Friend is Unable To Receive Texts/ Problems Storing Messages

[TroubledTexter]

Hello,

I have an LG Revere phone that has worked fine for the year that I have used it. About two months ago, a friend of mine on another network would no longer receive my texts. I could send him texts and my phone says they were sent, and I could receive his texts, but he would not receive any of my texts, and his previous conversations with me were being deleted off his phone. At first I thought it was a problem with his phone, but he has other friends on Verizon that he is able to communicate fine with. I occasionally get complaints from other people that I text every once and awhile that texts from my phone take two or three hours to reach them, and even then their phones will not notify them that they have a text.

I recently moved as well, and my phone has reset itself to the new time zone (two hours ahead) like it should. However, I will often not get notifications for texts. Instead, my phone will show that it has a new message, but it won't vibrate or ring. For example, I receive a text at 2:00. My phone will say  the date that it was received two hours earlier (time where I used to live, 12:00 in this example), and that it was "stored" to the time that I now live at (2:00 in this example). Because my phone seems to be storing messages, I am not getting notifications that I have texts, besides the icon on the screen.

I would really like to be able to communicate with people easily through text! Any advice?

[tikibar1]

This may have nothing to do with it, but have you tried updating your phone by dialing *228 and choosing option 2?

[SydneyK]

My first thought was your friend's internal storage is running low, because the phone would start deleting old conversations, but it sounds like he's only having those issues with your number.

The first thing you should try is to update your preferred roaming list (PRL) by calling *228, option 2. When traveling to another area, this updates which towers your service uses. If it's not prioritizing the towers near you, it could be causing delays.

Edited to add: Great idea, tikibar1!

[vzw_customer_support]

Dear TroubledTexter,

I am so sorry to hear you are having problems with texting. It sounds like we may have a translation problem. When you text is sent to another carrier, it goes through a "translator" that puts the text in that carrier's "lingo" so to speak, so that their phones can interpret the message. Do you have issues with other phones with this carrier? When your texts are delayed in being sent, is this also with the other carrier or otherwise?

Your phone should reset to the correct time zone that you are in if you have the setting enabled for automatic updating through the network. When a message is "stored" that means that it is stored on our network, not on your phone. You could have you phone off for a whole day and all the messages will be stored in our network. Then when you turn the phone back on, then messages will be sent. Then there will be a time difference in between stored and sent; it has nothing to do with time zones in specific.

The only thing that I could lend to the fact that your friend's phone is deleting your conversations is if they have a setting on their phone that gets rid of texts older than XXX amount of days. Since they are on a different carrier, I am not able to help there, but that particular issue is not one with the Verizon Wireless network.

Please help us further troubleshoot. It may be worthwhile to call in to our customer service center at *611 or 800-922-0204 to see if more in depth troubleshooting needs to be done.

Thanks!
MichelleG_VZW

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