Notification not working (AT&T)

[+Scarch]

Beginning May 16, 2020, I've stopped receiving text (via AT&T) notifications. Last text notification I received for a newly published cache, maintenance, or other from my notification list was May 15th. I use IOS on iPhone. I've confirmed with other local users as well as some in other states, to my knowledge, all on AT&T, that they're experiencing the same thing; and the date of first occurrence is May 16th. This is an issue that appears to occur periodically, and usually last a month or so. Hopefully the same/similar fix can be  implemented. 

 

I am receiving text notifications from schools, kids sport groups, work, etc. Similar to previous occurrences.

 

Historically Geocaching.com has not replied with what if anything was actually done. 

 

As in the past, I will reach out to AT&T and ask them to look into this. I would prefer not to be the middle man between carriers and GC. Especially since I can't assist with any of the technical interaction.

 

I would appreciate a response, preferably with something other than check with my cellular carrier. 

 

Thanks in advance. Hope everyone is safe and doing well.

[+Eat More Possum]

I and at least one other person in my area are having the same problem with not receiving any AT&T notification texts from Geocaching.

Edited June 4, 2020 by Eat More Possum

[+gban1984]

I have and at least 3 others in my area are having the same problem. I have contacted Groundspeak and they claim it’s not their problem and, as stated above, contact the carrier. One of the individuals has contacted att and were given the information but att has not been able to determine any problem. Like Scarch said, all my other emails from anyone other than Groundspeak is coming to me as a text.  This has been going on since May 15,2020. A swift resolution would be greatly appreciated. 

[+J&J Team Yukon]

I am having the same issues as the ones posted above.  I have contacted Groundspeak and have received the same answer back as the others. I have contacted my internet provider and also contacted my carrier AT&T which I spent nearly an hour on the phone with. The one I was talking to even went higher up the food chain to no advail. They said the only way they could really tell why i am not receiving my text notifications would be to follow a text from start to finish but I don’t have a clue how to give them an origin for a text that I am no longer getting. It seems like they need to talk to someone at Groundspeak to follow the transaction from start to finish. If you will furnish me that number I would be glad to contact AT&T and give it to them.

 

 

 

 

 

[+thenplayon]

I'm having the same problem. Haven't received a new cache notification since 5/13/20. Decided I would delete my AT&T phone number in the Account Settings -> Email Preferences and reenter it. Geocaching.com would not accept the exact same AT&T phone number (xxxxxxxxxx@mms.att.net). I get a message saying 'Your email must be in a valid format'. So all of my new cache instant notifications for my phone have all been changed to my default email address.  Not sure what's going on.

Edited July 8, 2020 by thenplayon
mistake

[Keystone]

I moved a number of posts about some email providers in Germany to a separate thread about that subject.  This thread is about AT&T text notifications.

[+TheLF]

I’ll join in on the thread of not receiving Remote Notifications of newly published geocaches from Geocaching.com.

The last one was on May 14th for GC8QJK5. Messages are received from other users as well as other web sites.

[+TheLF]

I changed the address from “mms” to xxxxxxxxxx@txt.att.net and clicked “save”. I received a message to visit this link to complete validation: 

https://www.geocaching.com/account/settings/emailpreferences/validateemailaddress?token=U0k2nHLC%2B7RbQjTG8OaESE1ikRbXvGu6WQvGuJyS4R4%
I receive another message with the same link and loop continues.

cant even verify a new “email” address. xxxxxxxx@earthlink.net.  It says email sent but I don’t receive it.

[+TheLF]

This thread is going nowhere..! Does anyone have a solution...?
‘The “verify your email” message to xxxxxxxxxx@mms.att.net gets through to my phone (although the link doesn’t work) but the expected message for “instant notification” to the same number does not get here. 
What is different about GC.com’s messages that causes this...?  I don’t see how this could be an AT&T issue.

