Is Skype overcharging for foreign character SMS?

According to a post on Skype News, there are some issues that appear to come into play when a Skype user enters a non-English character into your Skype SMS screen.

The unsigned poster charges that these non-English characters can be misinterpreted by Skype's SMS interface as constituting way more characters than just the one being submitted. The post author claims that up to "91" characters can be erroneously assessed in this way.

The problem may be even more acute "if you paste some text, from somewhere else like in an online translator," this commenter charges.

If you do so:

You will only see the remaining characters from the LAST part message if this message then has to span 2, 3 or more messages. Ahh yes, but if you look at the price AGAIN you may see it changed after you pasted. Your message is not costing 7 cents but 20 or 30 or so. But why should you after you looked at it already? Nothing says "keep your eyes trained on this part of the screen, double check before sending!"

And if you look it says somewhere there in bold SMS#3 so that is extra protection right? Wrong. If you have opened an old SMS to send another and keep them all in the same window, you will assume that this SMS#3 means the 3rd SMS is now in the window. Unless you are the Skype programmer who invented this text of course.

When you hit send, you will then likely be shocked to see that three or more short messages were sent, and you will think that it was an error. You may even probably resend it, believing that you had line returns that may have caused this, as you don't want your recipient to be confused if the messages arrive in the wrong order and are split in odd ways.

This poster's solution to this mess involves Skype coming up with a solution that would let users know before sending the SMS that this is going to happen.

"Simple: Skype need to reword the ambiguous SMS#3 to SMS Part 3/3," the poster writes. "Problem solved."

"Further protections could include a pop up window - "This SMS will be sent in 3 parts. Do you wish to send it now?" (Tick here not to notify me of this next time)."

But then this poster wonders aloud if Skype might not have compelling reasons for offering these caution flags. "But then again, maybe Skype like these things, as it brings them more money," he writes.

Until such time as Skype adds these caution flags?

My advice is the same as this poster's:

Keep your eye on your Skype Cost Counter.