topic Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours in Get Support

Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

pm-smayer97 — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 12:28:22 GMT

I do not text much but this past week I came to realize how bad things are with texting on Public Mobile. Please note that the following only addresses texting prolems on the network, not making calls.

My family and I now have 9 PM plans, where at least 4 are active at any given time (for various reasons). All are on the $10 50/50 plan. We also have one plan with Telus, and two with Virgin.

Bottom line is, this is what I discovered:

- all the plans tested CAN receive texts

- all the plans tested CANNOT send texts, except...

-... here is the insight: they CAN send AND receive text IF communicating with phones on non-PM/Telus networks.

So, at least in my case, the problem only occurs if I am trying to text to phones on PM/Telus network.

I have reviewed our texting logs and tested this with PM, Telus, Rogers, and Virgin.

This has been going on for almost 2 months, AFAIK. Did not identify this problem before because, we do not text a lot, and it works sometimes, as noted above.

Please share your insights to see if your experiences are the same or different. It might help PM resolve this issue, if they do not know the root cause.

@CS_Agent @Alan_K you may want to monitor this thread to see if it helps.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

will13am — Sat, 11 May 2019 11:12:46 GMT

I don't have any issues with any of talk, text and data myself on the 2016 fall promo plan. I have been trying to monitor the customer feedback here to determine if there's an obvious cause for the large number of problems in recent times. There does seem to be an association to limited use of talk and text. I wonder if the meter is getting in the way by disallowing a call or text because it thinks the limit has been reached. Previously, plans were simple with only unlimited talk and text. The data meter is ubiquitous, all plans have a need for it and it's been there forever. We are now seeing metering on talk, both directions on one plan, one direction only on another. Text is metered in one direction only. How do these plans differ from unlimited use plans that seem to have immunity? The metering is the obvious smoking gun. Anyway, failed texting hadn't been officially identified as being broken yet. Let see if there will be an official announcement.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

pm-smayer97 — Sat, 11 May 2019 11:55:44 GMT

@will13am wrote:
...
I wonder if the meter is getting in the way by disallowing a call or text because it thinks the limit has been reached. Previously, plans were simple with only unlimited talk and text. The data meter is ubiquitous, all plans have a need for it and it's been there forever. We are now seeing metering on talk, both directions on one plan, one direction only on another. Text is metered in one direction only. How do these plans differ from unlimited use plans that seem to have immunity? The metering is the obvious smoking gun. Anyway, failed texting hadn't been officially identified as being broken yet. Let see if there will be an official announcement.

Interesting insight. One nuance to highlight for me is that the problem only exists when texting WITHIN the PM/Telus network with a PM plan (not Telus) but not texting to/from outside.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

will13am — Sat, 11 May 2019 12:17:13 GMT

@pm-smayer97 wrote:
@will13am wrote:
...
I wonder if the meter is getting in the way by disallowing a call or text because it thinks the limit has been reached. Previously, plans were simple with only unlimited talk and text. The data meter is ubiquitous, all plans have a need for it and it's been there forever. We are now seeing metering on talk, both directions on one plan, one direction only on another. Text is metered in one direction only. How do these plans differ from unlimited use plans that seem to have immunity? The metering is the obvious smoking gun. Anyway, failed texting hadn't been officially identified as being broken yet. Let see if there will be an official announcement.

Interesting insight. One nuance to highlight for me is that the problem only exists when texting WITHIN the PM/Telus network with a PM plan (not Telus) but not texting to/from outside.

I text both Telus and non Telus customers and experience no such difficulty. I don't have an explanation why texting with customers outside the Telus brands yields different results. This is what makes debugging fun. A first step is for Public Mobile to acknowledge there is a texting problem.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

gslauen — Sat, 11 May 2019 13:27:06 GMT

Yes I signed up for the $15 plan and cannot send any text messages. It worked on the first day and then just stopped. Still no resolution to this problem. I am going to try and change my plan and see if that helps the problem until they resolve this issue.
If they don't resolve it soon it will be time to change provider.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

dabr — Sat, 11 May 2019 17:50:48 GMT

@gslauen wrote:
Yes I signed up for the $15 plan and cannot send any text messages. It worked on the first day and then just stopped. Still no resolution to this problem. I am going to try and change my plan and see if that helps the problem until they resolve this issue.
If they don't resolve it soon it will be time to change provider.

Did you already try the lost/phone procedure and rebootint the phone?

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

dabr — Sun, 12 May 2019 22:41:32 GMT

@pm-smayer97 wrote:
@will13am wrote:
...
I wonder if the meter is getting in the way by disallowing a call or text because it thinks the limit has been reached. Previously, plans were simple with only unlimited talk and text. The data meter is ubiquitous, all plans have a need for it and it's been there forever. We are now seeing metering on talk, both directions on one plan, one direction only on another. Text is metered in one direction only. How do these plans differ from unlimited use plans that seem to have immunity? The metering is the obvious smoking gun. Anyway, failed texting hadn't been officially identified as being broken yet. Let see if there will be an official announcement.

Interesting insight. One nuance to highlight for me is that the problem only exists when texting WITHIN the PM/Telus network with a PM plan (not Telus) but not texting to/from outside.

I've just sent and received texts from someone on Telus and haven't seen issues, although I have unlimited text wo agree it have something to do with metered plans as suggested by @will13am . Will try texting on the limited plan later on and see if there is an issue.

