iMessages sent from home wifi counting toward 50 text messages

[Kate23]

Just got the basic talk/text plan for my daughter with max of 50 outgoing texts/mth. She got her iphone for her bday yesterday evenng and sent out a few text messages from home using imessage, but when I looked at her usage it showed 8/50 used.  The phone was only used last night and this morning with wifi and has not left my house.  Wanting to know what we are doing wrong becuase she will burn through her 50 messages if we can't figure this out.  I was told we  could send messages in wifi and that would not count toward the 50.

[steff12321]

Okay, IMO the $10 (really $8/month) plan should really be used only for people with flip phones or with *extremely* low usage like seniors. Just because the limits on it are extremely low, less than 2 minutes/text messages a day.

Especially considering you have an iPhone, you are going to be using up texts to verify your phone number with Apple. If you go out and try to send iMessages while not on WiFi, it will send as SMS. Then when you get back on WiFi the iPhone often keeps sending as SMS for a few more messages. Or when your signal is poor, or when the message takes too long to send, or when the receipient's phone does not have data/wifi signal, the iPhone will send that message as an SMS. 

It's not a flaw, but rather a feature. It's made for redundancy, so your messages (usually) get delivered one way or the other. It's only $5 more for unlimited SMS and a bit of data, which would be significantly more suited for your use. I understand it's money you don't want to spend, but if you have a top of the line phone (which all iPhones were on the year they were released) you need to pay for some of the premium features. Otherwise just download TextNow and cancel the phone plan, and you'll be guaranteed not to have these issues and will serve the same purpose. 

[Anonymous]

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@RossN wrote:

Ok just to clariy if I have 25 texts left for the month I text you I say (hi whats going on today) short and sweet right? so all a sudden I check my usage and it cleary says 23 texts left 2 were used for that 1 simple text

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I think that's all about confirmations of sending/receiving going on in the background.

[RossN]

Ok just to clariy if I have 25 texts left for the month I text you I say (hi whats going on today) short and sweet right? so all a sudden I check my usage and it cleary says 23 texts left 2 were used for that 1 simple text. it happened at least9 no exaggeration 10 times

[Anonymous]

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@Lieux wrote:

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@RossN wrote:

@Anonymous  i agree with you about the higher priced plans there is no need to care,but the 10 dollar plan in its current condition is not a very good introduction to PM, I know when I started in dec I had it, and I was very close to packing it in between that issue and constantly being double and sometimes triple charged for texts it was not a pleasant experiece. lol anyway that's my ramble for the day (I hope) 

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@RossN you can't be charged with public mobile for anything more than what your plan gives to you.

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 @Lieux: May I step in and maybe attempt to interpret his meaning. He really should say counted or incremented but in the way that English is so stupid...charged also kinda works.

[Anonymous]

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@Kate23 wrote:

No bit the messages count toward your limited number, so its a big deal if they are counting messages that are not yours or double counting as someone else had a problem with.

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But they ARE yours. You have the phone. It's sending texts. The so-called double counting is probably confirmations being sent back and forth. All not the responsibility of PM.

I agree that they could choose to do something about it. But they haven't all this time. I doubt they will.

[RossN]

@Lieux  hi happy sunday to you Iam not sure you got the point of my rant lol when you only have 50 texts outgoing for the month if you are double or tripple charged it takes away from your total so basicaly I changed to the 15 dollar plan because it was not resolved I wont even go into detail about some of the  pathetic replies I got back from the moderators on that matter

[Kate23]

No bit the messages count toward your limited number, so its a big deal if they are counting messages that are not yours or double counting as someone else had a problem with.

[Lieux]

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@RossN wrote:

@Anonymous  i agree with you about the higher priced plans there is no need to care,but the 10 dollar plan in its current condition is not a very good introduction to PM, I know when I started in dec I had it, and I was very close to packing it in between that issue and constantly being double and sometimes triple charged for texts it was not a pleasant experiece. lol anyway that's my ramble for the day (I hope) 

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@RossN you can't be charged with public mobile for anything more than what your plan gives to you.

[ClaudeR]

I must admit that I know nothing about the other plans, since I am a pretty new client here:  only 2 months now.

[ClaudeR]

I am having the new $15.-/plan and everything is fine, yes.

