Emoticons in Texts Charges More Than Expected

Number of people employed emoticons to express how they feel, rather than writing. However, BBC has learned that those emoticons could rack up huge bills. According to Digital Marketing Agency, such action was likely to affects the phones’ model, namely some Apple and Samsung handsets.

Scotland was a case, for instance, after adding emoticons to text messages, a woman rack up bills totaling over £1,000. It was such a large amount of payment.

It is inevitably that every compliant about that.

“In some cases, especially on older handsets, the emoticons are converted into MMS (multi-media service) messages, which can cost up to 40p each depending on the network,” said Wakefield.

Money Saving Expert also found, “in some cases, users creating their own icons from full-stops, commas and brackets found they were converted into emoticons, running up the same charges.”

In the autumn, Ofcom planned to conduct a survey in the autumn via looking at all the reasons why people received higher-than-expected bills.

A spokesman told the BBC, "We would expect operators to make clear how much MMS messages cost under your tariff, and when those charges would apply,"