Its not often I feel the need to let off steam and have a rant but today I have really lost patience.
Picture messaging – introduced a few years ago supposed to be the new way of doing text messaging – easy to use and quite useful. In the 7 years I have had a compatible phone I have never got it to work and today I had an important photo I wanted to send to a family member and once again picture messaging has failed to deliver.

Excuses made over the years as follows:

By the phone: ‘Use alternative account’, ‘POP2 account?’ ‘message pending’ or the phone locks up.
By the provider: ‘Your picture messaging was turned off’, ‘your account has been updated’, ‘your picture messaging was locked’. Each useless excuse costs me 20+ minutes time and 25p.

When someone sent me a supposed picture message my phone still showed nothing and instructed me to download the photo using a link. That did not work either.

To add insult the phones offer choice of adding video, sounds or even effects. No point in even thinking of trying those…
I asked around and of a sample group of 7 long term mobile phone users not one has ever managed to send or has received a picture message. No-one knew the cost of using this service either – may be 15p, 50p or even a quid – who knows?

I feel better for that but the important photo I tried to send today once again wasted my time and made me rant. I would call T-Mobile but there would go another 25p and another 20+ minutes of my life.

Picture message success stories and failures welcome.

You either have the wrong settings, a very old sim card that doesn't send pictures or a dodgy handset. Other than that there's no reason why it shouldn't work. Try another sim card in the phone and see if that'll send pictures.

Try texting FIXME to 34963. That will make sure you have the right settings.

Thanks for the help. How do I know if the problem is at my end or the receivers end? Sometimes I think I have sent one OK but I get a text back saying 'what did you try to send to me' and I have to send another text telling them whaty the photo contained.

Has anyone sent a successful message? What should the person getting one see on their screen - a text message with a link?

It depends what phone the recipient has? If it's akin to a smartphone they won't have any issues and will see the photo in their message timeline, but if it's an old fashioned text only phone then yes, it will be a link that needs internet access to get hold of.

Sometimes, in this day of smartphones, I often forget that some people have non-smart phones and can't easily access pictures, web links or even overly long text messages.

Ah, that sounds right. If it were a link and the phone cannot 'follow' it then that may be part of the problem. Can the link be read from the phone screen and typed into a computer and viewed there?

You should be able to do that but I recall from my pre-smartphone days that it was a right hassle. I tried to do that via the Orange website once and I just gave up.

Tell your friend to buy a new phone then they can receive your pictures to their hearts content.

Update - I tried it again after using the 'FIXME' code on my phone and my Dad's phone, tried a picture message and it still did not work. My phone took over 2 minutes with a spinning globe symbol to send a VGA resolution picture and a few words and all he got was a huge long code that did not work and no text either. Waste of time, just as always.

The phones used are not even old - only 5 or 6 years and made right at the peak of the picture messaging 'craze'. Could not make it work then, cannot make it work now.
What is so hard about sending a VGA photo? Why do the phones even bother to concoct the various excuses when they could be showing a picture instead?

The few times I used picture messaging I found it to be a bit hit and miss also. Now I just use email which is much cheaper, more reliable and many people have it linked to their phone as well so in the end, the same result.

In today’s market phones that are 5 years old are more or less dinosaurs.

This is what gets me. Why is it so picky when it wants to work? It has been going years but the phones don't support it properly (even when they say they do) and the network does not either. I tried to find the price per message but T-Mobile stated '20p or 30p depending on your plan' but they say no more than that. They also say recieving a message is free but that is not true as it needs the reciever to connect to WAP to follow teh link and that is £1 on T-Mobile.

As to using eMail I tried that but all it does is jam my outbox followed by an error message. No wonder people are always fiddling with their phones - I was fiddling with mine for over an hour yesterday and still no result. I'm taking it in to the EE store and see what excuse they have. If they say I need a new phone I will reply 'why did it still not work when you sold me the phone at exhorbitant cost in 2007?'

Fed up with excuses and error messages.

I have a Galaxy S3 and if my brother sends me a picture message (iPhone) I either get it, a download button or a link to a website which I can only view on a pc. If it's the link I get him to re send the picture until I can see it on the phone.

I can send picture message fine, but I only send them now via iMessage to other iPhones as I've turned off MMS messaging due to Three not having them inclusive and charging for each one sent.

I have just had a fresh excuse 'YOUR BROWSER DOES NOT HANDLE FRAMES'.

How many more excuses for failure am I going to get?

What phone are you using? Perhaps that's the problem.

people who send picture messages subsidise the rest of us.

I don't mind that - as long as my actions of attempting and failing to send messages are not completely wasted then that is not so bad. Enjoy your discounts at my expence.

I always send pictures by email now. 02 charges for MMS messages over and above my allowance.