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Ana Ferreira (Super Admin) avatar image
Ana Ferreira (Super Admin) asked Phong Vu commented

SMS outbound no longer works for Company Main Number

I have had an ongoing issue for 3 weeks now, where my Company Main Number can no longer send outbound SMS texts. My direct lines still work, but I need the Main Number to be active. The Main number can still receive texts from clients but we can not send out. I have had several calls with Support and every answer I get is that my case has been escalated and someone from Tier 3 is working on it. The most common answer given to me is that there is a bug in my account where my number gets blocked after a certain amount of texts sent out. I also received a message that my texts are violating phishing traffic content policies from RingCentral but our content has not changed from 2018 when we first started using the service.


RingCentral are able to unblock the number, but it's inevitable that it gets blocked again after a day of use. Has anyone experienced the same issue and know how I can fix it? Or is there a phone number and extension to a department that I can speak to that they can help? I keep getting Tier 1 support when I call where they do not let me speak to anyone above them to help with the issue.

sending sms
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Phong Vu avatar image
Phong Vu answered Ana Ferreira (Super Admin) commented

What is your account id or exact company name?

How do you send text messages from the main company number, via your app or via the RingCentral app?

The SMS text messaging industry has changed a lot since the pandemic and mobile carriers are much stricter in blocking P2P (Person-to-Person) messaging violation. Once a number is blocked by a mobile carrier because of violations, there is not much RingCentral can help to get it unblocked unless the use case is legitimate and misinterpreted.

See the SMS policy https://developers.ringcentral.com/guide/messaging/sms-content-policy

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Ana Ferreira (Super Admin) avatar image Ana Ferreira (Super Admin) commented ·

Ferreira Law

We send text messages through the RingCentral app.

RC Tech Support has been able to unblock the number on several occasions.

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Ana Ferreira (Super Admin) avatar image
Ana Ferreira (Super Admin) answered

My Company Main Number is still experiencing the same issue with outbound SMS. The last status update I received from Tier 2 is that there is a bug on my account and the RC system is blocking it without a violation. Apparently the Engineering department has been working on it since December 27. Is there a faster resolution to this issue, can this be escalated to another department so it can be worked on immediately? Case number is 14262533.

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Sprinter State avatar image
Sprinter State answered

Same stuff here, I have that feeling when RingCentral technicians have no clue how to fix it. I was speaking with support several times and every time they give me a simple answer that there is a BUG and they do not know when they will fix it.

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Sewer View avatar image
Sewer View answered

Ana and RC Support,


This is not an answer but this has been an ongoing issue for our company as well. We go into an outbound (and sometimes inbound) SMS outage 1 or 2 days per month. Our main number is what is used by our customers and they are getting very frustrated because they cannot communicate with us in the way they have for the last 6 years. This has been happening since September and I am experiencing the issue again today. Some ticket numbers I have had created since this issue started: 13569424, 13591901, 13745448, 14137017. Phong - I have reviewed SMS Content policy and we are following the guidelines provided.

Our company has been a RC customer since 2016 and I would also like a way to escalate this issue beyond Tier 2/Tier 3 support.


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Sprinter State avatar image
Sprinter State answered

This is the Case #14270538 for the case I have created.

We started noticing the same issue since September also, I have called them multiple times, but today I received an answer of the year. The representative told me that this will be happening and every time this will happen I will need to call the support to ask them to unblock our number, which is not a solution at all. Here also is an email from another representative from Tied 2 that promised to fix an issue, but he only sent an email containing this text "We are still working on this BUG, there is still a possibility that the issue will happen and we need to re-submit again ticket to our carrier to clear it. Temporarily this is what we need to do while our team still working for a permanent resolution. ". After this email I have never heard from this guy.

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Phong Vu avatar image
Phong Vu answered

Hi everyone,

I fully understand your frustration of being unable to send SMS messages from your RingCentral phone numbers and the customer support could not help much. Remember that this is the developer community though. It is mainly dedicated for developers to ask questions and share experiences related to programming and application development using RingCentral API platform.

Since you are using the RingCentral app to send text messages, the issue you are facing is not a programming problem. I believe that the cause of the problem in many cases is that the numbers got blocked by mobile carriers, either by mistake or on purpose. The rules applied to SMS text messaging are not created nor controlled by RingCentral. They are guidances set by government agencies and reenforced by mobile carriers, the last node in the text message delivery chain, who decides whether or not to deliver the message to their subscribers.

It's hard for us to say why a number got blocked or a message got flagged without knowing the actual message, the number of messages and the frequency you sent, and also the send/receive 1:1 ratio, and ultimately, a list of recipient's carriers. These are the information a customer support would need to provide to a mobile carrier to investigate the root cause and resolve the problem.

You mentioned that it used to work before and now it stops working. Well, text messaging compliance has changed over the time and it changed a lot during the pandemic, particularly to business (non-consumer) text messaging. Also, carriers' messaging violation detections are automated and accumulated when it reaches a certain threshold.

Last but not least, unfortunately those case numbers are customer support cases (not dev support case) so I don't have access to the cases.

In order for me to jump in to help you with, please provide your account id and the last 4 digits of the phone number which got blocked (remember that this is a public forum, No sensitive information should be posted here). You will also grant a permission for us to access your message store to get the information needed by mobile carriers when we escalate the case to them. Alternatively, you can access your cases and ask the customer support to contact me (Phong Vu) to assist. In that case, you don't need to provide further information to this thread.

Hope this helps!


P.S. If you would like to ask non-programming questions in the forum, use the Customer Community instead.

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Sewer View avatar image
Sewer View answered Phong Vu commented

What I don't understand is why is it sporadically working. If I send 10 text messages to and from the main line when we are in an outage. The messages are sent and received maybe 1 out of 10 times and sometimes they arrive 2-5 hours later.


If the carriers were "blocking" the number it would 100% failure rate until they removed the block.


This makes me think it is getting stuck in cue somewhere in RC servers and catching up when the server has the processing power.


Thoughts?



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Phong Vu avatar image Phong Vu ♦♦ commented ·

Again, I cannot say w/o knowing if the recipient number is always the same number. Or recipient numbers are different and different carriers too.

Regarding the delay, we cannot be sure where it got stuck without the detailed data. This is the short path a text message would go thru, RC - Upstream (SMS Gateway) - Mobile carrier - Subscriber. Any node can cause the delay.

Pls clarify that if all 10 text messages failed or some failed, some passed?

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Sewer View avatar image Sewer View Phong Vu ♦♦ commented ·

If I send 10 texts to my personal number from RC, I'll sometimes receive some of them. For example I'll send Test 202, Test 203, test 204, etc... Example: Test 202 = a test message sent at 2:02pm.

On my phone I'll receive "Test 204" at 2:05pm and nothing else. Then at say 3:45pm I'll receive "Test 202" and "Test 207". So the text was delayed but still delivered.


This feels like a delay in the RC side servers/network not the carriers.


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Sewer View avatar image Sewer View Sewer View commented ·

Additionally, for us this issue tends to crop up about the same day every month. This has happened since September.


Is new code pushed to servers during the beginning of the month?

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