Help Text Message Error Message

[Android Question]

Whenever I send a text to one specific mobile phone number (my sister), the text does not go through. When I send her a text message, after I hit “send” I notice that that it changes her contact/phone number from her 10-digit phone number to her 10-digitphonenumber@mypixmessages.com. Then I get the following Undeliverable Message: (Undeliverable Message) Message could not be delivered to mobile. Error: No valid recipients for this MM.

I'm a Verizon customer and have troubleshooted a variety of solutions with tech support to no avail. Does anyone know what might be happening?

She can text me but I cannot text her.

 

[Kibaikasu]

Sounds like it could be either a device or settings issue. I'll need more information to be able to further help:

1) Make/Model of your phone
2) Confirmation that you're using either the default Messaging app or a 3rd party SMS app (i.e. - Hangouts, Whatsapp, etc.).
3) Confirmation if you are using a device obtained through Verizon or an unlocked device obtained elsewhere.
4) Make/Model of the phone your sister is using.

Knowing all of this would give me a good starting point towards helping you solve this issue.

 

[nmp]

Thank you! Here are the answers to your questions:

1. I have a Motorola Turbo 2. I just got this phone a few weeks ago. I had a similar texting problem with my previous phone, a Samsung Galaxy S4. With my Galaxy, I could not reply to my sister within a texting thread, but I could start a new text message and it would send. I thought this issue would go away with my new phone, but now it's worse. I can't text my sister at all.

2. I am using the default Verizon texting app. I tried switching to the Motorola texting app but get the same error message.

3. I got my new phone from a Verizon store.

4. My sister has an iPhone 5s.

 

[Kibaikasu]

Ok, so lets break down the problem. Lets first start by getting the basics out of the way:

1) Verify that the issue is actually with your phone and not your sisters. We would verify this by doing the following:
- Make sure she can receive SMS from other non-iPhone devices.
- Make sure she has not accidentally added you to her blocked list. Verify that by going to Settings -> Messages, and checking her Blocked list.

2) Make sure that the correct phone number is provisioned on your sister's iPhone. Do that by going to Settings -> Phone -> My Number.

3) If the above has been verified and the issue persists, make sure that both you and your sister delete any open conversations between the two of you and try to start new threads.

Get back to me with this info and then we can try some more detailed stuff.

 

[mikedt]

What's that "@mypixmessages" thing about, some third-party Internet messaging service? Something your sister is using on her iPhone? An Apple imessage problem?

 

[Kibaikasu]

What's that "@mypixmessages" thing about, some third-party Internet messaging service? Something your sister is using on her iPhone? An Apple imessage problem?

https://www.directly.com/p/verizon-what-exactly-is-mypixmessages-69452

Google turned up this link. The error message mentioned is in relation to something called PixPlace. If this is something you do not use nmp, then you can go into your App Manager and disable it. It sounds like something that came pre-installed on your device.

 

[nmp]

OK - answers to the basic's questions:

1) I'm actually not sure if it's my phone/account or my sister's phone/account that has the issue.
- Make sure she can receive SMS from other non-iPhone devices - YES, she can. I am the only person who cannot send her a SMS message. She can receive texts from anyone/everyone else.

- Make sure she has not accidentally added you to her blocked list. Verify that by going to Settings -> Messages, and checking her Blocked list. She has verified that I am not on her blocked list. She doesn't have anyone on her blocked list.
2) Make sure that the correct phone number is provisioned on your sister's iPhone. Do that by going to Settings -> Phone -> My Number. Yes, she checked and it is provisioned correctly.
3) If the above has been verified and the issue persists, make sure that both you and your sister delete any open conversations between the two of you and try to start new threads. We have both deleted existing threads and started a new thread. Still having the same problem. She can text me but I cannot text her. My text to her converts her phone # into that mypixmessages thing.

A few more data points:
- She got her iPhone in July. This problem existed with her old phone (and my old phone), as well. We had that work around that I could send her a text if I started a new thread (I could not reply to an existing thread). Her old phone was a Samsung Galaxy and she was previously on Straight Talk. She got her new phone (iPhone) in July and switched to Verizon; nothing changed with the texting issue. But it got worse when I got my Motorola a few weeks ago.

- I do not have a PixPlace app. She does not either. She had a PixPlace account a long, long time ago. I think it was an online photo album. PixPlace has been decommissioned but she is going to call to see if her account is still active for some reason.

- It seems that the network automatically changes the phone number to one used when trying to send a message in a computer via SMS gateway?