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Rate-limited, can our application get white listed?
I work for a large medical organization and we have an application that monitors temperatures of medicines, vaccines, etc. The application sends out notification emails when the temperatures are out of range. This application has been running for many years and recently some of the emails being sent to T-Mobile and Sprint phones (email to text) have been getting rejected. I suspect this is due to a new rate limiting policy. The issues started in July 2022 and has been getting steadily worse.
The emails come from a server hosted at AWS (Amazon) and uses AWS's Simple Email Service (SES) to send the emails to T-Mobile.
The emails are getting bounced back with these error messages:
This is the vast majority of the bounces:
- 554 4.4.7 Message expired: unable to deliver in 840 minutes.<421 4.2.0 <message_id@sending_domain> server temporarily unavailable AUP#MXRT>
These bounces are also occurring but not as much:
- 550 4.4.7 Message expired: unable to deliver in 840 minutes.<451 4.0.0 Unknown>
- 550 4.4.7 Message expired: unable to deliver in 840 minutes.<421 4.4.1 Failed to establish connection>
I am guessing "MXRT" means Maximum Rate.
I tried calling the main T-Mobile tech support phone number but got nowhere, they were nice and tried to find an answer but this question was outside of their knowledge base.
I need to speak to someone inside T-Mobile to help resolve this issue, hopefully our application can get whitelisted.
If anyone can help with this or knows how to contact someone at T-Mobile it will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Unfortunately, email to text is not designed for commercial messaging and should only be used for consumer-to-consumer messages. We don’t have the ability to whitelist anyone on this service because spammers tend to piggyback on the network configuration of the bulk messages that are sent through the it (by no fault of anyone but the spammers). The email to text service has some pretty aggressive spam filters and they won’t be relaxed until spamming is eliminated. The page that Fireguy linked does have an FAQ toward the bottom that discusses the email to text limitations at little bit.
Consumer versus Non-Consumer Text Messaging | T-Mobile Support
The e-mail to text gateway is a legacy system that may eventually be decommissioned in the future. It is designed for low volume consumer traffic only and cannot handle a significant volume of messages. For that reason, all non-consumer messaging is prohibited on the e-mail to text gateway, and even high volume consumer messaging may be blocked as it can impact the system's ability to handle messages for all customers. If you need to send non-consumer or high volume consumer messaging, please seek out an aggregator as their connections can handle these message volumes.
When companies are sending messages to customers, certain federal (CTIA) and carrier (not just T-Mobile) guidelines must be followed to ensure everyone’s protection and to avoid spamming of any kind. That is why using an aggregator is going to be a better option for you than trying to continue on the email to text options. Aggregators are vetted to ensure they are following the code of conduct so their services can be flagged differently through our messaging systems and you will not be blocked as a spammer.
If you do want to get in touch with someone about the situation you can write to our Customer Relations team at the PO box listed on our Contact Us (t-mobile.com) page.
Thank you all for your replies and information.
Unfortunately, email to text is not designed for commercial messaging and should only be used for consumer-to-consumer messages. We don’t have the ability to whitelist anyone on this service because spammers tend to piggyback on the network configuration of the bulk messages that are sent through the it (by no fault of anyone but the spammers). The email to text service has some pretty aggressive spam filters and they won’t be relaxed until spamming is eliminated. The page that Fireguy linked does have an FAQ toward the bottom that discusses the email to text limitations at little bit.
Consumer versus Non-Consumer Text Messaging | T-Mobile Support
The e-mail to text gateway is a legacy system that may eventually be decommissioned in the future. It is designed for low volume consumer traffic only and cannot handle a significant volume of messages. For that reason, all non-consumer messaging is prohibited on the e-mail to text gateway, and even high volume consumer messaging may be blocked as it can impact the system's ability to handle messages for all customers. If you need to send non-consumer or high volume consumer messaging, please seek out an aggregator as their connections can handle these message volumes.
When companies are sending messages to customers, certain federal (CTIA) and carrier (not just T-Mobile) guidelines must be followed to ensure everyone’s protection and to avoid spamming of any kind. That is why using an aggregator is going to be a better option for you than trying to continue on the email to text options. Aggregators are vetted to ensure they are following the code of conduct so their services can be flagged differently through our messaging systems and you will not be blocked as a spammer.
If you do want to get in touch with someone about the situation you can write to our Customer Relations team at the PO box listed on our Contact Us (t-mobile.com) page.
other than the FB/Twitter route im not fully sure. those two are the only ways i really know to get to that point quickly.
any more direct ways for them to attempt?
fireguy_6364,
Thank you for your response. I did check that page before posting but it didn’t really help me with my problem other than tell me that T-Mobile is probably using a third party anti-spam service.
Do you know how I can contact tier 2?
Facebook and Twitter won’t work, I am trying to contact T-Mobile as a representative of my company, not as a individual.
you will still need to contact TMO but personally you might have better luck using either Facebook or Twitter to contact them. you start with tier 2 support instead of the call in tier 1 support...before that though this might help a bit or at least point you in the right direction.
https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/consumer-versus-non-consumer-text-messaging
