o2 customers - media message charges BEWARE

[Anonymous]

***WARNING TO ALL USERS OF iphone on o2.***

I've just been charged £35.00 for sending text messages that were too big that o2 turned them into media messages. I've never known this to happen and have been stung for a huge cost for money I don't have spare 3 weeks before Christmas.

o2 have refused to refund as it's my own fault that I went over the character limit.

I am not renewing my contract as a result as this is the worst customer service I've known. I'll be posting this on Twitter and Facebook too so that other people don't find themselves with huge bills. Pass on the word also. These companies are very willing to take money in ways that I don't feel are transparent enough. Terrible customer service.

Don't let this happen to you.

[MI5]

It's already been covered here before, nothing new, and yes, it is your fault.... You can turn it off on your phone.

[Anonymous]

How do I do that?

[MI5]

Go to Settings>Messages>MMS Messaging>Off

[perksie]

Ridiculous accusation, especially as you have no idea why it happened or how to fix it!

If you had simply asked for advice:

http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/srvs/cgi-bin/webcgi.exe?New,KB=Companion,T=guruCase,VARSET_COBJID=52283,P...

[Anonymous]

While I agree you could have avoided it I would try again with O2 I have heard of them refunding may take a few calls

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

***WARNING TO ALL USERS OF iphone on o2.***

I've just been charged £35.00 for sending text messages that were too big that o2 turned them into media messages. I've never known this to happen and have been stung for a huge cost for money I don't have spare 3 weeks before Christmas.

o2 have refused to refund as it's my own fault that I went over the character limit.

I am not renewing my contract as a result as this is the worst customer service I've known. I'll be posting this on Twitter and Facebook too so that other people don't find themselves with huge bills. Pass on the word also. These companies are very willing to take money in ways that I don't feel are transparent enough. Terrible customer service.

Don't let this happen to you.

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It is all too easy to enter text in the Subject field when writing a message. Has soon as you enter text in the Subject field, that then turns the message into a MMS message, these are charged at 35p per message. I think this is what could have happened to you Karen.


O2 do not charge for text messages that are too long. A lot of people think that text messages can only be 160 characters long, this is not the case now. Some phones will split the text into multiple messages or some just send them as one message. I know with my iPhone, when I send a long text message, it just gets sent as one.

I wrote a video guide a while back, showing how to turn the subject field off to stop you inadvertently entering text into it and thus turning the text message into a MMS message. Although the video guide is showing how to do this in iOS 6, it should be very similar for iOS 7.


It might be worth watching this to see if this is the cause for your £35 charge Karen.

[Anonymous]

I have been told by one O2 employee that if I send one smiley face per month I will be charged £0.35. This is excessive and in previous mobile phone contracts I have never been charged this this.

In order to avoid charges for so called media messages, is there a list of all the types of media messages that you can be charged for?

[MI5]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I have been told by one O2 employee that if I send one smiley face per month I will be charged £0.35. This is excessive and in previous mobile phone contracts I have never been charged this this.

In order to avoid charges for so called media messages, is there a list of all the types of media messages that you can be charged for?

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Any message sent as an MMS will be charged.

Tell us what phone you have and we can advise on turning it off.

[Anonymous]

This is untrue Gerald-Gordon.

I regularly send multiple smilies and I have not been charged. I hasten to add that I am not on a media message bolt on.

I think the reason you may have been charged is because you may have entered text into the subject field on the messaging app.

See my video guide/post a few posts above.