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Vtext messages: Severe Delay

I use email to text using @VTEXT
.com. I use it to send daily weather forecasts to forest firefighters. As of late, I send the email to text in the morning and my firefighters are getting the text hours later, in the evening. It does go through Gmail but Gmail says it's been sent. Any reason why it's become so difficult?

Comments

Verizon_Support

Good afternoon Lara608 I'm sorry you are having difficulties sending text using emails. Any other apps having issues? Are you a current Verizon Wireless customer? -Joe

jav6

@Lara608
wrote:
I use email to text using @VTEXT
.com. I use it to send daily weather forecasts to forest firefighters. As of late, I send the email to text in the morning and my firefighters are getting the text hours later, in the evening. It does go through Gmail but Gmail says it's been sent. Any reason why it's become so difficult?

There are numerous other threads regarding email-to-text from Google Mail to Verizon Wireless numbers. The VZW gateways/servers seem to throttle the traffic when they see excessive traffic from Gmail. Apparently the 'excessive' traffic does not have to be coming from a specific source as users have confirmed they are not sending many emails (to text). Other email services (Yahoo, Comcast, etc) do NOT have this issue of being throttled. There has not been any further VZW tech support explanation/resolution on this issue.

rrn1894

I send messages with an outlook account, and I seem to have the same problem.

Verizon_Support

We're here to help with any concerns you may have, rrn1894. Please tell us more about what's going on with your vtext. When did this issue start? -Danielle

DG62

All my Verizon users have been experiencing text delays over the last week when sending SMS texts out of O365. Verizon keeps deferring the messages. server temporarily unavailable AUP#MXRT};{MSG=};{FQDN=vrz-sms.mx.a.cloudfilter.net}

dm120

We've been experiencing the same problem for months now. It's to the point where my entire team at work is looking to drop Verizon and go to another provider.

My group at work does customer support. When a problem comes in, the alert is sent to our cellphones via Verizon SMS message. We've seen several hour delays before the message shows up on our phone! This is unacceptable. My employees with AT&T phones get the message within seconds. What is Verizon doing to resolve this delay?

Verizon_Support

This issue has gone on for far too long and we would never want to lose you. Let's turn this around. A private message is being sent to assist you further.

-Sean

ackerman48

I have the same issue - sending to 2 different mobile phones (Business and personal) from my Outlook mailbox, very slow to send - 20+ minutes

skypop38

I have the same issue at work. We receive emails and text alerts from our network monitoring system. Where we once received SMS alerts before the emails came in, I have one Verizon user that never receives SMS messages, and mine are coming in hours later, which is useless for system and networking alerts. Another user has AT&T service and receives notifications within seconds of the alerts. SMS alerts, using Verizon, has become useless for us!

NH40

Verizon you take so much money and you still not able to fix this issue. I am seriously looking to switch now. I have been a long time customer and I now realize what its lacking when I try to use some functionality of it. This delay issue is huge negative. Please provide some value to your customers. I am very disappointed

Verizon_Support

This is very strange to hear, ackerman48! Just to confirm, are you able to send/receive text messages normally on your device? This only happens when using VText?

-Marshall

chrissutton

Hey Verizon, please really look into this new problem. As an American Red Cross volunteer I depend on timely delivery of text messages sent to me at ...@vtext.com, from a legitimate gmail.com account. Those messages normally went through quickly, until about 5 days ago. Now they are delayed 12 hours or more. Here is one to troubleshoot:

Received: from [192.168.1.202] ([2601:601:a300:4dd0:404c:c1b8:6036:3f6f])
by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id d1-20020a623601000000b00534abad34easm953054pfa.51.2022.08.13.18.41.25
for <[email address removed per the Verizon Terms of Service]>
(version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256/256);
Sat, 13 Aug 2022 18:41:26 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <[email address removed per the Verizon Terms of Service]>
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2022 18:41:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: ....@gmail.com
Subject: Scanner monitor alert

--------------------

Message was sent to @VTEXT.com one hour ago. I still have not received the text message.

Please investigate and fix so I don't need to change providers.

dm120

As a suggestion, try sending to @vzwpix.com instead of @VTEXT
.com

I'm not sending pictures from email, but the vzwpix.com server seems to be a little more responsive. I did have one message take 15 minutes to get thru, but I was seeing delays up to 14 hours using the vtext.com address.

Even delays of 15 minutes is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE! My AT&T wireless friends have messages delivered within seconds on their phones.

