviously + VAT.

I think you'll find that this is something your phone decides to do, not the network. For example, iPhones don't convert long SMS to MMS; they are sent as concatenated SMS. Perhaps you have Android and/or Samsung?

kiwikaz

Thanks for your post.

Have to say I'd not heard of this problem re Samsung ( which is my OH's phone ).
As yet he hasn't heard back from Orange. Obvioulsy I really hope this isn't the case.

K.

mossstitchmama

I have noticed this previously with my Samsung mobiles that instead of sending the message as more than one page, (and counting it as say three messages), it converts it to an MMS which I also don't get as part of my allowance.

Tony5101

This isnt restricted to Samsung phones. This is a 'feature' of stock android sms apps.
I use handcent, and there is a specific setting in this app that stops this from happening, a setting that is sadly lacking in the stock apps.