Why are my SMS's being charged at 20c per message? Isn't it supposed to be 10c per message?
In Sentral Messaging. once a message exceeds 160 characters, it gets broken up into parts. Each of these parts is 153 characters, and is counted as a a new message.
If you send a message that is 150 characters long, that is a single message, and you get charged 10c.
If you send a message that is 175 characters long, it gets broken up into 2 messages. The first 153 characters in message 1, and the remaining 22 characters in a second message. Most phones and messaging services are now clever enough to combine these and make them appear as a single message, but they actually get sent separately.
Before you send an SMS in Sentral Messaging, you are given an approximate cost. This is not always accurate, as it assumes the exact text as entered into Sentral is the text message.
For example:
"Message from Test Town High School: Your {son_daughter} {student_first_name} {student_surname_initial} is absent from school today. Please reply with a valid reason.".
This actual text contains 165 characters, which is what Sentral uses to approximate the cost. In this case, it assumes every message is 165 characters, which means every message spans over 2 SMS messages, ie 20c per notification.
However, once this message is actually sent, it would be
"Message from Test Town High School: Your son Harry J is absent from school today. Please reply with a valid reason."
The actual message SENT is only 114 characters. In this case, you would only be charged for a single SMS message, ie 10c.
It is possible for some notifications to span to multiple messages, and others not. However, you are only charged for the number of messages actually sent.