The problem (IMHO) is on Verizon's front end server. It's likely overloaded and messages get queued up before being sent to the cellular side. I've sent the same message to multiple Verizon phones in different geographic areas. The messages were delayed the same amount. This implies the problem is NOT at the destination cellular tower. The problem must be at the input side where the message comes in from the web server and gets delivered to the verizon system.

Verizon_Support

Hi, skypop38. We always want to ensure that your alerts are received promptly without any delay. We are here to help. When did you first notice this delay? Are you receiving delays from other sources besides your work's system?

-Lorenzo

Verizon_Support

Hello NH40. I'm sorry to read that you are having a hard time with us, but we are here to help you in all your concerns! I will send you a PM, so we can work on this together.

>Pia

Cowprincejulez

@chrissutton
wrote:
Hey Verizon, please really look into this new problem. As an American Red Cross volunteer I depend on timely delivery of text messages sent to me at ...@vtext.com, from a legitimate gmail.com account. Those messages normally went through quickly, until about 5 days ago. Now they are delayed 12 hours or more. Here is one to troubleshoot:

Received: from [192.168.1.202] ([2601:601:a300:4dd0:404c:c1b8:6036:3f6f])
by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id d1-20020a623601000000b00534abad34easm953054pfa.51.2022.08.13.18.41.25
for <[email address removed per the Verizon Terms of Service]>
(version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256/256);
Sat, 13 Aug 2022 18:41:26 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <[email address removed per the Verizon Terms of Service]>
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2022 18:41:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: ....@gmail.com
Subject: Scanner monitor alert
--------------------
Message was sent to @VTEXT
.com one hour ago. I still have not received the text message.
Please investigate and fix so I don't need to change providers.

I'm seeing the same behavior. Started a couple days ago.
They aren't from gmail addresses, but they do use Google apps. So for all intents and purposes, it's the same SMTP servers.

I'm not just seeing delays, but also out of order messages. These notification based emails also hit my wife's phone and we see the messages at completely different times. One of these messages was an MMS that had a timestamp on the associated image of 8-13-2022 @ 7:37pm. The delivery time of this message was 8-15-2022 @ 12:52pm.

I have similar text only based messages also.

unknown

Same here!

Started the day after Verizon helped themselves to $5 more per month on my bill.

Verizon_Support

We never want you having issues like this and are sending you a PM to assist you further.

-Sean

Verizon_Support

We want to help in any way that we can, we know you depend on your service to keep you connected. Please share details, we are anxious to help.

-Rosie

KilledByScott

I am having the same issue and I am seeing texts that I have sent myself via the @VTEXT
.com method and I am receiving these texts the next day. Here is some error info I get which may help...

Delivery incomplete
There was a temporary problem delivering your message to ##@vtext.com. Gmail will retry for 45 more hours. You'll be notified if the delivery fails permanently
The response from the remote server was:
421 4.1.0 <[email address removed per the Verizon Terms of Service]> server temporarily unavailable AUP#MXRT

Verizon_Support

KilledByScott,

Making sure you can fully enjoy all of our services is essential. I appreciate you letting us know. How long have you been having this issue? To confirm then, it does eventually go through, is that correct?

-Andrew

kentk941

I too am having the same problems with delayed text messages. It's been ongoing for a few months, and at first I've been placing the blame on the new spam filter that was installed at work, however after talking with co-workers on TMobile, they are getting alerts in a timely manner. I need these to work for my job, I'm on call and get critical infrastructure alerts in the middle of the night. Last night was a prime example. 35 alerts went out between midnight and 3am, I received 2 of these texts. Then for whatever reason, at 8am, the flood gates were opened and I started receiving all of the delayed text messages. This needs to be fixed or I'm going to have to switch providers.

jav6

@kentk94
What email service is being used at work? Are there options to use alternative email services? I see the issue with Google mail, but not Outlook via Comcast, nor Yahoo.

rdclay

I have had this same issue with Gmail throttling during all of August 2022. It makes vtext.com essentially useless.

noamparn

If only Verizon's support people could actually figure out how to open a ticket, and escalate it to their server team. I'll bet one of the load-balanced mail handler servers is misbehaving, and it takes that long for the message to time out, and get routed to different server. But unless their server team actually *get notified of a problem*, they likely aren't going to even look at the issue.

jav6

@noamparn
wrote:
If only Verizon's support people could actually figure out how to open a ticket, and escalate it to their server team. I'll bet one of the load-balanced mail handler servers is misbehaving, and it takes that long for the message to time out, and get routed to different server. But unless their server team actually *get notified of a problem*, they likely aren't going to even look at the issue.

