Welcome to my first post.  I’ve been wanting to do this for some time now, offer a forum to answer your questions about WISHTV.com and keep you up-to-date on any new features on our site.  Fortunately, I have a good topic to start with today…

Every time we have winter weather, I receive several emails from our SchoolWatch 8 subscribers about why they didn’t receive their school closing alert.   Here’s the reason why…

Just like email, all SMS messages get filtered by the cell phone carriers before they reach your inbox.  During times of peak demand, cell networks see our messages as spam and will choose to either delay or not deliver them.   In the past week, we’ve learned about a unique issue with Verizon Wireless.  The following was a memo sent from our service provider about Verizon:

Recently, significant text message delivery delays for Verizon subscribers have been occurring.  In working with Verizon network operations and messaging personnel, we have confirmed that all text messages are being delivered by TextCaster to Verizon in a timely fashion.  However, just after the first of the year, Verizon implemented a process that limits the number of text messages they pass through to their subscribers.  The bottom line is that some Verizon subscribers are not receiving the message content that they want and need.  Alltel subscribers may also experience delays, as Alltel has been acquired by Verizon.

We are continuing to work with Verizon to improve message delivery and are hopeful that our efforts, jointly with those of your subscribers, will result in immediate action by Verizon.

For all the Verizon subscribers out there, I’m in the same boat as you.  I subscribe to alerts for about a dozen schools (much to my wife’s chagrin when it goes off at 5 a.m.) and it’s been hit or miss whether I receive them.

Our provider is working very hard to get this situation resolved as soon as possible so you can receive these time sensitive alerts moments after they’re issued.

Now if you receive alerts via email, make sure you add alerts(at)wishtv.com to your safe senders or approved email list.  This should help these messages from being flagged as spam.