topic Texting trouble in Get Support

Texting trouble

Curly75 — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 21:11:07 GMT

I have only sent out 3 texts & was charge for 8 why was I charge 5 extra texts to my account

Re: Texting trouble

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Apr 2018 21:48:02 GMT

@Curly75, I'm guessing that you are on the new $10 50min/50 text plan... How long were your texts? A standard text message is 140 characters. If your messages were longer, they would have been broken up into multiple messages. Is this a possibility in your case?

Re: Texting trouble

Curly75 — Sat, 28 Apr 2018 21:52:38 GMT

that may be the reason because they where

long text message

Thanks.... Gordon

Re: Texting trouble

Korth — Sat, 28 Apr 2018 22:36:19 GMT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS

Maximum length of an individual SMS text is usually 160 characters in North America (based on old GSM standards with 7-bit characters). Although it could be 140 characters (on an 8-bit character set) or 70 characters (on a 16-bit character set).

Longer SMS texts (called "concatenated", "segmented", "linked", "multipart", or "long SMS") requires a few bytes of overhead (User Data Header) which actually reduce the maximum per-message length. Typical maximum length limits of "long" SMS texts are usually 153 7-bit characters (or 134 8-bit characters, or 67 16-bit characters). In theory, up to 255 discrete SMS segments can be concatenated into one "long" SMS.

In practice, most North American phones (that I've seen) default to GSM-based 7-bit character encoding and will only permit a "long SMS" composed of up to a maximum of five discrete/linked SMS segments (which all adds up to a total of 765 characters and "5 messages"). Some SMS software has options which can change the encoding and limits, although I've never changed them because I didn't want to risk breaking compatibility with the SMS settings on the network or on other people's devices.

Re: Texting trouble

jp2 — Sat, 28 Apr 2018 22:36:55 GMT

My texting app will show a small number in the bottom right that tells you how many characters you have left in the sms. Once you go over it will show the number of sms messages your message is. Not sure if yours is the same but that could help you

Re: Texting trouble

computergeek541 — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 04:04:30 GMT

As well as a long text message counting at the carrier level as multiple text messages, if you send a really, really long one, it will automatically get converted to an MMS message. (not sure if the 50 message plan even includes MMS)

Re: Texting trouble

Dipole_Moment — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 04:14:16 GMT

The length of your text messages is a factor. If they are over 140 characters, they count as more than one message.

@Curly75 wrote:
I have only sent out 3 texts & was charge for 8 why was I charge 5 extra texts to my account