I've/We've sent numerous emails to the Verizon Messaging Team (verizonmessages at verizonwireless dot com) but that hasn't helped with the issue

Verizon_Support

Good morning, kentk94. As a consumer, I sincerely understand the importance of getting notifications/alerts in a timely manner. I understand that you experience delays with messages sent to phonenumber@vtext.com and we want to explore options to resolve this issue. Can those alerts be sent to phonenumber@vzwpix.com instead? If this can be done, please give it a try and keep us posted.

-Antonio

unknown

"Antonio" from Verizon,

Verizon's already been posted.

Review my post "GMAIL TO VTEXT PROBLEM CONTINUES UNATTENDED, UNSOLVED" which shows test messages sent from both vtext and vzwpix one minute separate from each other took 25 and 26 hours to yield a Delivery Incomplete reply.

Please do the reading before you ask questions in class.

dm120

Has this issue ever been escalated within Verizon beyond level 1 support? I believe your server team or engineering group should be able to figure this problem out.

The delay is not unique to Gmail. We send email using Outlook. Incoming messages at your email server should be timestamped. You should be able to see the timestamp of the incoming message and compare it with the timestamp of when the SMS message goes out. There's likely a timestamp when the email server hands off the message to the SMS delivery system as well. This should show you if the delay is on the email server side or the SMS/cell side.

My guess is that your email server is overloaded or the load balancer isn't working correctly. It shouldn't take hours to send a message thru this system. By comparing incoming and outgoing timestamps, you should be able to quickly determine if the problem is on the user side (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) or within your domain. I'm surprised and disappointed this problem has lasted so long.

Verizon_Support

I want to make sure that you are able to use the service as inteded. What exactly are you experiencing and when did it begin?

-Chris

Jmcrn

Same

Verizon_Support

We understand how important it is for your services to work as they should. To clarify, are you having hte same issue with your emails being delayed?

*Ellisandra

azinnc

I have been seeing this increasingly become worse. Just this morning, I finally received an @VTEXT message nearly 32 HOURS after it was sent. Others on the same distribution list received it on other carriers immediately. We rely on this for critical system outages, so any delay is completely unacceptable.

dm120

I experienced the same issue this morning as well. Our linux email system sent messages to 3 Verizon users at 4:55 AM. I don't consider 3 to be an overwhelmingly large number where Verizon would overload. The text was finally received at 6:27, so 1 hour and 32 minutes later.

I've complained about this many times before and Verizon is doing nothing to resolve it. Text messages to my ATT users occur almost immediately after the email goes out. It's disappointing that Verizon isn't taking this seriously.

Verizon_Support

Thanks for reaching out to us! We want to make sure you're getting the best service possible! Please, send us a Private Note, so we can dig into the troubleshooting!

*Chance

TyraCorreia

Just found this thread so I thought I would add my experience. It has been getting worse lately, messages delayed by 15 minutes up to 11 hours with the order also incorrect. I sent a test message to vzwpix address about 6 minutes ago and it hasn't been received. I don't have much hope that it will be fixed based on the five pages of 'we will get it fixed' comments. One would assume there is a mountain of examples on the back end waiting for analysis.

Daniel_Odulo

We too have been plagued with this service defect. Some messages go through right away, others show up the next day, and some bounce back as a destination server did not respond within some number of hours. We rely on this feature to receive critical server error notifications, so Verizon working like junk is catastrophic to our company.

Verizon used to have the best service, but over the past few years, their wireless coverage became terrible, as much of their other services, including customer service, yet they continue to charge premium rates. Verizon has become a rip-off!

This "vzw_customer_support" account keeps posting how they are committed to resolve the issue, and asking people to private message them. Of course, if you go to their account and attempt to message them, it just takes you to a useless "Private Messages" page with a paragraph of junk text and no way of sending a message.

CntrlPro

I am having very very similar issue....and it has gotten worse with no resolution in the past 6 months. I am sending messages through 3 different Office365 Exchange account addresses in different locations to several recipients...ie.."message from companies Office365 exchange email address"-->"[email address removed per the Verizon Terms of Service]. These message either come through many hours late or not at all when the SMTP dictates and proves that the messages have been sent. There are times where some of the messages almost come through on time, but then you will receive a message from 3-6 hours earlier after the most recent message that was sent and received. I've also noticed that after midnight the message start to come back through on time until around the 6 am mark[then never receiving any of the messages that were sent earlier in the day]. After that you are waiting on vital information from the vtext servers to reach the recipients phone. It doesn't look like Verizon Wireless is onboard with providing a suitable fix or path to a solution. If you count up the different Verizon Wireless users that aren't getting their messages I would say about 20-30 Verizon Wireless Users within a network radius of about 200 miles. .....the nations most reliable wireless network? I'm really starting to scratch my head. Looks like we are all needing answers and solutions here.....but what is being done and provided to resolve...there lies the question.

