Verizon iPhone 5 and Samsung Can't text each other...

[spacescape]

My father and his client cannot text each other (gets kicked back). Both are on Verizon... Who should they contact? I've forced it to SMS and it still doesn't work.

Help... haa haa.

Thanks.

[TLB]

Did the Samsung owner switch from an iphone within a week or two? Twice I've had friends that switched from iOS to Android keeping their same number and they were blacked out from all iphone text for a week or so. Verizon said iMessage is somehow linked to the phone number and it takes time to clear the link when you leave Apple????

[silvarios]

TLB,
Could be right. There's definitely some iMessages purgatory happening to some users. I didn't realize iMessages was automatically enabled and my daughter's phone number became associated. I disabled the feature and contacted the one iPhone number she had messaged to make sure things were still working. Luckily they seem to be. Glad I caught the setting in time and I loathe Apple for trying to hijack an industry standard function with a proprietary feature that sometimes goes awry.

I haven't paid extra for domestic SMS in years. I would be more than happy to use IP based messaging when necessary, but please let me keep my number free and clear. Thanks.

[silvarios]

space,
Assuming this could be an iMessages bug, have the user with the iPhone clear the message thread and check to see how the contact is saved in Contacts. If it says iPhone, try switching it to mobile. For the other party, if this is the case of a recent iPhone to Android convert, they may need to contact Apple if they didn't "properly" disassociate the number with iMessages before switching phones. If the user still have the old iPhone, they could swap the SIM back into it (assuming the old iPhone was LTE capable) and then try deactivating iMessages before switching back to the Samsung again.

[Ombligo]

My son had this issue and it is not uncommon. Solving it is either easy or impossible, no rhyme or reason why some work and some don't. His issue did not clear up the Samsungs were replaced by a different brand of phone during a normal upgrade.

[Bimwad]

Not enough detail...

But, most are unaware that once a number is associated with iMessage, and Apple, sometimes users need to contact Apple to "release" it if they move away from the service and iOS.

Have you dad contact them and look into the issue.

...as already mention above. Duh.

[deckeda]

This doesn't make sense. The receiving iPhone should never have a problem getting a text, and it would already know to send as SMS to the Samsung so long as the iPhone user has that turned on.

iMessage turned on/off or in-between shouldn't matter. Bottom line: phone numbers are always associated with carriers for SMS. I can turn iMessage off and send as SMS.

[silvarios]

deckeda wrote:
This doesn't make sense. The receiving iPhone should never have a problem getting a text, and it would already know to send as SMS to the Samsung so long as the iPhone user has that turned on.

iMessage turned on/off or in-between shouldn't matter. Bottom line: phone numbers are always associated with carriers for SMS. I can turn iMessage off and send as SMS.

Check again on the interwebs. Lot of problems with iMessage purgatory. This all depends on whether one of the people in the OP switched away from an iPhone at some point. I hate iMessages. I hate that it is on by default. I hate that it hijacks the phone number. It should be opt in and the potential problems should be explained if you enable the feature. This really can be a pain in the tukhus.

Again, this theory may not be correct in this particular case, but the purgatory is real and incredibly frustrating.