Being charged for emoticons (smiley faces) as MMS/picture messages

[Anonymous]

I have had a good look through the forum but can not see anything like this problem.

A friend of mine had a large bill come through this month and contacted 02 customer service.

Basically she was told her bill was so high because she had used above and beyond her MMS/picture message qouta which she refused to except but was told that a Emoticon (smiley face) counted as a MMS/picture message.

Has anybody encountered this or confirm or decline this??

Thanks in advance

[Liquid]

Haha great joke poor circumstances

[Anonymous]

I have just changed from Pay as you Go to a contract.  I have an iphone (always have) and have now been charged for sending emoticons........ but i didn't on PAYG??!!  I have been into the store and contacted the CS.  They first tried to tell me it was Apple's fault, then they changed their mind and said O2 convert emoticons into picture messages!!!  Apparently, the PAYG account I was on was old and therefore didn't charge for smiley faces???!!  Wish i'd stayed on PAYG then!  It annoys me because firends & family on other networks dont get charged - wish i'd changed supplier!!

They also mentioned a 160 character limit - anything over can change your message to MMS.......... that cant be true surely??

[MI5]

As you have an iPhone turn off the subject line and MMS in settings.

[Anonymous]

Thanks.  MMS is turned off though so I really dont understand!  O2 dont seem to be consistent with their charging AND they dont tell you that they will charge for such things (how ironic they offer smileys on this forum!!! ha ha).

[jonsie]

O2 | text messages being sent as a MMS

[Anonymous]

I've just discovered I'm being charged for this too on my Galaxy S4 - they are sending them as MMS - scandalous!!

[MI5]

Turn on MMS Converstion warning in message app settings then you'll know in future.

[Anonymous]

Yea, just got a reply from Shikha in Customer Service. I get charged for sending emoticons on my S4 as well, not the fancy schmancy ones either, just the regular colon/ line/ parentheses assembly. Can o2 legally charge for the configuration of characters you send? If so, what's to prevent them from arbitrarily charging for other combinations of letters and symbols? Funnily enough, I was never charged for length of message or emoticon when I had an iphone. I see this charge as potentially fraudulent/ an abuse of customer trust, and given how hard o2 make it to get a straight answer regarding their charging policy in this respect, I suspect they know it too! Might be interesting to investigate...I shall be sharing this little nugget widely...

[MI5]

Something very wrong with that practice....
It needs a proper investigation. I've never been charged for a : - ) smiley and would be pretty annoyed if I was, too!!

[Anonymous]

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@MI5 wrote:
Something very wrong with that practice....
It needs a proper investigation. I've never been charged for a : - ) smiley and would be pretty annoyed if I was, too!!

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same here, never been charged either on my Samsung or iPhone...