Text problems

The Dom Post reports:

Text messages have been mysteriously altered between sender and recipient in at least 20 cases, prompting a Telecom investigation.

Salvation Army church leader Steve Molen discovered the glitch last week when he sent a text to 10 people to remind them of an upcoming dinner.

It ended on a lighthearted note with “bring a date or your muma but would prefer it if you bought [sic] a youth and plenty of food should be a great night so see you there six o’clock”.

However, one recipient – his wife Faye – received a message that read “bring a date or your muma but would prefer it if you bought me she setting a bad example for me”.

Mr Molen, of Newtown, contacted Telecom’s call centre and was told he wasn’t the first to experience the problem. “[The call centre worker] said it was a software fault that adds lines to the last part of people’s texts … and there had even been swear words added on to some messages.

I had my own text problems this week. Had played a round of phone tag with a new client and left a voice mail message for them at around 2 pm.

At around half past midnight my Blackberry beeped. I was in bed but still awake, so leaned over to check it. It was the client asking if it was too late for them to call me now. My initial thoughts were unprintable, and I resisted replying at the time.

I then talked to the client this morning and gently inquired what time did they send a text to me yesterday. As I suspected it was not at half past midnight – it was at 5.30 pm, and it took seven hours to reach me. The client was somewhat mortified (it wasn’t their fault) and was extremely grateful I didn’t phone back at the time I received it 🙂

It would be really useful if text messages were like e-mails, and had both a time sent and time received stamp.