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

[MI5]

Many feel they should be free now (esp as nearly everyone has a data allowance these days). MMS are an old, out of data throwback to WAP and have no place in modern smartphones, imho.....

[Anonymous]

A few years ago o2 included mms in some pay monthly contracts as I recall where each mms used 4 of your texts allowance.

Of course these days many people have unlimited texts so that would not be an issue but I do agree with MI5 that MMS (in my opinion) should be included as part of the text allowance.

[MI5]

The old legacy tariff's were 4:1 texts for MMS, then when they dropped that they started giving 20 free MMS per month with contract tariff's. That too has now been dropped which may explain why some people think they are getting charged now when they weren't before...?

[perksie]

Fortunately some of us still have the 4:1 MMS included!

They were only dropped for new contracts.

[MI5]

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@perksie wrote:

Fortunately some of us still have the 4:1 MMS included!

They were only dropped for new contracts.

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Mainly the old buggers

[perksie]

Anyone retaining their contract from around 6 years ago should have them!

[Anonymous]

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@MI5 wrote:
The old legacy tariff's were 4:1 texts for MMS, then when they dropped that they started giving 20 free MMS per month with contract tariff's. That too has now been dropped which may explain why some people think they are getting charged now when they weren't before...?

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I think that might be what i'm on, an old legacy contract (600 mins, 1200 texts, unlimited data) - i've never had any MMS charges (and I sometimes have sent VERY long texts full of smileys lol!).

You still get MMS free in the Family Bolt-on (or mine does - it's been a few years though, so may have changed also).

If they were charged as part of a data allowance, even that would be more understandable - just the clarity up front is what's needed though, to save surprise bills in January when money is tight!

Anyway, i've contacted Live Chat, the guy was great and really didn't think we should've been charged (he wanted to refund the difference as a goodwill gesture but doesn't have the access level to do that), and said he'd had a lot of people contacting him over this specific issue!  But he gave me the complaints address, and i've sent them a nice email - hopefully someone with a bit of good PR sense will read it...

It's a good job you guys on the forum are on the ball - at least I was able to identify the reason for the issue, and then follow it up with O2... I will definitely keep a check on the ongoing billing every few days in future though!  Thank you all for your comments

[perksie]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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If they were charged as part of a data allowance, even that would be more understandable - just the clarity up front is what's needed though, to save surprise bills in January when money is tight!

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This was never hidden and there was a lot of discussion here when this happened a few years ago.

Stay in touch here if you want to stay up to date on any changes.

[Anonymous]

I have had exactly the same problem. I have a Samsung S4. Seems they chage you for adding emoticons to a text. 

[jonsie]

The S4 will warn you when the sms message is changed to mms. Just enable it in message settings.