Iphone charges at 35p for 160+ character texts and group texts

[Anonymous]

I've just been sent a bill for £52 for a group text that my daughter sent on her ipHone 4. Having phoned o2 it would appear that the following are considered as MMS and not SMS and charged at 35p:

1) Group texts (4+ people)

2) Texts more than 160 characters. This is ridiculous given that the contract I signed up for was for "Unlimited texts and phone calls" and I was not made aware of this 'scam'.

3) The expected texts with images etc.

O2 have cancelled £50 of the £52 bill, but the contract remains as it is. Is there any way around this? My daughter now has a character count on her texts, but 160 is small and only 4-5 lines. This is worse than her previous simplicity contract!

[jonsie]

me too.

[Anonymous]

I think this must be because you have an unlimited SMS & MMS in your plan. I now realise that I 'used' to have 'both' unlimited but when I've upgraded and my plan was renewed, O2 omitted to mention they were taking something off me that I'd had previously had. Not impressed O2!!

[MI5]

If you change tariff you will be bound by the new tariff terms. Unlimited SMS/MMS hasn't been available for about 4 years now....

[Anonymous]

I've only been with O2 since the end of September so I definitely don't have unlimited MMS.

[Anonymous]

I have unlimited texts, had for nearly 2 years now, and on many occasions sent very long texts and was never charged a penny

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I've just been sent a bill for £52 for a group text that my daughter sent on her ipHone 4. Having phoned o2 it would appear that the following are considered as MMS and not SMS and charged at 35p:

1) Group texts (4+ people)

2) Texts more than 160 characters. This is ridiculous given that the contract I signed up for was for "Unlimited texts and phone calls" and I was not made aware of this 'scam'.

3) The expected texts with images etc.

O2 have cancelled £50 of the £52 bill, but the contract remains as it is. Is there any way around this? My daughter now has a character count on her texts, but 160 is small and only 4-5 lines. This is worse than her previous simplicity contract!

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I have sent text messages over 160 characters many times on my iPhone and I’ve never incurred any charges.

Also, these texts messages were sent to at least 4 or more people at the same time too and they were not to other iPhone users, so these would not have been sent as a iMessage.

Out of the 3 listed items, there is only number 3 that would be classed as a MMS message (due to the images) and these are charged at 35p (unless you have a MMS bolt on).

I think the information you have been provided (apart from number 3) is incorrect.


I think what your daughter may have inadvertently done is entered text into the subject field in Messages and thus turned the SMS message into a MMS message and that’s where the charges have come from. It is very easy to enter text in the subject field by accident, and I think that out of the box, this option should be turned off, rather than on.

I made this video guide as I saw a few posts on the forum where people were being charged for MMS messages, and this was because a lot of the time people were entering text into the subject field in Messages. Has soon as you do this, you then turn that message into a MMS message and incur the charge for a MMS message.

In this video guide, I describe how to turn this “Show Subject Field” off to stop these charges.

Although the video guide shows the instructions for iOS 6, it is the same for iOS 7:

[Anonymous]

So... it would be interesting to check the following points, with everybody that is still active on this thread, because there is something very wrong if some of us are not incurring charges and some are, when all should be equal!
This would only be applicable to those who have NOT opted to have MMS bolt on's or where it was confirmed by O2 to be included in their plan. If you're not sure it would be worth checking with O2 exactly what your allowances are.

We are accepting here that A/ if you include a picture within your message, or B/ send multiple/group texts over 4no = that they will be classed as a MMS & therefore chargeable.

1/ Are you charged for texts over 160 characters (without having bolt on or MMS incl' in your plan) ?
2/ Do you have 'MMS Messaging' turned ON or OFF within your settings/messages ?
3/ Were you made aware by O2, when upgrading, that text messages would be sent as an MMS and therefore chargeable if picture (or smilies) were within the text OR if characters were over 160 ?
4/ When did you last upgrade ?

Hope I have included everything that will make sense of this anomaly?!

NB...Just as a foot note, does anyone know what happens with a text (or how it is sent - if at all) if it's over 160 characters OR a picture is included BUT with 'MMS messaging' turned OFF??!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

NB...Just as a foot note, does anyone know what happens with a text (or how it is sent - if at all) if it's over 160 characters OR a picture is included BUT with 'MMS messaging' turned OFF??!

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With regards to a text over 160 characters.

On my iPhone, it is just sent exactly like, say for example a text message that contains 20 characters. There's nothing displayed on the screen that shows anything different.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
So... it would be interesting to check the following points, with everybody that is still active on this thread, because there is something very wrong if some of us are not incurring charges and some are, when all should be equal!
This would only be applicable to those who have NOT opted to have MMS bolt on's or where it was confirmed by O2 to be included in their plan. If you're not sure it would be worth checking with O2 exactly what your allowances are.

We are accepting here that A/ if you include a picture within your message, or B/ send multiple/group texts over 4no = that they will be classed as a MMS & therefore chargeable.

1/ Are you charged for texts over 160 characters (without having bolt on or MMS incl' in your plan) ?
2/ Do you have 'MMS Messaging' turned ON or OFF within your settings/messages ?
3/ Were you made aware by O2, when upgrading, that text messages would be sent as an MMS and therefore chargeable if picture (or smilies) were within the text OR if characters were over 160 ?
4/ When did you last upgrade ?

Hope I have included everything that will make sense of this anomaly?!

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I think that it would be interesting to see of the people who are active on the thread, how many could have inadvertently entered text into the subject field in Messages and thus turned the SMS message into a MMS message.

Or if they can definitely say that they already had “show subject field” turned off and still incurred the charges.

Like I said earlier, with show subject field turned on, it is very easy to inadvertently enter text into the  subject field, and if you have sent a lot of messages and on each one inadvertently entered text into the subject field, then the charges could be high.

Like I mentioned earlier, I have never been charged for text messages exceeding 160 characters and or when sending to 4 or more people at the same time.

For the record, I am on a 12 month Simplicity Tariff which I just went on to 7 days ago, previous to this I was on a similar 12 month Simplicity tariff.

[Anonymous]

Well, I definitely have the 'MMS messaging' and 'subject field' turned off and I'm still being charged for texts over 160 characters.
So, if they're not being sent via MMS (because it's turned off) then how are they being sent and incurring a charge?

Maybe an O2 moderator could step in here and clear all of this up!!!