Forum Discussion
How to fix significant delays of messages sent using the email to SMS service?
Sprint customer here. About a month or 2 ago, I started noticing that some messages sent using the email to SMS service can be significantly delayed. I've seen messages delayed up to (and possibly ...
I actually (think I) solved this problem by working around it. I switched from using email-to-text to an AppleScript that tells the messages app on macOS to send the SMS.
My only concern there is that my phone may need to have either a WiFi or data connection in order for the SMS to be sent, which makes it no better than an iMessage, but from what I’ve heard, the ability to send/receive SMS without a data connection is going away with the decommissioning of the 2G network anyway.
James Britt wrote:I don't have a Mac to work around this, and that shouldn't even have to be considered. T-Mobile has outsourced "spam" filtering to some 3rd-party and washed their hands of it. It's as if the service now doesn't even exist.
I feel ya and completely agree. Although part of it is that as of sometime this year, mobile providers are required by law (FCC regs) to perform spam filtering of SMS messages, and their email-to-text service is a major source of spam. They've just implemented it extremely poorly.
Isn't there some PC texting app that can be scripted the way you can write an applescript for any mac app? If not, there do exist services out there for SMS messaging. Unfortunately, to get around the same problem, they now have to pay the mobile provider(s), and those costs are passed on to their users. I had looked into a few of them before writing the applescript solution.
However, there are lots of ways to send messages (that require a data connection), and pretty soon, there will be no 2G network and every SMS message will require a data connection moving forward, so there will no longer be a benefit to trying to get automated SMS messages to work.
While I was working out the SMS issue, I set up a discord server to send my automation messages, but there are dozens of other solutions and they don't cost a penny. Plus, they're more feature-rich. E.g., you could mute certain types of messages or direct different messages to different channels and individually mute those channels, etc. I'm thinking that I may refine my messaging system to use a mix, and put less important messages in muted channels…
At the same time, I have considered demanding a discount from TMo since they're blocking my legitimate messages that I essentially pay for. Also, I recommend sending feedback to the FCC.
