iMessage waiting for activation

[shane12345]

I've burned up nearly two days trying to sort this out!

New iPhone with verified Apple ID

I messaging and FaceTime both hang on waiting for activation. Spent two hours on the phone to Apple and they swear it's because vodafone is blocking the Apple SMS activation number.

Spoke to vodafone 6 times today and they keep telling me it's my network settings, which they have redone several times.

Tried all known fixes.

Apple got me to test it by manually sending a text to the activation SMS number- it fails every time. Please help!

Shane

[shane12345]

Three more calls and still no further forward. It gives you the option to enter your phone number for a callback. And sure enough, they never call back! Ever!

[Retired-Rodney]

Hi @shane12345 

Sorry to hear this.

For immediate assistance, please contact us via Live help here.

Thanks,

Rodney

[shane12345]

Hi Rodney, I've been trying to get in chat all day! It's always unavailable. I did manage to get through twice and both times they didn't manage to fix it.

[shane12345]

Please help

[shane12345]

Please help! Begging.

[GojuSuzi]

Couple of things you can check which may or may not have been done:

Go into Settings > Phone > MyNumber and check that it's correct. If not, edit it and restart the phone. You may need to then delete account under iMessage/FaceTime and attempt to activate again from scratch.

Did you have an iPhone on iMessage previously? If so, go to the Apple website, log in, and check what devices are listed under your account. If the old one's still there, remove it (effectively the activation requests would default to that one and never reach the "real" phone). Again, remove from phone, restart, and try again after this.

[shane12345]

Thank you Suzi. I have already tried all of those.

[shane12345]

Ok so today I received an iMessage on the phone and when I replied it went as an iMessage! Even though iMessage still says 'waiting for activation'.

However, when I try to send an iMessage to this phone from my other iPhone, on which iMessage has always worked perfectly, it will not send it as an iMessage it will only send it as a text.

[Sukhi]

Hi @shane12345 

Please connect the iPhone to iTunes to make sure all the settings are up to date.

Thanks,

Sukhi