Verizon Wireless quietly shuts down SMS delivery confirmations
According to DSL Reports, Verizon Wireless has been quietly ending their SMS delivery confirmations. You know those quick icon changes (letter D or a green checkmark) that occur when your text message has been delivered to your recipient; well, they’re suddenly not working anymore. Discontinuation of the service reportedly started on September 9th on a regional basis and all regions should see the service gone by the end September. According to the word on the forums, the service was stopped in order to reduce network traffic. For every text message sent, Verizon had to send out the text message data to the recipient and then send back the data with the status information to the sender. We suppose don’t believe that 1KB of data being sent back per text message could bog down “The Network”. Rather, we wonder if they are phasing it out so they can offer it as a value add-on to your text messaging plan. You will now be able receive “dynamic” text message delivery status notification for just $1.99/month. Pure speculation here so don’t be spreading rumors that BGR said this or that about some new charges for SMS delivery confirmation. We’re just saying that with the way Verizon Wireless nickle and dimes their customers to death, it would not be outside the realm of speculative possibility.
Disclaimer: I have Verizon Wireless.
Tags: text messaging, Verizon, Wireless
there are no plans to add a service for delivery notification. This has actually been asked for by the field though. You will still get delivery notification via vtext.com
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worked fine for me until around 5:51…the last maker i got. At 5:53 they all stopped in Boston, MA.
It sucked not knowing when AT&T/others got your message…but now people in the network? sucks. a lot.
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weird…i just sent a text 2 seconds ago and i got the check mark…but all texts between 5:53 and now (8:24) did not confirm with my phone
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I don’t see it happening, charging for confirmation… But that’s just me.
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its actually just certain verizon people ive been sending to…some work fine..others dont
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I love Verizon Wireless, and I never really cared to much about delivery confirmation. But that was hella funny, “new charge= $1.99/month delivery confirmation” lol
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Now you can no longer say, “I know he’s ignoring me because it says the text was delivered.” Instead, “I wonder if my text went through… he hasn’t responded yet.”
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Maybe they are just running low on SMSC capacity?
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I have AT&T - I don’t think I ever had SMS delivery alerts. But, that’s why they have Blackberry Messenger!
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yeah..i work for verizon wireless and we’ve known they were going to do this for a while now…there was a pdf explaining everything about this on our internal site in like august…and it hasn’t happened in all places yet…only in certain service areas but it should be pretty complete as of october… regarding to the 1.99 charge… i haven’t heard about that… i wouldn’t doubt verizon doing that…but i really doubt they will
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The sad part is that some people out there would pay money for it.
Oh and I love the disclaimer, sad that this is what you guys have to go to in order to shut people up.
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A lot of vzw phones have a feature that you can set for txt ack, so when someone recvs your txt, you get a txt message confirmation that the recpt got the original message….Just sayin’
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I think it’s more of a privacy issue. When I actually used Verizon I didn’t like that some people knew I got messages when I didn’t want them to know.
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@Myke3630
I don’t have verizon wireless but I understand where you are coming from, it’s like the new BB messenger on the Bold, before if someone sent you a message you could open another contact and see what that message said, without that person ever knowing u actually read it…now it forces you too open it, letting people know you have read it.
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@Myke3630
that is a good point. it is like a read receipt without the option to opt out.
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Damn that explains why I haven’t been getting those little “d”
It’s a good feature, but not worth enough for me to pay for it.
BTW it only worked if you send to someone with in the verizon wireless network.
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Good riddance. They’re farking annoying.
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Oh great yet another VZW bashing from BGR. Stopping deliver notifications has nothing to do with nickel and diming. Think about the times when the network it bogged down like after a natural disaster. All of those confirmation text messages will effect the network during those times more than ever. I’m done with this site!
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Deathstar® doesn’t have “real” delivery alerts since all of their traffic goes through a text message ‘gateway’ so any delivery alert is bogus and gives the message “delivered” even if the phone is off or even if the message never even made it to the phone. For national carriers T-Mobile is the only GSM carrier that gives real delivery reports. All others to all CDMA providers and to AT&T are not real. All delivery reports to CDMA carriers and to AT&T report that the message was received by the gateway.
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I’ve been w T-Mobile for almost 6 years and have always had it. It is really useful.
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Soooo…..
Verizon (and all the others) doubles the price of text messages-which cost very little for them to send and have NOT increased in cost. For this increase in price, we get…reduced service. What a surprise.
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NO WONDER IT WASNT WORKING
DAMN YOU VERIZON WIRELESS.
next thing you know you’ll be charged everytime you switch cell phone towers.
it gets more ridiculous by the dollar.
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mine still works…
i think it’s cool and all but i never really pay it that much attention..
for me it really only works with a txt sent to another vzw customer..
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Actually text delivery notifications were like 25% of all SMS traffic, cutting this feature will save the company something like $50 million and open TXT capacity (which now is in the billions of messages per month/quarter) for real messages instead of delivery confirmations.
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@ Kelly Hodgkins
“that is a good point. it is like a read receipt without the option to opt out.”
- actually BlackBerries do have this feature.
Options –> MMS –> Allow Delivery Confirmation (toggle).
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