Why am I not receiving text messages from short code telephone numbers?

In this article:

You recently discovered that you are able to send and receive text messages but you are unable to receive text messages from short code telephone numbers with messages from your bank or another website. 

A short code telephone number is typically a 5-6 digit number used by a company to send out various notifications, reminders and multi-factor (MFA) or multi-step (MSA) authentication messages. In this article we will explain why you are not receiving these messages and what you can do about it.

NumberBarn uses two different carriers for texting

In response to regulatory changes to text messaging called "10DLC," we migrated our SMS service to a new carrier, we'll call them "Carrier A," where we secured a P2P (Person to Person) classification. You can click here to read more about these regulatory changes and NumberBarn's response. In doing so, we were able to again offer inbound AND outbound texting for our customers.

We also quickly learned that customers were unable to receive text messages from short code telephone numbers. After working with Carrier A, we learned that they did not support short code texting on their platform.

As a result, we have been moving customers, upon request only, back to our previous carrier, we'll call them "Carrier B" so they could receive short code text messages. The only issue with this move is that Carrier B does NOT support outbound texting.

Which carrier do you want to use?

After reading the above explanation, let us know if you need the SMS service for your telephone number(s) migrated to a different carrier. Here are the choices and what each offers or doesn't offer:

Carrier	Inbound	Inbound Short codes	Outbound
A (default)	Yes	No	Yes
B	Yes	Yes	No

Carrier A is our default carrier and it's likely that's the carrier the SMS service for your number resides on. If you don't have a ticket open already, you can open a ticket by clicking here if you'd like your number(s) to be migrated to Carrier B. Be sure to let us know which of your telephone numbers you would like to have migrated. There is no additional cost to do this.

What's next?

We know this is not optimal and that many customers likely want Carrier A to support short codes as well as outbound texting. We want to ensure you that we believe this will ultimately be possible and that this is a high priority. That said, we do not yet know when this project will be complete. 

I moved to Carrier B and still can't receive short code messages

If our team worked with you to migrate your number(s) to Carrier B and you still cannot receive short code messages, it's important to keep in mind that our telephone numbers are classified as landline or wireline numbers. Certain institutions and banks will only send messages to wireless telephone numbers.

You can read more about this in the following article.

Does NumberBarn support SMS from various websites and banks?