 

[+Jjhinnj]

Same issue here. We have MMS notifications from geocaching set up so we both receive them, we are both on AT&T iPhones, though we have different models. We are getting getting other mail-to-MMS notifications, but ones from geocaching are not getting through. Seems like this happened to us in the past and we were told to check with our carrier but got nowhere with calls to AT&T. The last texts we can confirm were 4/19/2020. We have tried playing with the last text we received and can send them between the two of us using the mail to mms route (xxxxxxxxx@mms.att.net address) if we take out the “http://coord.info/GCxxxxxx”. We can also directly text that url. However the AT&T mail-to-MMS gateway seems to be blocking a message that contains a url of that type. We can also send other urls through the mail-to-MMS gateway, so it seems to be the just the coord.info urls that are getting blocked. My guess is something in the AT&T mail-to MMS gateway is blocking or failing to handle those urls. Hopefully someone is able to get to the right support people in AT&T to gat this fixed. 

[+ecanderson]

Mail-to-MMS requires that the mail first be accepted by the receiver's mail host.  If the mail is rejected for any reason, there will be no MMS.

Assuming your email is 'consumed' when the MMS conversion occurs, try shutting down the Mail-to-MMS conversion and see if the emails are even being accepted and presented to you.  If not, there's the reason for no MMS, and then the discussion can head in a helpful direction regarding AT&T vs. Groundspeak mail servers.

 

 

[+hzoi]

Please bear with me if this is a stupid question, but is there an advantage anymore to having emails delivered via text message? I know it was handy to have ten years or more ago, when phones were not quite so smart and getting emails to one's phone wasn't really a thing, but I have relied on email apps to accomplish this task for years now.

[+ecanderson]

I certainly can't think of one.  What's worse is when a Verizon user sends a text message to an email address.  The text doesn't show up in the email.  It comes as a *.txt file attachment to the email that has to be opened to see what the text was.  That, and there's no indication of who sent it apart from the phone number, which isn't always something a person recognizes these days.

 

I don't particularly like the text > email or email > text conversions.  Most of this seems to work better email > email and text > text.

[+thenplayon]

I can think of one! I don't check my email on my phone since Apple required an IMAP email account. Checking an IMAP email account removes all email from the server. I don't want all of my emails to be stored on my iPhone. I want all of my email to be in one place (on my main laptop). Unless someone can tell me how I can change that, then I need to be able to have new cache notifications sent to my phone via text messages.

[+Tungstène]

1 hour ago, thenplayon said:

Checking an IMAP email account removes all email from the server

Are you sure you don't mix IMAP and POP3 up? POP3 is known to have the behaviour you describe, not IMAP.

[+hzoi]

2 hours ago, thenplayon said:

I can think of one! I don't check my email on my phone since Apple required an IMAP email account. Checking an IMAP email account removes all email from the server. I don't want all of my emails to be stored on my iPhone. I want all of my email to be in one place (on my main laptop). Unless someone can tell me how I can change that, then I need to be able to have new cache notifications sent to my phone via text messages.

 

I'm not an Apple expert, but my Blackberry email app on my work iPhone doesn't remove mail from the server. It does mark it as read, but it doesn't remove it. Neither did the previous email client my IT shop mandated. It would very much surprise me if your issue could not be resolved by changing some settings.

 

If this is truly an insurmountable problem for your existing email account, perhaps create another email account just for notifications, edit your notifications to send to that address, and then only check that account on your phone.

 

At any rate, the issue appears to be on AT&T's end if they're not sending the email to text, and I'm not sure what Groundspeak would be able to do about it short of changing the email format for all users. Since that could have greater effects for the 99.whatever% of geocachers who do not rely on AT&T email to text to received their notifications, I'd say the onus is on the remaining 0.whatever% to adapt to the problem if AT&T won't fix it. 

[+ecanderson]

4 hours ago, Tungstène said:

Are you sure you don't mix IMAP and POP3 up? POP3 is known to have the behaviour you describe, not IMAP.

Indeed, it's POP3 that pulls the email off the server into the client's 'database' (e.g., Outlook).  The reason that *I* don't use IMAP is that I don't need all of my emails out there on some server forever.  Not that aren't probably copies stashed in some backup server somewhere, but ...

[+TheLF]

Just this morning I received 2 new cache notifications for Florida, that has been active for 5 years. The last one I received was on May 14, 2020.

Also received a notification today for a PA cache note, that I set up as a test when this failure started on May 14th.

Those are the first notifications that have come through in over 2 months. Perhaps something has been changed or corrected today.

I hope y’all’s notifications start working too. I’ve made no changes to cause this to start working...!