Text messages that convert themselves to media messages

[Anonymous]

Hi, Does anyone experiece text messages changing from a simple text message to a media message and then incurring charges when no image was attached!

This has happened to me on more than one occasion and is very annoying!

Is there a way round it?

I didn't notice that it had changed from an ordinary text.

Did I miss something?

Can anyone help or make suggestions on how to prevent this?

Thanks

[anticpated]

I love how you back up your answers with a statistics. It's a bit like explaining X-Factor with psychology. 

Joking aside, it's very informative. I use GMail to send MMS type messages; as my data is inclusive in my contract.

I'll send a text asking people to check their e-mail account.

Looking at the maths, this is a really old system of 8-bit data communication. The only other answer would be to raise the level where a text becomes MMS and this can be done with some 3rd party apps however usually by using a proxy to the developers server, therefore your privacy then becomes an issue.

Making e-mail a safer choice for me.

[Anonymous]

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@anticpated wrote:

I love how you back up your answers with a statistics. It's a bit like explaining X-Factor with psychology. 

Joking aside, it's very informative. I use GMail to send MMS type messages; as my data is inclusive in my contract.

I'll send a text asking people to check their e-mail account.

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Thanks :smileyhappy:.

Email is the king of communication methods anyway.  With a decent email system, who needs sms, mms, IM, etc?  Send me an email and it arrives instantly on my phone just like a text would.  Ditto on the computer.  I can reply from either.  Sent messages and old messages eventually end up just on the computer ready for archiving. Nice, fast, reliable, cheap, and just works.

[Cleoriff]

I certainly don't whinge about sending MMS...for the simple reason I don't send them.

Others however do, whether by choice or inadvertently. If they send by choice then they should expect to pay the price....I they send in error.... then its up to us to advise  them. (which is why we always include MI5's excellent help guide about SMS>MMS conversion..)

Simple, helpful and effective.

[Anonymous]

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@anticpated wrote:

Looking at the maths, this is a really old system of 8-bit data communication. The only other answer would be to raise the level where a text becomes MMS and this can be done with some 3rd party apps however usually by using a proxy to the developers server, therefore your privacy then becomes an issue.

Making e-mail a safer choice for me.

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It's basically packing 8 bits in to 7 to raise the capacity of a single message from 140 characters to 160.  Quite useful a couple of decades ago when it was invented.  Old 80s computer games did a similar thing, to fit more text in to the small memories.  If I remember rightly, the system was called 5-pack, as it used 5 bits for each character.

There is nothing to stop an app creating a much longer chain of SMS messages, infact you can do this manually.  Just prefix each message with 1/ 2/ 3/, etc, and let the receiver put them together using their brain (assuming they have one).

Since SMS is normally unlimited or with a massive allowance, and since virtually ALL modern handsets can be set to send unicode SMS, nobody needs to be over charged for sending messages like this.

And as you point out, email is usually a better choice anyway.

[Anonymous]

I have decided to close this discussion.If you have an issue with the actions of another, please use the inappropriate content button or PM us instead of creating a debate on a thread. 

We have had this discussion before, remember:

• 'How to offer advice' is an entirely subjective view. 
• To be a part of this community, we must all accept each others' different approaches to advising others.