JasGot

I get the same delayed error message, but my messages never go through. This has been happening for over a year.

We do not use any public email servers like yahoo, gmail, O365, or others.

I am looking for an alternative. I am so upset with Verizon over this, I am contemplating leaving Verizon after being a loyal customer for 30 years.

toekneetech7895

Same issue as the rest. On Call team gets sent alerts from Data Center equipment. ALL messages are randomly delayed 15 mins to days. Most common delay is a couple of hours. 10 month old ticket and Veri$on doesn't care that their paying customers are being inconvenienced. Maybe a discount on our bills since their system isn't working as it once before.... lol, that would never happen.

FIX IT!

Verizon_Support

We never want there to be a delay with your messages. CntrlPro. We appreciate the details you have provided and would like to take a closer look into this. Do you experience issues with another other types of messages on your device? Were there any changes to your device when this started? -Danielle

Verizon_Support

JasGot, we are concerned to hear you are having issues with Vtext messages and would hate for you to leave the Verizon Family. To clarify, are you having any issues with any normal texts, data or phone calls? Is this happening with multiple destinations or one particular contact?

*Joshua

JasGot

The trouble is ONLY email to [myphonenumber]@vtext.com

Here is the error. Verizon will not fix it.

[myphonenumber]@vtext.com
host vrz-sms.mx.a.cloudfilter.net [34.199.121.51]
SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
552 5.2.0 <[email address removed per the Verizon Terms of Service]> sender rejected AUP#BL

Verizon_Support

To learn more about Data Center equipment, can you provide a link to this service?

-David

CntrlPro

Thank you Danielle I appreciate the response.

The issue is widespread to MANY devices ( other Verizon Customers). If there were changes to the devices ( Verizon Customers Cellular Phones) then every one made the same change at the same time....and that's a lot of people.

I am sending SMS Messages via MS Exchange SMTP Server (smtp.outlook365.com>"phone#[email address removed per the Verizon Terms of Service]" )

I'd say based on my records that this really started to become prevalent in March of this Year and has progressively gotten worse. In fact, some of these email addresses are only handling 1 SMS per 12 hours that may or may not be received by the individuals cellphone via the the Vtext. Some handle more, and more frequently(Example : 1 SMS per Hour to 6 Verizon customers or more).

I have no issue with sending emails through these different MS Exchange addresses.

Walkowiak73

I found this trying to troubleshoot yournumber @vtext.com issues. Wondering if there was a setting or other permission or option I was missing on my phone, or on the vtext.com portal settings to allow me to get the email-to-texts and "opt-in" etc.

Further web searching, even archives, Wayback Machine etc. indicates that problems, delays, and outright denials/blocking of various domains has been an on/off problem for many years.

I see four possibilities honestly...

1. vtext.com is partially orphaned, because nobody within Verizon wants to deal with it, it got the hot-potato treatment between groups until it dropped, and no one was forced to pick vtext.com back up.

2. vtext.com is just simply low priority for maintenance and administration as it doesn't generate any revenue directly.

3. vtext.com is an obvious target for spam or abuse, and Verizon's attempts at filtering/blocking are working very badly. Or, no one at Verizon is able, or willing, to make the effort or capital expenditure to add some sort of whitelisting ability. Perhaps instead of just throttling, or blocking indiscriminately, an email bounce message directing a sender to a Verizon page, and solve some captchas etc. to be whitelisted would be nice. Verizon could even do this by pairing an email sender to a number for whitelisting one at a time if they needed to, in case whitelisting entire domains isn't good enough, because those domains are sources of spam despite many legitimate users.

4. Verizon is deliberately throttling, trying to force anyone they think is enterprise or a business user over to their paid contract service for enterprise SMS messaging. And Verizon won't clearly tell anyone this, hoping to simultaneously get additional revenue, yet not alienate anyone either. And perhaps Verizon is also trying to put pressure to get some sort of compensation from large email provider domains like gmail.com and outlook.com, regardless of any particular users trying to send emails to vtext.com are business/enterprise or private/individual.

https://www.verizon.com/support/enterprise-messaging-faqs/

Oh.. maybe there's a "5" too. Some combination of the above 4 possibilities.

