iMessage activation issue - Telkom

Spawn-1401 said:
Thanks for the attempt, sand_man.
I am still to visit a Telkom branch, hopefully, this Saturday.
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Good luck. I visited a store. They said the IT guys were not in. They are the ones who would have helped by checking the problem with my phone.
 
Please share this thread with Telkom on Twitter, I have already done this but it needs more attention. Trying to explain this issue from scratch is a nightmare, and I have both an iPhone X and iPhone 8 that used to work perfectly on MTN, but after porting to Telkom, both refuse to activate iMessage.
 
Mine randomly activated one day out of the blue sometime this week, it’s been a few months since the problem started but now it seems to have solved itself lol
 
So my wife's iPhone 8 just did the same thing (activated out the blue). However, my iPhone X is still having issues, but might have been because I kept trying to fix it. From this, I reckon that Telkom has to manually activate it on their side, and a tech probably does it every couple weeks in bulk. That is a guess, but I can't see any other reason for it.
 
JohnJuniorV3 said:
Mine randomly activated one day out of the blue sometime this week, it’s been a few months since the problem started but now it seems to have solved itself lol
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Same as mine. On Prepaid and wasn’t activating for a long time.
 
samcro said:
Same as mine. On Prepaid and wasn’t activating for a long time.
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Question, did you do anything while waiting? I notice that if activation for the mobile number fails, it defaults to your iCloud email address. Were you using that and then suddenly it activated on your number? Or was it just a case of waiting for a long time, then trying to switch it to your mobile mobile and having it suddenly "stick" (instead of fail or the endless spinning that I always seem to get).

Thanks, feedback would be much appreciated.
 
mulletman87 said:
Question, did you do anything while waiting? I notice that if activation for the mobile number fails, it defaults to your iCloud email address. Were you using that and then suddenly it activated on your number? Or was it just a case of waiting for a long time, then trying to switch it to your mobile mobile and having it suddenly "stick" (instead of fail or the endless spinning that I always seem to get).

Thanks, feedback would be much appreciated.
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It was activated with email address then the number just added itself after months.
 
mathenges said:
Good luck. I visited a store. They said the IT guys were not in. They are the ones who would have helped by checking the problem with my phone.
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I visited the Telkom and by luck the manager was an old school friend. I explained the problem to him and he changed my FreeMe Open contract to a TopUp one with the same benefits and imessage activated immediately. Clearly there is an issue on the FreeMe open contract that the out-of-contract spend does not cover this. Morover, what is leaving the Telkom staff so confused. The part I couldn’t understand either, but this does not exempt them from the lack of knowledge and effort in helping the customer getting the issue resolved instead of weeks of back and forth. Curiously, after four days later my wife’s iMessage activated automatically. I’m assuming my manager friend took it to upper management. With that said, has anyone else with the same issue find that your iMessage is suddenly working? If not and you are on the FreeMe open contract, go to the branch and have it changed to a TopUp contract. But before you do this, please beware of the small contract changes because now I am having airtime issues and I can‘t seem to buy airtime via the self-portal. Still lessor of the two evils, so I am happy.
 
Spawn-1401 said:
I visited the Telkom and by luck the manager was an old school friend. I explained the problem to him and he changed my FreeMe Open contract to a TopUp one with the same benefits and imessage activated immediately. Clearly there is an issue on the FreeMe open contract that the out-of-contract spend does not cover this. Morover, what is leaving the Telkom staff so confused. The part I couldn’t understand either, but this does not exempt them from the lack of knowledge and effort in helping the customer getting the issue resolved instead of weeks of back and forth. Curiously, after four days later my wife’s iMessage activated automatically. I’m assuming my manager friend took it to upper management. With that said, has anyone else with the same issue find that your iMessage is suddenly working? If not and you are on the FreeMe open contract, go to the branch and have it changed to a TopUp contract. But before you do this, please beware of the small contract changes because now I am having airtime issues and I can‘t seem to buy airtime via the self-portal. Still lessor of the two evils, so I am happy.
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After reading this I have insterted my telkom sim card in the iPhone and imessage has activated immediately.
 
