Not receiving international text messages from vodafone user [ Edited ]

[djrussell53]

Recently I haven't been able to receive text messages from a friend in Australia. Up until two days ago I did receive them. I tried texting another friend and I did receive her text messages. The difference is the one I can't receive is using Vodafone and the other is using the "3" network. Does anyone have any suggestions what it might be? I've called ATT and they say it's my friends cell service, while my friend's cell service says it's ATT.

Thanks,

Donna

[JFizDaWiz]

International text is so hard to troubleshoot as the other phone is in another country. That's just international, it either works or it doesn't

[stufried · Accepted solution]

Have your friend send a text message to another ATT phone and to a friend with somebody else's service.  I agree with the other poster that they are very hard to run down.  

There are many free texting apps out there if your friend in OZ is using a smartphone.  I use Whatsapp to text my best friend in Dubai.  It saves us both international texting, but there is also TextPlus, and a number of others.  Another alternative is Fishtext.  for apx. $15 a year, they will give you a UK virtual number which is very text friendly for SMS networks.  Texts to OZ are three Euro Cents a minute.  The savings in texting should pay for the  service.  It is not a perfect solution, but it works. YOu can get a free text friendly number from Google, but you can't send responsive texts back on that number.  (Fishtext will spoof your US caller-id for foreign texts, but you are then using one program to send and another to receive). 

[djrussell53]

Thank you for the very helpful information. I plan to look into the Whatsapp you mentioned. Thank you again.

[mpomroy88]

ok i had this same issue, and just fixed it myself... if your using an iphone, turn it off for a minute or 2, then turn it back on... should work, because i just got a heap of messages come through

[djrussell53]

I'm glad yours is working. I haven't tried it lately with my friend in Australia. I've sent text message using a free app instead. It works great. I'll have to give the other a try though.