S4 - Ignores Texts from One Phone Number

[Fork501]

Hello everyone!

I'm trying to diagnose an issue with my mom's S4, but have hit the wall, when it comes to ideas.

Basically, about four months ago, I started noticing that she wasn't responding to any SMS from me, unless we were in a group message together. When I asked, she said that she never received them. So the next time I was over there, I checked her phone and sure enough, when I send her SMS messages, they just don't come through. No alert, not in the history. When she sent me messages, I received them with no issue.

We decided to delete my contact info from her phone. When I sent a text, it was the same issue. (btw - I know that i keep saying SMS, but MMS is the same.)

The next step was to completely remove our text history. This is where it got weird. We added me back in and now when she sends me a text, it doesn't even show up that she sent it. I still receive her text messages, though. She'll start a new message, send me a text and the portion of the screen for chat history will stay blank. I'm not added as a recent person that she had sent a text to, either.

Right before this all happened, my brother installed Facebook Messenger in her phone. She apparently clicked 'Ok' to have it work like her default SMS app. So I completely removed Facebook Messenger and still had no luck.

As far as additional debugging is concerned, I've looked at her spam menu and I don't see anything from me in there. My contact card doesn't have anything set on it, which would allude to blacklisting me. I'm not in archived messages, either. Group messages still work fine and if we're texting with other people, we can send and receive messages all day long. From what we can tell, my phone number is the only one that's affected by this issue.

I apologize, but I don't know the Android version that she's on. I don't think that Samsung supports the S4 anymore, so it would be whatever the last version they put out for it.

Since she's older, I'm trying very hard not to reset her phone; it was a battle to get her to have a smart phone, a few years back.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated! I'll be heading over there this afternoon, so if anyone has additional debugging suggestions, I'll gladly report back.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Dannydet]

She's probably blacklisted you accidentally.
Go to settings, apps, messaging, and choose clear cache and data, then restart the phone.

 

[Fork501]

She's probably blacklisted you accidentally.
Go to settings, apps, messaging, and choose clear cache and data, then restart the phone.

Thanks for the reply! I'll give that a try this afternoon. Do you think that would explain why she can't see herself send me a message, though?

 

[Dannydet]

Not sure, but you can try installing Textra from the play store, that's what I use for messaging and never an issue

 

[svim]

With both you and your brother managing your Mom's phone, it sounds like there's just a conflict in which texting app is actually working as the default. If you dig into the Settings menu, just which app is set up as the texting/messages app?
I'd recommend going into your Apps menu, doing a 'Force stop' and then a 'Clear data' on all the texting apps. This clears the settings/configurations of those texting apps and their caches. Now sit down with your brother and pick one of those apps to be the main, primary, sole, default app, and set up just that one app for her texting/messages.

 

[Fork501]

With both you and your brother managing your Mom's phone, it sounds like there's just a conflict in which texting app is actually working as the default. If you dig into the Settings menu, just which app is set up as the texting/messages app?
I'd recommend going into your Apps menu, doing a 'Force stop' and then a 'Clear data' on all the texting apps. This clears the settings/configurations of those texting apps and their caches. Now sit down with your brother and pick one of those apps to be the main, primary, sole, default app, and set up just that one app for her texting/messages.

Will do! She didn't want Facebook as her main texting app. He didn't choose it for her, either. When I look at the default apps, it shows the Messages app (default phone SMS app) as the one. I can't remember if we reinstalled Facebook after that, but if we did, we'll clear the cache there, as well. No SMS ever showed up in Facebook; that's the weird part.