Yes, he does! Better than (555)555-5555. Has variety and you don’t have to count the number of 5’s.

Gordon Shumway said

cid said
In the contacts listing, there is no 1.

Ex. In contacts: (123)456-7890

The send to box in the iMessages sends it to: 1(123)456-7890

Sorry, but this seems self-contradictory.

Have you tried putting this number in the contacts listing: 234567890?  

@Gordon Shumway In my contacts, there is no number 1. I will use (234)567(8901) as the example number instead (123)456-7890. 

In my contacts, say John Buck. His number is listed in my contacts as:

(234)567)8901

When I go to messgaes and start to enter his name it gives the selections and you choose, John Buck. The “To” box shows, “John Buck”, and it is selected. Type the message and send the text. 

A second later I get a message saying the message would not send and it says to use a legitimate 10 digit phone number. It also shows the number that was used. It says I used 1(234)567-8901. The number 1 was added at the beginning by whatever is responsible for sending the message. The number is now an 11 digit number and will not send. That is not how it appears in my contacts, in my contacts it is (234)567-8901.

Now, I tried to just manually enter the phone number, I typed 234578901 and got options pop up. First one is John Buck. I tried to ignore all options and have it use what I typed in. Nope, had to choose. Could not just type the message and send with the number up above,

For some reason, either Messages or my carrier, ATT, is adding the 1 before all numbers when you call, I do recall that being started years and years ago. It is some code for area. Automatically is added so if you call, say another county that makes it a long distance call, or out of area,  you would normally have had to add the 1 before the number, you don’t do that anymore. It is done automatically. For some reason, it is also being added to text messages. Since Messages will only accept a 10 digit number (at least for texts in the US), it will not send the text because a “1” has been added to the number you are using.

I have been Googling this and found compaints from way back as far as 2015. Nobody has given an explanation as to how to prevent it. One person said to use another messenger. Sorry, but that is not a solution. I am not downloading another app, another app to have to keep updating, and another app to worry about security with. Probably another username and password requirement (which is not going to happen). 

This was not happening before, or I have never run into this circumstance that creates the issue.  Unfortunately, I can’t do any testing with the two numbers I know give me this issue. It is driving me nuts that I cannot find anyone with this issue. I bet if someone (US resident because I don’t know about international numbers) tried to text someone they have never ever texted before, an absolutely new contact with an absolutely new number, they would get this probelm. If they tried to manually enter the number and that contact was in their contacts, they would have to choose and the “1” would be added automatically. If they tried to send to someone not in their contacts, I suspect the number 1 would be added when it was sent, even though it is not typed in the “To” box.

From Googling, this is not just ATT. There are Verizon, Sprint, etc people finding this issue. But responses to the issue are not paying attention and telling them to switch carriers. Not a solution. 

I am going to call ATT later and see what I can find. Maybe it is an issue with them that they need to address whereby a number that is sending a text message does not get that “1” tacked on to the front of phone numbers?

It makes absolutely no sense. 

Sure is an iPhone. 6 plus. I tried on my husband’s iPhine (different model) and got the same thing. 

@Amateur  said “I previously had an issue after moving to a new town where the phone wouldn't choose the closest cell tower and kept trying to utilize the further one whenever a call was made or received which resulted in many dropped calls. The staff at Verizon were stumped.”

When we got our first cell phone, mid to late 1990’s, here in the US there was still this thing back then about how many local talk hours were in your plan and how many long distance hours were included in your plan. You paid extra if you went over the talk hours in your plan.

With that in mind, here was my issue with Verizon back then. If I called from inside my house to anywhere local, it was a local call. If I went outside in my driveway or yard, it all of a sudden was considered a long distance call to the same people who are local. If I called a family member from inside my house, local. If I was outside, it was long distance. No WiFi was involved at this time, it is all cellular. 

I called Verizon and they said it was not possible. I had to be calling long distance. I told them that I had not traveled out of my town, there should be no long distance use showing up on my bill. I was in my driveway when I called so and so. I stood in my driveway and saw it change and indicate a long distance call. I showed them my bill the next month. I did a test. I made calls from inside (they are timestamped). I immediately went outside and made the same call. If I recall, I did it about 5 times to the same person, inside and out. I showed the people at our local Verizon. I told them that there was no way that in leas than a minute I can travel to make this same person be a long distance call, and then local again. Probably not even if Scotty beamed me. I was told that it must be a tower issue, to which I told them to fix it. I cannot remember exactly how that issue was rectified. I just remember that very odd issue of being local inside and long distance outside back in the mid to late 1990’s.

The talk time did not matter either way because we never even maxed out talk time, but the fact was that there was an issue that could have bitten us in the butt later.

Isn’t that really weird? If I remember, after that contract was up, that was when we switched to ATT. Those were the days when phones were used for phone calls and you paid for the phone call use. Flip tops, simple little phones.