Email to SMS gateway not working from AWS SES

[maryc123]

Good morning,

I am writing on behalf of Castle Rock Associates, a consulting company to Departments of Transportation throughout the US. One of our services is responsible for sending automated travel alert messages to subscribers via the Verizon email to SMS gateway in the states of Iowa and Idaho. All messages originate and are sent from the AWS SES platform and our server logs show that they are being received by Verizon.  However, our customers in these states are not actually receiving the SMS alert. 

This is a major issue and poses a risk to public safety. Can you please assist with triaging the issue? 

Thanks,
Mary

[vzw_customer_support]

maryc122, 

I know how important it is for your alerts to be received by your customers! We want to make sure these messages are coming through, and are not filtered. Is it a shortcode that you are using to text these subscribers? If so, what is the shortcode you are using? 

MichelleH_VZW

[maryc123]

Hello,

Thank you for your reply. It looks like this issue has been resolved; travel alerts resumed sending Friday evening. That said, I would like to understand why they stopped in the first place and if there is anything that we can do to prevent this from happening in the future. For instance, can we whitelist our AWS SES server IPs with the Verizon system so that we are always flagged as a trusted source?

To answer your question, we are not using shortcodes in our messaging. We are sending travel alerts through the Verizon email to SMS gateway. We include a custom short link in the message so that users can click to view the entire travel alert report on the web.

An example of an SMS message can be viewed Here 

[vzw_customer_support]

You are very welcome, maryc123. We're very glad to hear that this is now resolved. There are many factors that can contribute to this issue that we would like to further investigate for you. When did this issue first start? Did anything change with your company's travel alert system before this began? BrettA_VZW

[maryc123]

Hello, the issue was noticed last Thursday March 5th around 5:00 pm CST and lasted until Friday March 6th around 5:00 pm CST. Nothing changed about our travel alerts system during that time. 

Mary

[vzw_customer_support]

maryc123, to ensure that we're on the same page, is this in reference to a consumer or business account?

LorenzoP_VZW

[maryc123]

Our software uses the Verizon email-to-SMS gateway which does not require a consumer or business account.