Why was my message late/lost?

Messages can sometimes become delayed within a mobile operator's network, particularly at peak times when they deal with heavy traffic.

There are many other possible reasons that could cause an SMS message to be delayed including:

• Handset out of coverage temporarily
• Handset switched off
• Handset memory full
• Source or destination network congestion
• Signalling or communication errors

SMS is generally a reliable protocol so these problems would simply cause a delay, instead of the message being lost. Please view the article about the Reliability Of SMS.

If your message has still not delivered after 10 minutes, please check the following:

• Is the recipient number formatted correctly in international number format with no leading 0's or + signs?
• Have you received a message id and successful status confirming that CardBoardFish has received the SMS message from you?
• Is the handset switched on and receiving GSM signal?

Note that delivery reports are not prioritised as highly as SMS messages by mobile operators, so therefore they are not guaranteed to be returned for every message. If you fail to receive a delivery report, this does not indicate that the message you have sent failed to deliver to the handset.

If after 10 minutes you are still unable to identify what the problem could be, please do not hesitate to contact technical support by logging into your account on our website and creating a new Support Request from the Support page. Please include the destination number you were sending to and the message IDs you were experiencing difficulties with so we can fully investigate the matter. Please read the Contacting Support article to learn more.