Why is my bill higher than normal?

Photo messages aren’t included in your standard plan – there’s a fixed price for each one you send. Some phones may classify a text message as a photo message simply because it includes an emoji.

These charges will appear on your bill in the photo messages section.

If you send a lot of these types of messages you may want to buy add-ons, which give you an allowance every month to send photo messages at reduced rates. You can check out the prices in our:

When do devices convert text messages to photo messages?

This can happen when:

Sending a photo message instead of a text message is down to the phone you’re using, the messaging platform and the person you’re sending to. It’s not because of the EE network.

Here are some common reasons for one-off charges on your bill (these will appear as extra charges in My EE).

Please note: If you started your contract with EE on or after 1 March 2017, you might see a 'Price Rise Discount' on your bill. This is to ensure your bill is at the price you agreed for your contract. It will appear on every bill for the rest of your contract.

If you’ve upgraded, unlocked your phone or paid towards a new device on your plan, you may see some one-off charges on your bill. Things like: 

You can find the amount you paid when you ordered your device on page one of your bill or by logging in to My EE.

Partial charges will show on your bill if you make a change to your account partway through your billing month. 

Your charging periods should be back to normal next month, provided there are no further changes.

If you’ve bought something from your phone’s app store and it appears on your bill, it’s because the item has been charged to your EE account instead of your debit or credit card.

Is there a purchase limit?

Yes, any amount over £15 will be charged to your credit or debit card, not your EE account.

Have a question about your app purchases?

You’ll need to contact your phone app store or the app developer directly. You can find their contact details by logging into your app store account.

To prevent any unwanted purchases from app charging, we suggest you set a PIN on your app store account.

What happens if I get a refund?

Refunds for apps you’ve bought will be given to you as credit to spend on future apps, not as a credit for your EE bill.

The breakdown of charges on your bill is always shown without VAT.

The VAT charge is calculated under VAT in My EE or on the first page of your paper bill.

VAT is calculated on most charges, but there are some exceptions. For example:

Any charges on your account not subject to VAT will show on the first page of your paper bill as VAT charged at zero per cent or VAT-exempt.

VAT invoices

If you need a VAT invoice of your payments, please let us know. There’s a charge per invoice requested – see our non-standard price guide.

Deposits

There are two types of security deposits you could be asked to pay: 

Both are called Deposit for Service on your bill.

Getting your deposit back

We’ll refund your deposit automatically via your current payment method once you've built up a good payment history with us. Payment of your bills by the due date every month will help this.