MSE News: Got a Samsung phone? You could get charged extra for sending emojis

d123

P400enx wrote: »

So I have a Samsung S4 and my contract is on O2, I will be honest I never checked my bill, until a vacation late last year when I was curious of my charges. Then I noticed I had paid for an mms as opposed to sms prior to my vacation, in fact I was charged for lots during that month. I started to go through my bills and found I had been charged almost £300 in mms. I challenged this and it turned out I was charged for emojis. Granted this was in the small print of my contract, however I did not know what and emoji was. To me it was a smiley face or other wise know dots and brackets. I challenged O2, I asked the, to explain to me what and emoji really is, they explained to me it is a combination of characters or punctuation which can resemble faces. On some phones they appear as yellow faces and on some as characters and punctuation portraying a face depending on phone orientation. So I then asked, can you detail which combinations are chargeable. They could not answer. I asked for a refund they said no. I said what have you charged me for and they replied for emojis I repeated my question slightly different, Can you tell me which characters and punctuation is chargeable and in which orders and I will ensure not to do this again. They again could not answer, apparently they did not know all possible combinations. So as I explained to them, you are charging me for combinations otherwise known as emojis, when you do not know what the combinations are and you can't tell me. That's like getting a speeding ticket without knowing the speed of the road and the person providing the ticket not knowing either. They cannot force a charge on you if they cannot prepare you with a method of knowing what you may be charged for.

GUESS WHAT, i recieved a refund to the value of every mms I sent in the last 18 months.

Fight your case everyone.
:beer::j:mad:;):o:T:)

Because I can :j

You got a goodwill gesture, nothing to do with forcing a change on you. MMS have always been chargeable and the phone pops up a warning about the MMS conversion. You had no right to a refund, but well done in getting them to refund it anyway.

In future save yourself the risk of charging, just use a non-Samsung messaging app that doesn't have this issue.

polystyrene

My terminally technically inept relative sent me a text the other day. I forwarded it to my partner. She did not receive it.

Checking that out, I realised that the message was an MMS. Partner changed her settings to allow receipt of MMS and she got the message. Within hours I had seen the story this thread is based on, checked my bill,and seen I had been charged for two MMS messages.

Because I forwarded before I had even read it, I had not clocked it was an MMS. Nothing seemed different!

I have an unusably high SMS allowance, unlimited data, adequate call minutes - and yet for forwarding the few poxy extra bytes implied by a smiley I get charged!

spangle67

I currently own a Samsung S4 Mini, and have had Samsung smart phones for several years. It always annoyed me that you can only write a window of text before the message becomes an MMS, and costs 50p to send. And then some people can't open them. Lucky iPhone and other phone owners can send long messages without this problem. I usually use WHat'sApp now and avoid my phones own texting issues.

However, until a few weeks ago it didn't cost a bean to send an emoticon in the message- not one of my Samsungs ever did this including my Mini S4. UNTIL the updates. My phone was faltering badly and saying it was full despite having only two additional apps- Facebook and WhatsApp and no stored photos on it. I had to totally empty everything before I could do the updates and when I did- it started charging me 50p to use one of their rubbishy emoticons. Not even nice ones!
Other aspects of the updates have left my phone with problems- texting is now harder and slower due to strange little things like needing to press the space bar not once after a comma but two or three times or it becomes a hyperlink. It's a really fiddly habit to get into and I am constantly making the mistake. Also I have totally lost the settings button if I want to change any aspects of texting such as keyboard type. Which I do need to, but can't seem to get back what I had before at all.
I also lost the search address bar and have to go to the Google Icon every time.

All in all the updates are a massive downgrade for my phone, and just as soon as I can bear to empty everything all over again whilst I do a factory reset yet again I will have to. I have had the phone less than six months, and the first factory reset had to be done immediately because the camera was faulty.
Every time I get a phone I say Samsung never again!!! Then I do as its the Devil I know and they are cheaper than iPhones. But I can't say I would ever recommend them to anybody.

spangle67

Photos cost. Emoticons never did.
I have had Samsungs for years. My S4 Mini is my most recent and not one of them including this phone ever charged MMS for sending emoticons until I did some updates a couple of weeks ago and suddenly it wants to charge me for a little smiley.

Deleted_User wrote: »

back in the day e.g 10 years ago everyone who sent MMS knew that if you added a pic/image then it would be an MMS.

Clearly user error here.

yvonneuk

My partner changed to three network last year and upgraded to the samsung galaxy 5. He never knew about being charged for emoticons as he'd always had an iphone and never got charged.

When he got his first bill he'd been charged £10 so he rang up but was none the wiser, he said they told him texts wernt free. I nipped into the shop for him and they told me about being charged for sending a text with an emoticon in it, that they class them as mms.

He hasnt sent anymore since

ClareEE_2

it's not just emojis. My husband was texting groups to confirm meetings on a weekly basis, and because one of the contacts was an email address, the whole lot got converted to MMS, and he had no idea it was happening! Cost a fortune!

solvent_saver

My MOTO X 2nd Gen converts punctuations into emojis which are then charged as out of bundle MMS. Can anyone help?
What's the difference between emoticons and emojis and where do I find the 'free' ones on my phone?
Thanks

solvent_saver

While on the topic,

a) I tried to send a text to Classic FM and received a 'chargeable' warning - as I could not find out how much these charges are, I cancelled the SMS. Does this apply to all 'short' text numbers, e.g. for charitable donations? My provider is TalkTalk.
b) TalkTalk website states that lengthy SMS are converted to MMS, and that this is determined by handset manufacturer. When is an SMS 'lengthy' for Motorola X 2nd Gen?

Can anyone help?
Thanks

diamonds

solvent_saver wrote: »

While on the topic,

a) I tried to send a text to Classic FM and received a 'chargeable' warning - as I could not find out how much these charges are, I cancelled the SMS. Does this apply to all 'short' text numbers, e.g. for charitable donations? My provider is TalkTalk.
b) TalkTalk website states that lengthy SMS are converted to MMS, and that this is determined by handset manufacturer. When is an SMS 'lengthy' for Motorola X 2nd Gen?

Can anyone help?
Thanks

It is all in the settings of your mobile, the choices not to send as mms or max text length.

diamonds

solvent_saver wrote: »

While on the topic,

a) I tried to send a text to Classic FM and received a 'chargeable' warning - as I could not find out how much these charges are, I cancelled the SMS. Does this apply to all 'short' text numbers, e.g. for charitable donations? My provider is TalkTalk.
b) TalkTalk website states that lengthy SMS are converted to MMS, and that this is determined by handset manufacturer. When is an SMS 'lengthy' for Motorola X 2nd Gen?

Can anyone help?
Thanks

Classic FM and any shortcode service user should state the cost.