Emergency Assistant does NOT send message to contact

In Garmin Connect, I've created and selected 1 contact in Safety & Tracking, the phone number of contact is with country code as: +1658962315 (sample dummy number here).

When I active the Emergency function in Watch, I see the screens are:

Sending Assistance Alert

Sending

Assistance Alert Sent

then the information screen: My Info, Name, Location, etc.

But the contact never received the message.

Then I go to my iPhone, I cannot see any message sent.

Is there any other settings should be done?

Please advise.

Thank you.

H

  • I have this same problem and my husband ( we both have this same watch ). I add to plead - is there anybody with an answer. I also added email into emergency contact and that works just fine, email received but NOT TEXT MESSAGE.  

  • I've just tested it and I got it to work - 2 possibilities

    1) Have you put in the full international dialcode version of the number?

    2) (and this one I think may be the kicker) - does your Garmin profile name contain any emoji's etc? Mine did and when I tested it before it didn't work. But once I put in just alphabetical characters as my profile name I just tested it and it worked..

    BTW as it's not sent by your phone direct, and by Garmin, it will not appear in your sent text's. For peace of mind, I added my own mobile number as an emergency contact so if I got the text, I knew my wife would!

  • I'm having the exact same problem with my Forerunner 645 Music. Email works every time, even the text saying I added them as an emergency contact went through (so I know the country code isn't the issue), but when I send an alert, ONLY the EMAIL receives it, never the text. This is a pretty big deal Garmin... any idea for a solution? 

  • I made test after this thread posted and sent test report to Garmin on 20-AUGUST 2019, unfortunately, the had never answered nor gives any result or update.

    The tests have been done:

    I registered Garmin Connect on International Server - Say Canada is selected

    The emergency contact added are with phone number Mainland China - with Country Code, with out emoji's

    Under above situation, the text had never been sent.

    The following situation makes the emergency text sent:

    Change the phone number of the emergency contact to a Canadian Cell Phone number.

    The emergency text sent successfully. Unfortunately, the URL given in the text is not accessable.

    I am truely sorry Garmin is so unconscientious to a "Emergency" function.

  • Sorry to the late reply.

    My situation is different, you are correct, it's sent by Garmin. But my case is, the text cannot be sent if I registered on ROW server while the emergency contact phone number is Mainland China.

  • Sorry to the late reply, please see my reply to NikWik above.

    I've formally reported to Garmin 3 months ago followed by garmin required format, but without responding till today.

  • Posting so other that have this issue after Christmas know (THIS is on the new Fenix 6 x).  I too have the same issue email goes out but text does not.   I called got a ticket and after two weeks was told, after I followed up, that the ticket was closed it appears to be specific to ATT users.   So that may or may not be true.  They asked me to test again and  formed them I am not their tester.   My advice don't expect text to work but the emails do.  Here is the info from my call Reference ID: 15572098K1 >> <Q#:1006206>.  Good luck to anyone that wants to push the topic with them.  I gave up.

  • Cannot speak directly to issues with F-series and emergency contacts. However, inReach devices have experienced similar issues which were specific to AT&T. There have been at least 2 different protracted incidents in which AT&T anti-spam measures have impacted delivery of SMS messages from inReach devices. In one case, AT&T changed things so that they tagged messages containing certain forms of shortened URLs as spam. I am not sure what the issue was in the other case.

    In both cases, Garmin worked with AT&T and eventually got it sorted out. AFAIK, this has not occurred with other cell phone providers.

    Bottom line here is that blaming the issue on AT&T is not as far-fetched as it might sound.

  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 2 years ago in reply to twolpert

    It has been two years since the last answer in this thread. I now have the exact same issue with my brand new Fenix 6 Pro Solar but it's not at AT&T but one of Polish networks (Play). This feature is one of the reasons I've bought the watch and actually switched from Suunto. I'm really disappointed to see that it just does not work at all. It's a security feature - it has to work every single time Disappointed

  • I think you are right about  "shortened URLs as spam" is the main reason for not getting the SMS.  I have the same problem. So when the SMS orginates from outside our country with a shortened url it is treated as spam/scam and deleted by the recepient's mobile service. :-/