Mobile phone picture messaging charges!!

whittysmum

Hello, we have just received our son’s mobile phone bill from EE for £209 on a £30 a month all inclusive contract! I phoned them up to be informed that as he has been including Emoticons in his messages, they are charged as picture messages at 33p a time, and not included in his contract.
Apparently, all the networks and mobile phone manufacturers are aware of this (they very kindly sent me a link on their website detailing this) but obviously, I and all my friends are not!
There is an APP that you can download to get round the charges, and most new smartphones are now updated to include this, but again, I wasn’t aware of this.
I do find it strange though, that he has had this phone/contract for a few months, sending the exact same messages, but this is the first time we have had the extra charges?
EE have now agreed to halve the bill, which I suppose I will have to accept, but I would just like to warn any other computer/smartphone illiterate parents of the pitfalls!

kittykat17

Hi, does your son have a Samsung? I've been told that this only applies to Samsungs and that it is something to do with their software! Don't exactly understand the reasoning but will be steering clear of samsung's when I upgrade at the end of the year!

gjchester

whittysmum wrote: »

I do find it strange though, that he has had this phone/contract for a few months, sending the exact same messages, but this is the first time we have had the extra charges?

Has he downloaded any new software, upgrade the phones software or even removed some software? It could be something is on the phone that changes the : - ) type entry into a ? Or all prior messages went through a program like WhatsApp that uses data, and thats since expired and messages are going as a MMS.

A lot depends on the phone, if I sent a emoticon from my iPhone to another iPhone user it will go by imessage so not cost anything. Sending that to anyone without an iPhone and it goes as a chargeable picture message.


Actually thinking about I half recall some phones will send long messages (over 140 characters) as a MMS as a way to link them onto the end users phone, that could be an element to it too.

MikeWhite

I don't think it's clear cut enough to blame Samsung phones. I have one and regularly include faces of various kinds and have not been charged a penny by Tesco Mobile.

wongataa

Some phones messaging apps convert emoticons to pictures and therefore create a mms instead of a regular text message. You should go into the settings for the messaging app in question and look to see if there is this option and if so turn it off. It's not unique to Samsung.

Rusty!

kittykat17 wrote: »

Hi, does your son have a Samsung? I've been told that this only applies to Samsungs and that it is something to do with their software! Don't exactly understand the reasoning but will be steering clear of samsung's when I upgrade at the end of the year!

It's not a Samsung thing at all, I've got a Note II here and just added some emoji to a text message and it did not convert it to MMS.

whittysmum

EE told me it can happen with any phone model, but the newer models have updates that compensate for it,