The story about how Lifecell and Vodafone mocked the client

Once SMS was no longer delivered from one Lifecell number to all Vodafone numbers, while SMS was delivered to numbers of other mobile operators successfully.

This number was used in one company to send employees technical SMS notifications and informational SMS for users; on average, about 5000 SMS were sent per month. Since less SMS was sent to Vodafone than to other operators, and since one SMS was sent to one user per month, the problem was not noticed immediately, but several months after many users began to complain that they did not receive SMS.

Having looked at the logs on the SMS server to which the SIM card from Lifecell was connected, I found that hundreds of SMS, and possibly thousands of SMS were sent to Vodafone numbers, the money for sending was debited, but the delivery status of these SMS is Unknown, that is, they were sent but not delivered.

Then I decided to call Lifecell support at 5433 and explain the problem, after which the operator said that Vodafone had a problem. I contacted Vodafone support via chat and there the operator told me that he does not see requests from Lifecell and this is Lifecell’s problem. AND SO I CALLED 6 TIMES IN LIFECELL, WHERE I WAS TOLD THAT THE PROBLEM IS VODAFONE, AND VODAFONE ON ALL 6 APPLICATIONS TOLD THAT THE PROBLEM IS WITH LIFECELL. And this despite the fact that the Lifecell number was a member of the PLATINUM PLUS club, with priority solution of issues.

I also checked the correctness of the SMS center number, an employee of our company pulled out a SIM card and tried to send SMS from other devices, during sending it was written “Sent” and literally “Not delivered”.

When communicating with the operators of Lifecell and Vodafone, I insistently asked the technical department to make a request, but the operators did not want to do this and constantly pushed the problem onto each other, it seemed to me that I could call like this indefinitely and they were not able to solve the problem.

Here are some answers from Vodafone operators:

If this was the situation with only one number, then it would be possible to make an application. And since the situation is for all numbers, then ask the Lifecell operator to make an application to check the fact of sending SMS. They transfer the application to those. department and they will be able to check exactly whether the SMS is sent or not.

One of the Vodafone operator’s responses

Doesn’t it seem suspicious to you that it is from this number that SMS are not received to different Vodafone numbers? In this case, you need to contact the support service of the company from which you are sending SMS. There are no restrictions on incoming messages for your number, SMS from other numbers are successfully received. Sorry, but in this situation I cannot help.

We do not have the right to block outgoing SMS from numbers of other operators, even if we wanted to, such an opportunity is not provided.

One of the Vodafone operator’s responses

I checked, we did not have the fact of receiving an SMS, I advise you to contact life again, because the problem is definitely not on our side, yet other SMS come to you

One of the Vodafone operator’s responses

Then I found an e-mail address on the Lifecell website and wrote there, to which I was offered to call the operator again, but I replied that the operators were not able to solve this problem, after which I was offered to write a complaint against the operator who did not want to make a request for the technical department, in I indicated the reason for the complaint – “refusal to draw up a request”, the purpose of the complaint – “drawing up an application to the technical department to solve my problem”. After I made a complaint, a couple of days later I received an SMS that the complaint was considered, but the SMS was never delivered to Vodafone numbers.

I called for the seventh time, in support of Lifecell on number 5433 and I was told something like that there were no arguments for the complaint, like the operator did the right thing, I asked what to do next, the operator asked me to wait on the line and after a couple of minutes accepted the application for technical department.

A week later, SMS started being delivered to Vodafone and the problem was resolved!

UPD: After a while, the problem repeated itself, I made a repeated application to Lifecell and later found out its status, the operator said that at the time indicated by me, the SMS was sent successfully. After that, I started a chat with the Vodafone operator and said that the technical department of Lifecell had checked and reported that there were no problems with sending SMS, the Vodafone operator made a request, after a while an SMS came with the text: The service “Blocking by the decision of the operator (MTS Decision)” is disabled … But the problem remained, I once again contacted the Vodafone operator and it turned out that this service had been disabled for the Vodafone number, not Lifecell, and I asked to make another similar request, but for the Lifecell number, the problem was resolved a day later.
As a result, Vodafone can block numbers at its discretion.

See also my articles:
How to disable advertising messages from Kyivstar
How I closed the account in Polish Pecao Bank

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