O2 loophole/con to charge customers for sending emoji's

[Anonymous]

Did you know that emoji's are classed as pictures and each is charged at 50p.

I didn't know this until I started noticing a spike in my bill. Even though o2's terms and conditions state that the pay monthly tariff doesn't include mms it doesn't specify that emoji's are part of this charge.

So customers, beware that even when  you type a smiley face like ':-)' and it gets drawn as a picture O2 will charge you..

A while back 4 text msgs used to get converted to one picture msg but then how would o2 make money if they are offering unlimited text msgs in their tariff? Therefore, someone in their company came up with this genius idea of firstly not including mms in the tariff but the real genius is in charging for emoji's and the unsuspecting customers don't realize what they are paying for until you get told about it!!!

Sound familiar? This is exactly what happened when premium msg services started and the ill infitmed customers didn't know what was  happening to their bills until the regulations changed and customers knew how to stop premium charges!!!

Hopefully, this msg is useful to unsuspecting customers like me who don't realize unless specifically abd directly nformed about updates and changes exploiting loopholes. 

Well done, o2.

[MI5]

Not much point posting them then

[xbow]

I've just been told by o2 that now any text sent that contains any emoji will be charged as an MMS.

They said this has been in place for over a year but I've not been charged for them in this way until today.

When I asked if they could point me in the direction of where this is written they could not & said their web pages have not yet been updated with these "new" terms & conditions.

[MI5]

That's not entirely true.
We have help explaining it here https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Other-Products-and-Services/Accidental-MMS-Sending-and-How-to-Avoid-it...

[jonsie]

Have a read here. MMS are charged when a particular text normally goes above 480 characters. An emoji varies but are typically around 100 characters for the first emoji and maybe 2 or 3 characters for subsequent ones. So the adviser was talking tosh. It's all about character count.

https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Other-Products-and-Services/Accidental-MMS-Sending-and-How-to-Avoid-it...

[xbow]

Yes, I understand all that in the link - that is how I thought it was.

But I explained that to the guy at o2 but he said it has now changed (about a year ago) so that every text sent with any emoji is now charged as an MMS.

[xbow]

As I said - that is how I understood it but now o2 have told me this has changed so that any emoji is billed as an MMS.

[MI5]

As we have said, that's rubbish.

[jonsie]

That's absolute nonsense. Nothing has changed and certainly not a year ago! 

[xbow]

Sounds wrong to me to so I rang o2 again & spoke to someone else. They said the same thing - that I'd get charged for MMS for any message with an emoji regardless of characters. They told me to use Whats App.

Doesn't make sense to me though as I just sent an emoji to try it out & wasn't charged.

I have been charged wrongly for this in the past so maybe staff have just been told to say this so that when mistakes are made they've covered themselves.

[MI5]

Yes, sounds like a stock answer to something they don’t understand.