InReach Mini not sending messages to specific phone number.

I set up my mini with contacts as well as saved messages. I sent out a message with my number, my wife’s number, and our daughter’s number. The message made it to my phone and my daughter’s, but not my wife’s (who is the main person I need to receive messages.) All three of us have Verizon and are on the same plan. I even deleted my wife, re-added her as a contact and performed a sync, message still won’t go thru. I sent her the number for the mini and asked her to send a message, she received a reply stating the InReach device needs to send a message to her first. I’m leaving for a trip across country on Thursday, thankful for any advice.

0 twolpert over 2 years ago

First, make sure that you entered the phone number correctly - including selecting the proper country code. Make sure you sync the device after making ANY change on the web site.

If the contact still does not work, try sending directly to the phone number (by entering the number as a recipient). Yes, I know it's painful on the Mini. But support will ask you to do this. When you do it this way, you do need to enter the country code on the Mini itself.

For both attempts, check your Inbox at explore.garmin.com to see if the message appears there. If it does, the problem is on the cell provider side (Verizon in your case), not in the Iridium network or (most likely) on the Garmin servers. This won't fix your problem, but it will tell Garmin support where to start looking.

Usually when this happens, it's because the cell provider is filtering messages containing short links. With default settings, every SMS message contains a short link to a map with your location. In your case, this is apparently not the issue. Other Verizon users received your messages. You can try the customary workaround for the short link issue, but I don't think it will help. On the Account tab at explore.garmin.com, see the SMS Configuration section in the lower right corner. Make sure that the box for "Include a link to an online map..." is NOT checked. After making the change, try again.

Your Mini does not have a "phone number". There are a lot of moving parts which allow the SMS recipient to "reply" to your message. As the error message said, the phone in question must have received a message FROM your iR device in order to enable the reply. In addition, the message must be relatively recent. (Nobody knows for sure how recent, but in the last couple of weeks seems to work reliably.)

Bottom line - if you cannot get it to work, especially when entering the number directly on the Mini - open a support ticket.