Understanding Potential Text Delivery Issues

With texting, you've likely experienced times when you send a text to a friend or family member, but they never received it or vice-versa.

Text-Em-All delivers your texts by sending them your contacts' phone carrier (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc.), and the carrier is then responsible for delivering the text to your contacts' phone. 

Common reasons text messages are not received

• Phone Unreachable – Many scenarios can lead to a cell phone being temporarily unreachable. It could mean the phone is out of its cellular service area, is not currently enabled for text messaging, or is on a prepaid plan and is out of allotted messages. In addition, there are occasional network failures on the carrier side that could lead to failed message delivery. Lastly, we have seen circumstances where this result means that the contact has a spam filter enabled for their phone number (this seems to be more prevalent among T-Mobile customers). 
  • If you have a T-Mobile contact who has a spam filter enabled and wants to turn it OFF, they can do so by dialing #632# and pressing the call button.
  • If you have an AT&T contact who has a spam filter enabled and wants to turn it OFF, they can find instructions in this AT&T support article. 

• Rejected for possible Spam – Mobile carriers have filters for automated text messages to prevent spam — also known as unwanted messages — from delivering.

  Here are a few things that can trigger the carrier filters and enforce a block on your messages:

  • Sending the same text broadcast repeatedly (changing up your wording a bit shows the carriers that you are not sending out SPAM).
  • Using all caps, special characters, and excessive punctuation (THANKS, ASAP, @, %, !!!, ???).
  • Including an email address in the text.
  • Using too many numbers, dates, or listing a phone number in the text that is different from the number that sent the message.
  • Using a redirecting link, or a generic link shortener (like bit.ly).
• Disallowed URL - If your message contains a shortened or redirecting link, the carriers will sometimes block your message. See our best practices for Sending URLs in Text Messages.
• Unsupported Media - It's possible the media you attached is too large or not supported by the end carrier delivering the message. 
• Carrier Limit Exceeded - To reduce the amount of spam, fraud, or otherwise unwanted messages being sent to cell phones these days, the carriers have put limitations in place. AT&T has implemented speed limits (messages per minute), while T-Mobile has implemented volume limits (total messages per day). If you see this result when viewing your broadcast details, please contact us about registering your organization to increase your limits. See this article for more information.
• Rejected by Handset - This occurs when a recipient has put a block on your text number. To resolve this, ask the recipient to either remove the block themselves or contact their phone carrier and ask for the block to be removed so you can resume texting them.
• Text Number Unavailable - This occurs when you bring your own telephone number to Text-Em-All to be used for text messages. Example: you sign the Text-Em-All Letter of Authorization to enable your office phone number to send text messages with us. If the company that hosts your phone number does something to break the Text-Em-All connection, your text messages will fail because we no longer have access to send texts from your number. If this happens to you, please contact us at (877) 226-3080 or support@text-em-all.com so we can help you resolve this.

Invalid Numbers

The numbers you are contacting may not be working numbers, or their plan may not allow for texting.

You can see which numbers are Invalid from your Broadcast Details results page. 

Other Delivery Issues

Mobile devices are constantly updating for improvement and depending on where the mobile device is and the amount of service it is able to obtain, text messages can have issues being delivered:

• Devices could be roaming or in and out of service.
• The device could be performing an update.
• Carriers could be experiencing an outage in a specific area.
• Carriers can experience a delay in delivery so the message shows up later than when it was originally sent. 
• Message Arrived Out Of Order or Incomplete 
  • On occasion, if your text message is longer than 160 characters, it may arrive at your contact's mobile device incomplete or jumbled into different segments. Unfortunately, this issue occurs on a third-party carrier level and is out of Text-Em-All's control. 

If you are receiving reports of contacts not receiving your texts, please let us know!

Contact our Customer Experience team:

• Phone - 877-226-3080
•  Email - support@text-em-all.com