Spawn-1401 said:
I visited the Telkom and by luck the manager was an old school friend. I explained the problem to him and he changed my FreeMe Open contract to a TopUp one with the same benefits and imessage activated immediately. Clearly there is an issue on the FreeMe open contract that the out-of-contract spend does not cover this. Morover, what is leaving the Telkom staff so confused. The part I couldn’t understand either, but this does not exempt them from the lack of knowledge and effort in helping the customer getting the issue resolved instead of weeks of back and forth. Curiously, after four days later my wife’s iMessage activated automatically. I’m assuming my manager friend took it to upper management. With that said, has anyone else with the same issue find that your iMessage is suddenly working? If not and you are on the FreeMe open contract, go to the branch and have it changed to a TopUp contract. But before you do this, please beware of the small contract changes because now I am having airtime issues and I can‘t seem to buy airtime via the self-portal. Still lessor of the two evils, so I am happy.
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Hmm this is interesting, I thought that the freeme might have been the issue, but since I just loaded it once off (i.e. I am not on contract), I wonder if I have to ask them to somehow remove any trace of it from my number. I am able to load airtime via the self-portal, so my situation is different to yours, but if the once-off loading of a freeme package means that my number is borked, I am going to be very frustrated.
 
UPDATE: I just updated to iOS 14, and changed my iMessage to use my phone number. It immediately failed as usual. I loaded R50, and although I had done this before, this time around it stuck on "activating iMessage" in settings. I left it like that for a few hours, then turned off my phone for 10min, and after going back to iMessages, it had successfully activated on my cell number. This is janky AF, and I don't quite know if the update (which is essentially like doing a fresh install via iTunes) played a role, but it is now working. It is worth mentioning that as per my previous post, I did load a freeme 3GB once off package back in July, so that might have been the cause of this nightmare. Needless to say, I recommend trying what Spawn-1401 suggested RE changing it from FreeMe to TopUp. Hope this helps someone, this issue was a bloody waste of my time lol.
 
mulletman87 said:
UPDATE: I just updated to iOS 14, and changed my iMessage to use my phone number. It immediately failed as usual. I loaded R50, and although I had done this before, this time around it stuck on "activating iMessage" in settings. I left it like that for a few hours, then turned off my phone for 10min, and after going back to iMessages, it had successfully activated on my cell number. This is janky AF, and I don't quite know if the update (which is essentially like doing a fresh install via iTunes) played a role, but it is now working. It is worth mentioning that as per my previous post, I did load a freeme 3GB once off package back in July, so that might have been the cause of this nightmare. Needless to say, I recommend trying what Spawn-1401 suggested RE changing it from FreeMe to TopUp. Hope this helps someone, this issue was a bloody waste of my time lol.
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I am going through the same issue, fails on activation. Will try what you did as I have no idea how to change it to top up
 
mulletman87 said:
Hmm this is interesting, I thought that the freeme might have been the issue, but since I just loaded it once off (i.e. I am not on contract), I wonder if I have to ask them to somehow remove any trace of it from my number. I am able to load airtime via the self-portal, so my situation is different to yours, but if the once-off loading of a freeme package means that my number is borked, I am going to be very frustrated.
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If you ported the number, then you have to wait 3 months before they can port it back.
 
johnjm said:
I am going through the same issue, fails on activation. Will try what you did as I have no idea how to change it to top up
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You have to go to the store and request the change from Telkom. I suggest you take this thread with you as proof To cut through any possible red tape. Best be safe than sorry.
 
Spawn-1401 said:
You have to go to the store and request the change from Telkom. I suggest you take this thread with you as proof To cut through any possible red tape. Best be safe than sorry.
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I suspect it’s the freeme bundles, I’ll just leave it and wait mission to go to a store
 
Guys guys guys ... it’s not the freeme stuff of your sim ... all you need to do is ... make sure when you activate your iMessage make sure your settings is using data ...
 
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