The strangest SMS Problem + Proof , Please help, Not even Telecom knows why it's happening.

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › The strangest SMS Problem + Proof , Please help, Not even Telecom knows why it's happening.

wiidsmkr91

25 posts

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#116290 24-Apr-2013 11:58

Hey all.

Please take the time to understand this, as I cannot fathom what is causing this issue.

My Mum has a postpaid account with Telecom, and has been having this issue at least once a week.
At the advice of telecom NZ, she has bought a new phone, swapped sim cards and all the usual resets.
Just to be clear - this is not user issue (proof below) , this is not an issue with the phone, this is an issue with Telecom service.

Problem:

Message One: On the 10th April, Mum sent an SMS to her friend. No issue.

Message Two: On the 23rd April, Mum sends another SMS to the same friend. It looks fine on Mums Phone.

Message Three: This is how mums above message appears on her friends phone.
Half of the message is sent correctly, then for some reason, it is truncated.

Message one has been inserted into the message that mums friend receives. This only shows on her friends phone, mum is oblivious to the fact the message she sent is not the same one that her friend receives.

This is the strangest thing I have ever seen.
Mum has been into telecom three times. They keep saying it is a phone issue, so mum bought a new phone.
Then they said it was a sim issue, so mum got a new sim.
Then they said it was an issue with her friends phone, however this happens to alot of people on mums contact list.

I have reset, updated everything.

At a complete loss :-(

Thanks for reading.

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#804832 24-Apr-2013 12:07

Both are Apple iPhone handsets. Does the same problem happen on another recipient's handset if it's not an iPhone?

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johnr

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#804834 24-Apr-2013 12:09

have you tried turning off imessage on the handset/s?

wiidsmkr91

25 posts

Geek

#804835 24-Apr-2013 12:09

freitasm: Both are Apple iPhone handsets. Does the same problem happen on another recipient's handset if it's not an iPhone?

This happens regardless of handset.

Sony Ericson W508 , Apple iPhone 4 and Apple iPhone 4S all have created this issue.

Cheers

wiidsmkr91

25 posts

Geek

#804836 24-Apr-2013 12:10

johnr: have you tried turning off imessage on the handset/s?

iMessage is not used on her phone, and the recipients phone is an android phone.

(The screenshot of the message showing iMessage being turned on is only because I took the screenshot on my phone, which has iMessage).

Neither Mums not her friends phone use iMessage.

Cheers

Toledo

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#804859 24-Apr-2013 13:04

Cant help sorry. But Mr D's is yum!

My opinions are purely my own and are not at all those of my employer 2degrees.

jaymz

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#804916 24-Apr-2013 14:06

I have had this exact problem!!

Sending from Windows Phone 7.8 on 2Degrees to a Sony Android on Telecom

very very odd!

wiidsmkr91

25 posts

Geek

#804920 24-Apr-2013 14:09

jaymz: I have had this exact problem!!

Sending from Windows Phone 7.8 on 2Degrees to a Sony Android on Telecom

very very odd!

oh thank goodness!

My mother is not the only one!
To be fair when she was telling me, I did roll my eyes, but her replicating the issue in front of me was a bit of a "what the... " moment.

The fact that it looks to be Telecom issue would suggest its the problem receiving the message rather than sending it.

Interesting that my Mum's number is the common factor though.

jaymz did you get it fixed or did it fix itself ??

jaymz

1133 posts

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#804938 24-Apr-2013 14:18

wiidsmkr91:

oh thank goodness!

My mother is not the only one!
To be fair when she was telling me, I did roll my eyes, but her replicating the issue in front of me was a bit of a "what the... " moment.

The fact that it looks to be Telecom issue would suggest its the problem receiving the message rather than sending it.

Interesting that my Mum's number is the common factor though.

jaymz did you get it fixed or did it fix itself ??

It happens randomly. sometimes i can go weeks with no issues, then out of the blue the issue re-appears for one message.