Just to update on texting on a limited plan ($10), didn't have any issues sending and receiving texts to someone on Telus here too. Wondering why your lines are having this issue. Strange all these things affect some users with the same plan and not others.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

pm-smayer97 — Sun, 12 May 2019 05:53:59 GMT

@dabr wrote:
@gslauen wrote:
Yes I signed up for the $15 plan and cannot send any text messages. It worked on the first day and then just stopped. Still no resolution to this problem. I am going to try and change my plan and see if that helps the problem until they resolve this issue.
If they don't resolve it soon it will be time to change provider.
Did you already try the lost/phone procedure and rebootint the phone?

Because I have 9 plans (actually had even more at one time) but with only some of them active at any given time (for various reasons) used on different phones, I have had to do this multiple times over the last couple of months, both rebooting phones and using the lost/stolen phone feature to suspend/activate accounts. So, I can confirm with certainty that this has NO effect.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

Arman — Mon, 13 May 2019 03:08:11 GMT

I can not send a text at all whether the recipient is inside or outside of PM/Telus. One of our phones is with Bell and I still can not send a text to that.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

pm-smayer97 — Mon, 13 May 2019 05:16:39 GMT

Late this evening (just before closing) a mod just informed me that they made some changes and to try things out. My results are as follows: I tested 4 PM plans and one Telus plan (that is what is available to me at this time).

The net of it is that whatever changes they made has now made it possible for our 4 PM plans tested to both receive AND send text messages BUT ONLY to other PM plans. Currently, our 4 PM plans can still receive text messages from the Telus plan but still cannot send to the Telus plan; so, an improvement, but we are still not fully there.

I have not confirmed that this holds true for any of the other PM plans we have. I'm also awaiting confirmation from PM as to whether these changes are universal or only apply to these plans.

Note that in my testing, I included 2 PM plans that I had not tested nor communicated to PM that they were having problems. This suggests that the fixes may apply more broadly but this is unconfirmed.

Although I had already determined this, this latest development confirms 100% that the problem is entirely on the PM/Telus network AND that there is nothing you or I can or need to do to improve this (other than to continue to communicate with PM the problems that still exist).

HTH.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

Jie001 — Mon, 13 May 2019 15:37:07 GMT

I have 2PM line. One is ok, the other just changed 15$ plan, NOT send message successfully. hope to solve quickly

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

Arman — Mon, 13 May 2019 15:48:33 GMT

Have been waiting for 13 days.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

gslauen — Tue, 14 May 2019 13:31:04 GMT

So it turns out the reason I was unable to send text was because the automatic system for blocking spam blocked my outgoing messages for no reason. Anyone that is having problems might want to look at this solution. My text works fine now but it seems I am having a problem using data now.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

Arman — Tue, 14 May 2019 14:35:17 GMT

where do you see this setting in your phone? I like to check on mine?

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

pm-smayer97 — Tue, 14 May 2019 17:18:57 GMT

See this new announcement:

[Fix in Progress] Select customers unable to send text

where they finally acknowledge a problem on the $15 plans. Unfortunately, they have not acknowledged the same problem on the $10 plans.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

pm-smayer97 — Wed, 15 May 2019 01:49:02 GMT

@pm-smayer97 wrote:
See this new announcement:
[Fix in Progress] Select customers unable to send text
where they finally acknowledge a problem on the $15 plans. Unfortunately, they have not acknowledged the same problem on the $10 plans.

Seems that PM implemented a solution for the $15 plan (see link above). That has had no impact on the $10 plans, at least not for me.

As mentioned before, some progress was made such that now my $10 PM plans can send and receive text to/from others, including other PM plans, but still cannot text out to Telus plans (but can receive from Telus). Very odd.

If anyone else is on a $10 plan and is still having issues, please be sure to share any update here.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

byKevin — Wed, 15 May 2019 02:16:03 GMT

@pm-smayer97 wrote:
@pm-smayer97 wrote:
See this new announcement:
[Fix in Progress] Select customers unable to send text
where they finally acknowledge a problem on the $15 plans. Unfortunately, they have not acknowledged the same problem on the $10 plans.

Seems that PM implemented a solution for the $15 plan (see link above). That has had no impact on the $10 plans, at least not for me.

As mentioned before, some progress was made such that now my $10 PM plans can send and receive text to/from others, including other PM plans, but still cannot text out to Telus plans (but can receive from Telus). Very odd.

If anyone else is on a $10 plan and is still having issues, please be sure to share any update here.

The NOT able to sent text out has been only worked for 3 days, starting yesterday, i'm no longer able to sent any text ... receiving is still fine. PM MOD again ... event thay said it was fixed, but look like it's not for everyone 😞

Thanks

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

burnr142 — Thu, 16 May 2019 19:12:42 GMT

I have the 15 plan. I'm still not able to send anything in or out. Including calls .nothing working. No response from any mod. @Alan_K hopefully this helps

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

Arman — Fri, 17 May 2019 04:13:48 GMT

Technical support response time for me was 14 days. I got a text from tech support that PM does not know the root cause and it has escalated and reassigned to a higher level of support.

Re: Problems with Texting on Public Mobile? Read my insights and share yours

pm-smayer97 — Fri, 17 May 2019 04:20:56 GMT

@Arman wrote:
Technical support response time for me was 14 days. I got a text from tech support that PM does not know the root cause and it has escalated and reassigned to a higher level of support.

Wow... I supposed that at least they responded eventually, so that is good. Thx for sharing.