Text Message charges

[furkin]

I?m a bit stumped by my unit.

A couple of weeks ago, I sent a text message to someone, asking them to contact my email address.
When I pressed ?Send?, I got the usual ?your balance is ?20.99?, so I pressed O.K. Within a split second I got another pop up saying ?your balance is ?20.87?,,,, then another, then another ? with the balance going down 12p at a time.
I contacted 02, who said ?yep ? you?ve sent 4 messages?. Of course I only sent 1.
02 sent me a printout to show the records. (I initially thought they were all timed the same, but now see they were a few minutes apart). (the pee take is that the number I texted to, is no longer in use !?).
This occurred a couple of times, with one young lady saying: ?you don?t need to send me 3 copies? !?

After a couple of other niggles, I had the unit changed (I bought it from Phons4You. If I had known they were part of DialAphone, I wouldn?t have touched ?em with a barge pole).Yesterday, I got the same thing again ? charged twice for a message just saying ?I?m on the way?.

When I mention it to 02/Phones4you, they always ask ?how long were the messages ??.

So, my questions are:
Are text messages limited to a certain amount of characters ?
If so, how many ?
Without having to count ?em, how do we know how many we use ?

Unrelated: How do I tell if I?m using G2 or G3 ?

I?m slowly getting used to this new fangled gear ?!

 

[nessinhaw]

but it does have a count at the very bottom of the page lol

and i believe there is no minimum characters, since i already sent messages as short as "ok" and never got this issue!
seems to me like a carrier problem...

sent from my Moto G <3

 

[prepaidguy9081]

Yea I had that happen on att once, I sent three txts but my freind got like 30.
Carrier!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Tapatalk 4

 

[Unicorn Rancher]

and i believe there is no minimum characters, since i already sent messages as short as "ok" and never got this issue!
seems to me like a carrier problem...

There is a maximum length for SMS and longer messages will get split accordingly. That's better than being truncated IMHO.

I agree this sounds like a carrier problem, unless furkin is using a 3rd party messaging app. Then all bets are off.

 

[nige730]

Text messages are usually 150 characters long.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Ry]

SMS is 160 characters.

 

[Caz42]

Is there a setting to stop your phone from converting a message into an MMS?

I often send texts more than 3 messages long and it then automatically sends it as an MMS .......thus rendering me with a charge of 50p per MMS from my provider as it's only texts that are free on my contract.