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Issue with billed SMS text length when zoom details included

TomD
Investigator

Issue with billed SMS text length when zoom details included

The scenario: I have a 'group listing' on my S20 phone. Its a group of parents from a sports club I text rather than whattsapp so as to not share contact info.  Normally I text them reminders. Occasionally these can be slightly longer than a single text message.

 

In early March I cut and paste zoom meeting details from an email into a text. I added some verbiage and sent to the group.  The text was 265 characters in length was sent as as an SMS (and not an MMS). This I checked on both my phone and my bills.  However the texts were billed as 5 SMS messages to each person (not 2 per person).  Just in case the issue was having a URL in the text (even though it was just plain text), in subsequent text messages on both March 8 & 10 I didn't include a URL.  In this instance they were billed as 3 and 2 SMSs per person respectively when should have been 2 and 1 SMSs per person respectively.

 

Has anyone else seen similar patterns with using zoom meeting details with our without a URL where Three designates the SMS to be much longer than the number of characters in the message?

5 REPLIES 5
Three_Deborah
3 Mod Retired

@TomD These days with people using Zoom more than ever, you've voiced a very important point that may be helpful to others who are in a similar situation. Especially those who do not have unlimited text to all Irish mobile networks. Let's look at this in bit size pieces 👍

Character length for a standard SMS is 160, letters, special characters, numbers and spaces. So the count of 265 with a generous allowance for spacing should come under the count of 320 ( 2 SMS). Did you take the count from your SMS? This is visible up in the right-hand corner on Samsungs when writing the text. On my phone, it appears when I get close to the character limit for the "first" SMS. I've don't a rudimentary test here. The invite ended up just under 2 SMS and I confirmed that on our systems 👇 total characters 270.

 

Three_Deborah_0-1616597980204.png

 

Does any else extend Zoom invites by SMS for family, club, or work purposes? Have you noticed the SMS is over count? Instead of the expected 2, you end up with 5? 

 

@billbond4 @RainbowRuth @HyperViz0r98 

 

Maybe make the URLs shorter ? this may work

https://www.rebrandly.com/

 


I’m involved in scouts we send zoom invites via the Komeer app and email but never by sms, so I can’t provide any gems of wisdom!

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde

Thanks guys

 

@RainbowRuth I've never heard of Komeer 🤔 I might look into it. 

We’ve only been using relatively recently.. payments can be made through it, plus notices, messages etc.. hopefully it will work well when we can get back to scouting!

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde