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

[Bambino]

O2's policy regarding this needs to be made more clear. There shouldn't be any differentiation from phone to phone.

[perksie]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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...

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Have you checked the possible reasons here:

http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/srvs/cgi-bin/webcgi.exe?New,KB=Companion,T=guruCase,VARSET_COBJID=52283,Problem=Obj%2852283%29,question=ref%28User%29:str%28Mobile%29

[Anonymous]

On my S4 before the upgrade to 4.3 I had to click on the button to the left of the home key which brought up a selection of smiley faces. These were not converted to mms and were not charged.

However 4.3 saw an extra button next to Sym on the key pad with lots of colourful emoticons. I clicked on one and it changed the message to mms and I got charged.

So now I stick to the first format above and I am NOT being charged. If I put in 🙂 I don't get charged either.

Hope that helps.

[MI5]

You can turn off the auto conversion to MMS in the settings. That way you either get a warning or it won;t send as an MMS at all.

[Anonymous]

HI, I have just have a long 'chat' to Kenny from O2 regarding a charge on my account. He repeatedly confirmed that I would be charged for any smiley including :-))

Not very impressed with the answers I received. I have sent 4 picture messages this month yet my extra charge was £7.58. The only smiley's I use are the above. I have been with O2 for years but have recently changed my tariff to 12 month sim only as I do not want to upgrade just now. I think this may be the final contract with them unless this is resolved.

[MI5]

You don't get charged for :-)) so it must be for something else.......

[Anonymous]

MI5 is right

Have a good look at your recent charges in myo2

[adamtemp64]

Are you sure those Charges relate to mms messages? I.e. ho many is it showing you sent on the breakdown of your bill?

[Anonymous]

Yep this does seem to be correct.  My other half has been wondering why his bills have increased over past couple of month and when he logged onto his account it did say he had used over the 20 mms he gets free each month.  He said he had not sent one mms and was told by o2 that on 'some' phones a smiley in a text is classed as an mms. He has not changed his phone for 2 year so Im not sure it is the type of phone or something o2 have brought in and not made anyone aware and are blaming certain types of phone. 

[perksie]

See my link above for the reasons this happens and how to avoid it.