Sneaky MMS charges

[Anonymous]

Has anyone experienced text messages being automatically morphed into MMS after reaching an undisclosed number of characters. I'm not talking about including emocions just straight text messages. I have incurred over £8 in additional charges before I noticed this happening.

[Anonymous]

yes this has happened to me when i tried sending a bulk sms to all my contacts with my new number which ended up costing me £5 for all the mms.

It does however say on screen ( or it did for me after testing)  a little pop up when it is switching from a normal txt to a mms which gives u the option to del a few words to bring it back to normal sms. All i can say is be carefull and doubble check before sending it nextime. ( thankfully i have not done this again after the first time )

[Cleoriff · Accepted solution]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Has anyone experienced text messages being automatically morphed into MMS after reaching an undisclosed number of characters. I'm not talking about including emocions just straight text messages. I have incurred over £8 in additional charges before I noticed this happening.

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Never experienced anything sneaky about it. Sending a SMS has to be less than 480 characters. if it exceeds that it will convert to MMS   A help guide is shown here

http://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Other-Products-Services/Accidental-MMS-Sending-and-How-to-Avoid-it/td-p/689503

[jonsie]

Most android phones have a setting in messages to warn you when a sms is converted to mms.

[MI5]

There is nothing sneaky about it at all it's just a limitation of the old fashioned SMS platform.

[Anonymous]

In years gone by some handsets would allow you to send very long text messages and the phone would break it down into components. The longest ones I sent were about 10 texts long.

However several years ago this changed and anything over 480b characters became a "long text message" which was chargeable at mms rates.

Also on many phones if you group several recipients in the one text it will send as mms. On my Note 3 it is 20 recipients to the same text, S4 was 10.

[Anonymous]

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@MI5 wrote:
There is nothing sneaky about it at all it's just a limitation of the old fashioned SMS platform.

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I am still not clear as to who is actually responsible for applying the "limitation" - is it O2 who obviously waht to make some more profit, or is the phone manufacturers (what do they get out of it?)  or is it the firmware/software engineers?   Is there any physical, electronic or other reason why there should be a limit (apart from the arguably obvious one that we are talking about SMS - ie SHORT message system.)?

From this perspective it may perhaps seem a  "sneaky" business to some.

[Anonymous]

Gone are the days when long messages were converted to two messages. I used to get a little message saying that the text would be sent as two text messages. I have now asked O2 to deactivate MMS. I don't need it and I think they have a cheek the way text messaging is handled. I am now sorry that I took out a contrat with O2

[Anonymous]

I only sent to 2 the first time and 4 the second and they charged me. Cheek!

[Anonymous]

Hi. What handset are you using? Most handsets allow you to send texts up to 480 characters long and they be sent as text not mms.

Also handsets provide a feature where you can be warned when your message converts so you can change it.

This is not an o2 issue but it is a handset issue in the first instance.

Welcome to the Community by the way