This could change you smiley face to a sad one

[mickybha]

This may be old news to some but i bet there are plenty who like me were unaware of this rip off it seems a bit of pot luck if your getting charged or not,
the wife and i both have new identical phones on the one contract in my name with O2 she is getting charged (£40 over the last 4 months) and i am not
worth checking your recent bills and informing friends and family to do the same
A call to O2 has just resulted in a miserly £10 credit as a "good will gesture" for this month but nothing for previous bills along with the advice to "use whatsapp if your going to use emojis in text messages.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31148424

 

[RandyWanger]

SMS is converted to an MMS when using an emoticons, would have assumed this was common knowledge but I guess not.
iMessages or WhatsApp is a way around this, you can also disable them entirely and go back to the old skool style emoji.

iPhone --> Settings --> General --> Keyboard --> Keyboards click Edit and then remove Emoji.

Maybe like with SMS being green and iMessages being blue, they need a colour for SMS to make ti clearer to end users?

 

[Paul Reids Sock]

SMS is converted to an MMS when using an emoticons, would have assumed this was common knowledge but I guess not.
iMessages or WhatsApp is a way around this, you can also disable them entirely and go back to the old skool style emoji.

iPhone --> Settings --> General --> Keyboard --> Keyboards click Edit and then remove Emoji.

Maybe like with SMS being green and iMessages being blue, they need a colour for SMS to make ti clearer to end users?

Completely agree with all you have said. They probably should make it a lot easier by changing the colour or at least warning on the first 2/3 occassions

I refuse to use the things as they just annoy me so have been an advocate for the old school for example: 'Fancy an early night ;-)?' It still gets the message across and is still followed up with a negative response... at least its included in my free texts though

 

[SAC]

First I have heard of this.

Just to be clear, if your message states SMS you wont be charged but if it converts to MMS it will be? If they have been sent as SMS does this mean that they wont appear on the receivers phone?

 

[Buzzer]

This may be old news to some but i bet there are plenty who like me were unaware of this rip off it seems a bit of pot luck if your getting charged or not,
the wife and i both have new identical phones on the one contract in my name with O2 she is getting charged (£40 over the last 4 months) and i am not
worth checking your recent bills and informing friends and family to do the same
A call to O2 has just resulted in a miserly £10 credit as a "good will gesture" for this month but nothing for previous bills along with the advice to "use whatsapp if your going to use emojis in text messages.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31148424

Can I ask if your missus has a Sony Z3 because exactly the same thing happened to me. I've got a Z3 Compact and noticed that if I sent texts to more than one person at a time then it was converting the texts to multimedia messages and charging me 33p a time per person. It's because the default setting for text messages to more than one person is as a group message (so everyone can see everyone else). Switch off the group setting and you won't get billed for text messages to more than one person.

Text messages - settings - group conversation - set to 'off'.

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

This problem seems to be related only to certain devices. Some iPhones and Samsung phones were mentioned in a money saving expert report. It occurs as the device's messenger app automatically converts the smiley into a picture message. I send a ton of the things and have never been charged and neither have my two boys and wife.

 

[mickybha]

Can I ask if your missus has a Sony Z3 because exactly the same thing happened to me. I've got a Z3 Compact and noticed that if I sent texts to more than one person at a time then it was converting the texts to multimedia messages and charging me 33p a time per person. It's because the default setting for text messages to more than one person is as a group message (so everyone can see everyone else). Switch off the group setting and you won't get billed for text messages to more than one person.

Text messages - settings - group conversation - set to 'off'.

We both have Samsung s5 mini, I was aware regarding the group message incurring a charge of 33p a time
but its the smileys i was unaware of I'm sure there are plenty of others who use them but don't check there bills or bank statement regularly enough to spot this

 

[Buzzer]

We both have Samsung s5 mini, I was aware regarding the group message incurring a charge of 33p a time
but its the smileys i was unaware of I'm sure there are plenty of others who use them but don't check there bills or bank statement regularly enough to spot this

Ah, fair enough. Apologies and thanks for the heads up.

 

[Westdene Seagull]

We both have Samsung s5 mini, I was aware regarding the group message incurring a charge of 33p a time
but its the smileys i was unaware of I'm sure there are plenty of others who use them but don't check there bills or bank statement regularly enough to spot this

Just in case you want to keep emocicons etc - you can on a Samsung set it up to alert you that what you're about to send is an MMS.

Messages --> Settings --> Multimedia Messages --> MMS Alert ( set it to on ).