@vzw_customer_support
You have my sympathy, you're tasked with replying to these support forum threads, and may be just in the dark as we are. Or you do know what is going on, and why, and are under strict orders not to say, but still have to drop in and soothe everyone. A tough spot to be in.

MetrologyKeith

We are currently having the same issue with our temperature monitoring software sending email alerts. We are supposed to receive the texts immediately so that we can fix any out of specification issues before it affects product. But there's times when I've been getting vtext alerts through outlook a day or two late.

Laurvick84

Any update to this at all?? We use an outlook email to notify our 5 on call techs of trouble calls. Occasionally there will be a 15 minute delay but most of the time it is 12-24 hours, or it fails all together. We are a small city government and need this to work. We use a priority message @address for our fire department. Are we able to use this for our city government?

LarsF

Yes. This was resolved for us. At first they attempted to get us to sign up for some business plan for it but I told them no that stupid. They adjusted their mail throttling I assume to allow our domains emails to flow properly. I assume they had put in a new system that saw the alerts as spam and it automatically throttled them.

angieculp

So, is there a fix for this? Some configuration that can be updated? I need these texts to come through in real-time, which they did up until about 2 months ago.

Laurvick84

No fix for us yet, we have not had any success as ours are still severely delayed or failing after 24 hours

Verizon_Support

angieculp, due to the inherent limitations of Internet email, Verizon provides no assurance regarding the timeliness or receipt of messages sent using this service.

-Natasha

DogsCatsAnarchy

Natasha:

Your response regarding "the inherent limitations of Internet email" feels like a cop-out response. I think most of us on this forum understand that there can be delays that are beyond Verizon's control and so we won't have any guarantee or " assurance regarding the timeliness or receipt of messages sent using this service."

However, I am just wanting the vtext e-mail messages to show up in a similar amount of time as it takes for e-mail messages to show up to other domains (like the speed e-mail shows up to Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.)

As an update, this week, the delays were acceptable (except for the two highlighted which were more than 10 minutes):

Time Delay (in minutes) for messages: 1,1,1,3,4,1,76,1,2,1,11,1,2

I welcome your thoughts and guidance on these delays and what can be done to improve the outliers. Why shouldn't 99.9% of all messages show up within 3 minutes, is that reasonable? If not, what should be the expectation? Can you publish this expected standard response time?

DCA

cor_it_user

We are currently having a issue getting SMS messages to our police officers who are using Verizon. We are not having any issues getting messages to anyone on any other network. Currently the messages have been delayed over eight hours for those on the Verizon network. It is extremely important that we get these messages to our staff in a timely manner.

ecormio

@Anonymous
Same here. It has been consistently working until about mid-May. Then it stopped, and no SMS messages are sent AT ALL. This has a severe impact on our operations. Please provide an update on cause and fix ETA.

LarsF

Originally I had them whitelist our domain and that took a few days for them to do mainly because they didn't want to do it at first. First it was, are you sure it isn't the sending system? (Yes, because lots of other people are having the same issue), then it was well we can guarantee it will go through if you pay us for this text business plan. Really verizon, the billions you make isn't enough? Not to mention they just raised our rates again for no other reason than to make their stock go up (side note, they pay dividends, if they keep raising the rates at least you can make some money on it too). But even though it has worked great for a few years this morning I had an alert come through my gmail, work email and AMS Connect paging app about 2 hours ago. Verizon message just came through. No delay on regular messages. They are basically throttling the "business" emails, doesn't matter if it is a hospital like us or police, fire, forest service (some of the others that posted).

SynthpopAddict

There were some huge discussions back in December 2023 about Vtext being shut down. Surprised there is any functionality of this app at all, but in a nutshell, you can't email to text anymore with Vtext. I think I heard of some replacement app out there, but don't have the details.

Verizon_Support

@ecormio
wrote: @vzw_ Same here. It has been consistently working until about mid-May. Then it stopped, and no SMS messages are sent AT ALL. This has a severe impact on our operations. Please provide an update on cause and fix ETA.

ecormio, Vtext/VZpix are not a Verizon product and we do not support it. With the rise of more SMS spam/fraud texts, Vtext sent messages are increasingly being blocked by filtering systems. As a result, messages sent by Vtext are increasingly unreliable, with messages sent via it, being blocked. If you have been using VText to support a business or government operation, then I highly recommend switching to Enterprise Messaging.

Enterprise Messaging is a Verizon Business Group product, designed for sending SMS messages in bulk to Verizon or on-Verizon phones. You can learn more about Enterprise Messaging here: https://ess.emag.vzw.com/emag/login

-John

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