Charged for sending pictures

[#1]

My daughter discovered pictures of herself as a child on my phone which she upload to Messenger on her phone. I have just had to pay £6.40 for the pleasure. We could not believe but despite calls to Plusnet Customer Services and being referred to the List of Charges, I am still not understanding. I am even told that an emoji included with a text will incur a 40p charge. What am I doing wrong please. Can anyone explain

[#2]

If you are using standard text messages adding an image to it will change it to a MMS (Multimedia Message) and Plusnet Mobile charge for these, as do most other providers.

Other message types, such as iPhone to iPhone iMessage, Whatsapp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger use data to transmit the images and these would come out of your data allowance.

[#3]

Moderators Note

This topic has been moved from My Account / Billing to Mobile.

[#4]

Good morning masser 

What have is your set your "Smart Cap" set at this is the reason I have mine set to zero

PlusNet do not charge for Emojis I know EE do because my daughter is with them so who told you that are incorrect

Brian A

[#5]

The PlusNet Customer Services person referred me to their T's and C's, where it also says they charge for emojis and texts that exceed 160 characters.

What I do not understand is why I have never encountered this before. The photos on my phone are held in Google Photos, is that why I am being charged. All I want is an explanation and perhaps a solution to ensure that I avoid costs in future. I will certainly set my SmartCap at zero but how do I send pictures in future

[#6]

For what it’s worth @masser it would appear that 3 don’t charge for emojis either, as I’ve sent many these past few days and my balance using the my3 app never changes. In fact it’s quite worrying I’ve had £16.53 for weeks now.

[#7]

I may be wrong on this but if you think about it does make sense. With your pictures on the Cloud there may well be data  involved as a connection would need to be made to the Cloud to ensure that your pictures haven't been updated via another source i.e. from your PC for example. In addition to that there may be data needed to generate thumbnails as well.

[#8]

Phones by default will commonly auto convert what most might think an ordinary sms TXT to mms if you use emojies

 and its this mms form of message, rather than sending vids or more clearly multimedia messages which all too often inflicts unexpected extra cost - and often a lot.

Turn them off : Usually in your messages app settings

So how can you be sure your iPhone only sends SMS text messages? You can turn off MMS on the iPhone by following these steps:

Navigate to Settings -> Messages -> MMS Messaging -> OFF

google [your phone and OS version] turn mms off

[#9]

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@masser wrote: All I want is an explanation and perhaps a solution to ensure that I avoid costs in future. I will certainly set my SmartCap at zero but how do I send pictures in future

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Having photos in Google photos, wouldn't produce a charge, unless they are up in the cloud. I assume you do have a data allowance?

I don't actually use Plusnet mobile but with my present provider, one way I avoid additional charges is to use the data side for messaging, sending photos. Yes, it does mean opening an app, I tend to use Viber, simply because I don't do Facebook, Whatsapp  etc. The wife also uses Viber, FB etc and frequently sends photos (many each day) and does video calls (sometimes they last for hours) to the other side of the world...for free. All down to using the data allowance or using WiFi.

You really need to see what your tariff is and what allowance is included with it. You then need to find an app that most people that you have contact with use. If you then find you are still being charged for doing things that you would normally expect no charge, maybe you're on the wrong tariff.