[RossN]

@Anonymous  i agree with you about the higher priced plans there is no need to care,but the 10 dollar plan in its current condition is not a very good introduction to PM, I know when I started in dec I had it, and I was very close to packing it in between that issue and constantly being double and sometimes triple charged for texts it was not a pleasant experiece. lol anyway that's my ramble for the day (I hope) 

[Kate23]

Her icloud backup is also off

[Anonymous]

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@RossN wrote:

I agree 100% they should fix the issue!! having to contact a moderator to get a credit is not a solution

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I kinda don't agree. It's not the fault of PM that this happens. It's fixable from the device side. It's only the limited plans where it matters. The unlimited people don't need to care.

It would be nice if they did something about...but I don't think they ought to be required to.

[Kate23]

Her cell number is in and correct so not the problem 

[RossN]

I agree 100% they should fix the issue!! having to contact a moderator to get a credit is not a solution. I would also like to add that if they cant fix it then get rid of it and come out with a similarly priced plan that works

[Kate23]

It just seems to me that tbis is a well known problem and tbat public mobile should be able to program their system to ignore this number so that it doesn’t count toward the users limited text messages.  It’s frustrating!!

[GinYVR]

Actually it is not just iMessage.. it is the data transmission for iCloud eg if you use Facetime etc, sometimes it triggers it. Apple tries to make the data transmission seamless to the user, while the back end it tries to connect the user's data to the iCloud via various mechanism.. the number via SMS is one way, data is another, think about the SMS transmission as a fall back.

[RossN]

@ClaudeR  hi when I was on the 10 dollar plan I had to go in to my password and settings in my apple id and make sure I had my correct phone number there (which I hadn't)after I corrected it the problem stopped it is just apple servers trying to sync with your phone but personely I think the 15 dollar plan 13 with autopay is much better with fewer problems also

[ClaudeR]

OK  

[Lieux]

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@ClaudeR wrote:

@Lieux

Would you know why it happens?

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I already know.... first settings with Apple!!!

[ClaudeR]

@Lieux

Would you know why it happens?

[Lieux]

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@Kate23 wrote:

My daughter’s account continues to have outgoing text messages to the same number 474663 which are being taken off her limited 50 messages.  This is apparently a known problem with setting up the iphone.  But I was told it would only happen on initial setup but now there are 5 more of them, again when she was home in wifi.  I have notified the moderators and will wait to hear from them.

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Don’t give up... the 474663 will ended. I had 35 of them during the 1rst month... but since no more. 

[ClaudeR]

OK

Keep us posted...

🙂

[Kate23]

My daughter’s account continues to have outgoing text messages to the same number 474663 which are being taken off her limited 50 messages.  This is apparently a known problem with setting up the iphone.  But I was told it would only happen on initial setup but now there are 5 more of them, again when she was home in wifi.  I have notified the moderators and will wait to hear from them.

[Lieux]

@Kate23 good news!

[Kate23]

Thank you for giving me the information about the number 474663.  I had the same number on those 8 messages and this was key to getting the messages credited back.

[Kate23]

Thank you for the helpful information. They have credited back the 8 messages.  All the messages were to one number 474663 which apparently is an apple number.  We have not had any other problems since.

[computergeek541]

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@Kate23 wrote:

Just got the basic talk/text plan for my daughter with max of 50 outgoing texts/mth. She got her iphone for her bday yesterday evenng and sent out a few text messages from home using imessage, but when I looked at her usage it showed 8/50 used.  The phone was only used last night and this morning with wifi and has not left my house.  Wanting to know what we are doing wrong becuase she will burn through her 50 messages if we can't figure this out.  I was told we  could send messages in wifi and that would not count toward the 50.

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iMessages does something unique in that it has an option to use an internet connection to send the messages.  To my knowledge, Apple is converting the message to some type of instant message format and then delivering it as a standard SMS to the receiving end.

I do supsect as others here, that's it the operating sending out automated messages to the Apple servers.  Some Android phones sometimes do this to Google servers as well.

[Lieux]

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@Kate23 wrote:

I agree but we didn’t want the data that comes with the auto pay and thought the 50 outgoing would be enough for now.  Seems like a weird glitch with Apple. Thanks for help!!

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You can trace them in USAGE HISTORY as 474663.

[Kate23]

I agree but we didn’t want the data that comes with the auto pay and thought the 50 outgoing would be enough for now.  Seems like a weird glitch with Apple. Thanks for help!!