SMS Help (stopped working after switching mobile carrier)

#1

1) Give a description of the problem
I stopped receiving SMS messages from my Webcore Pistons

2) What is the expected behaviour?
That I receive SMS messages from webcore when I hit the Test button for the piston

3) What is happening/not happening?
I am not receiving SMS messages

**4) Post a Green Snapshot of the piston

download
download.png1178×348 33.9 KB

5) Attach logs after turning logging level to Full
Log remains empty

ADDITIONAL IMFORMATION:
The above piston is just a test piston that I run “test” on to see if SMS have started working again. I have multiple pistons that use SMS and they have been working fine for 2+ years. I DID opt in last year when SmartThings requested authorization and the SMS continued to work up to this past weekend. The major variable that I did change is that I switched phone carriers to from AT&T to Cricket. While on Cricket I received 3 more SMS one my new phone, then nothing (pun intended). I can’t seem to receive anymore. My wife’s phone whom I also switched to cricket has the same new issue. I have called Cricket to see if Webcore was placed on some type of SPAM list but was told no. I attempted to reply to Webcore (844-647) with Yes (that did not work) then I tried Stop followed by Yes (that did not work). I called SmartThings and they were not sure of the issue. VERY interesting was that they mentioned that they are retiring the classic app at the end of the year and that Webcore will no longer be support. Any news on that?

#3

I am aware of this. I texted yes last year AFTER Sept 25 2019. Again it worked up to this last weekend. Today, I texted Yes again to see if that fixed anything. It did not. I then texted Stop followed by Yes to see if that fixed anything. It did not.

#4

Do you have TMobile, looks like they have issues today.

#5

Thanks for the reply eibyer. I don’t have TMobile. My original carrier was AT&T. I switched for Cricket (new carrier). The SMS messages lasted for about 1/2 a day then stopped.

I am no where near 100 messages per day additionally the issue has been occurring for 2 days now.

#6

This may sound silly, but I wonder if there are other textual commands that you can send to that ST number. (besides Stop and Yes)

I’m thinking if you can get some kind of response from the bot, hopefully there may be clues in that reply.

This is the only information I have from last year… but surely there are other commands you can send to verify the connection…

pic

Edit, I don’t know if case matters, but I typed in all caps.

#7

I typed HELP and still received nothing. I wonder if Cricket is having server issues. I restarted my phone and no change. Would restarting the SmartThings hub do anything?

#8

Am I understanding you correctly?

  • You have a US phone number (US area code)
  • Your ST texts has worked well the past year
  • You switched to Cricket this past weekend
  • Cricket ported your old number to your new account
  • You successfully received a few ST texts on the new device (original phone number)
  • All further SMS have not gone thru?

If your answer is yes to all of these, then I suspect Cricket’s algorithm is assuming that ST is a spam bot. (IE: the tech support is likely unaware of this)

I wonder if adding 844647 to your favorites overrides this…

#9

I have noticed that in some instances where I set my phone number as a global variable integer it would for some reason not hold my number. Changing that variable type to a dynamic and making sure the number was right fixed it for me. Not sure if that applies to you as well

#10

WCmore - Yes to all of those questions. You summarized that better than I could :slight_smile:

The number is not blocked on my end. It is part of my contacts such that the number comes through as WebCore instead of 844-647.

I called Cricket and they said they DO have a mid-man SW that filters out known spam, but they assured me that 844-647 was not on that list.

#11

I guess you could try calling the 1-888 number for SmartThings (shown in my image above)
… although I think all of the clues point towards Cricket

#12

I called SmartThings yesterday. I was told that webCore was being phased out by them and that at the end of the year it would not longer be supported. Honestly I thought that the support employee might not know what she was saying…

She said the SMS was not working because new phones (carriers i guess are included) can’t be added due to the phase out. (Honestly this just confused me more)

#13

Here are two simple tests to help narrow it down…

  1. Have you tried using a piston to send a SMS to a non-Cricket number?
  2. Have you tried using a piston to send a SMS to a friend’s Cricket number?

Note: In both of these cases, the first SMS to come in to the new number will likely be the message asking for permission… (AKA, reply with YES)

#14

Good questions/debug skills that I have not been able to try yet. I will keep you posted.

Have you (or anyone) received any word about webcore being discontinued at the end of the year?

#15

The creator of webCoRE (@ady624) now works for SmartThings & is actively working on webCoRE v2.
(but there is still a dedicated team that works on the current version)

There will come a day when groovy based code will not work with SmartThings, but we’ve been promised that the next version of webCoRE will be up and running long before then.

#16

Update: Yesterday night I texted Yes again just to see if anything changed. It worked! I got a message back from Webcore. My guess is that switching mobile carriers just took time to get updated in some system and that is why help/yes/no were not working for 2 days.

#17

Thanks for reporting back!

Just to clarify a silly note… Was it Yes or YES that worked for you?

#18

not a silly question at all

it was Yes

That being said - I think it had something to do with the servers. I had typed “Yes” earlier and it did not work. Again my guess is something was in the process of being updated and therefore my messages were falling on deaf ears.