I originally thought it was either my phone or my girlfriends phone as we both had very very long message history. but upon deleting the message history the problem returned.

I havent done any further troubleshooting as, much like yourself, thought it was just an issue with her phone or my phone and didnt cause too much trouble.

I havent had a fix yet.

Is the person receiving the txts on Telecom pre-paid or On-account? my girlfriend (who the stuffed up messages appear on) is on Telecom On-account.

wiidsmkr91

25 posts

Geek

#804939 24-Apr-2013 14:20

jaymz:
wiidsmkr91:

oh thank goodness!

My mother is not the only one!
To be fair when she was telling me, I did roll my eyes, but her replicating the issue in front of me was a bit of a "what the... " moment.

The fact that it looks to be Telecom issue would suggest its the problem receiving the message rather than sending it.

Interesting that my Mum's number is the common factor though.

jaymz did you get it fixed or did it fix itself ??

It happens randomly. sometimes i can go weeks with no issues, then out of the blue the issue re-appears for one message.

I originally thought it was either my phone or my girlfriends phone as we both had very very long message history. but upon deleting the message history the problem returned.

I havent done any further troubleshooting as, much like yourself, thought it was just an issue with her phone or my phone and didnt cause too much trouble.

I havent had a fix yet.

Is the person receiving the txts on Telecom pre-paid or On-account? my girlfriend (who the stuffed up messages appear on) is on Telecom On-account.

Both the sender and receiver are on Telecom On-Account.

Is it of your opinion that the issue is receiving the message rather than sending it??

eXDee

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#804944 24-Apr-2013 14:25

If it's worth anything, i have an ongoing support ticket with them in regards to text message delays. As far as i know im not losing chunks of multi part messages, but i can have two messages sent to me in the same minute, one arrives on time, the other gets caught in the backlog and arrives anywhere from a few hours to 3 days later, where i get a flood of old messages.

wiidsmkr91

25 posts

Geek

#804947 24-Apr-2013 14:26

eXDee: If it's worth anything, i have an ongoing support ticket with them in regards to text message delays.

Will be interesting to see what they come back with.

Every time I try and explain to a Telecom representitive the issue I get the "Obvious User Issue" look.

Very frustrating.

jaymz

1133 posts

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#804952 24-Apr-2013 14:30

wiidsmkr91:
Both the sender and receiver are on Telecom On-Account.

Is it of your opinion that the issue is receiving the message rather than sending it??

In my experience, yes.

I have not had the issue on my phone with any of the messages i have received from her (there has been LOTS)

i suspected something was wrong with the phone OS in the way it was receiving the messages.

I wonder if there is some "re-use" of message headers and thus the phone reads it as a previous message? To be honest though, i have no technical understanding of the way the messages are handled by any of the telco's

eXDee

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#804954 24-Apr-2013 14:31

wiidsmkr91:
eXDee: If it's worth anything, i have an ongoing support ticket with them in regards to text message delays.

Will be interesting to see what they come back with.

Every time I try and explain to a Telecom representitive the issue I get the "Obvious User Issue" look.

Very frustrating.

Mine's with their complex technical support so i think i'm beyond that point. Also edited my post above with detail.

Toledo

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#804985 24-Apr-2013 14:55

Now that I read more into this I had exactly the same issue with emails (probably totally unrelated to your problem but still frustrating!) I used web based clear.net.nz email and to one particular offshore email address about every 3rd email would be half of what I wrote in that email and half of what I wrote in the email a few weeks prior. Frustrating!

My opinions are purely my own and are not at all those of my employer 2degrees.

uglyb0b

335 posts

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#805000 24-Apr-2013 15:13

I have had this before as well. Not on Telecom though, one Vodafone account and one Vodafone prepay. Happens to both numbers when sending to each other.

It happens so rarely that I haven't bothered doing anything about it and assumed it was a bug in the handcent SMS app that both android phones were using. Now that I see others are having the same issue, and its not carrier or message app specific I'm starting to wonder what's going on.

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