Sandy's Mobile Phone Number

I don't know for sure, but I get the same behavior with my work cell on the AT&T network when I get SMS delivered from email. My personal Verizon network cell phone just reports the email address of the sender. Sandy-grams to my personal cell come from the address which I would use send email to Sandy.

I don't think Values of n can do anything about it. It's either AT&T being brain-dead, or maybe a limitation of SMS. Verizon (on CDMA) doesn't really have "SMS", but some sort of mostly compatible text protocol.

I know Facebook does something like this so that it can keep track of each thread. I can see the same use in Sandy.

Say a "Lunch with Mom (10:30)" reminder is sent to your cell phone, and a few minutes later "Buy Christmas lights today" also comes in. The unique numbers allow you to reply to one, or the other, and have Sandy know which one you are referring to. So by replying to the first message at (####-001), it knows that "update tomorrow 1pm" refers to Lunch (having been moved) and not anything to do with Christmas lights. Similarly, it knows "forget" being replied back to the Christmas lights message (####-002) means you have already picked them up and not the the lunch should be forgotten.

If you are using an iPhone you might find it easier to use email. You could setup a free email account just for iwantsandy.

Alternatively how about using twitter and following S (IwantSandy) on Twitter? twitter has a fixed sms number 40404.

I have this same problem. Sandy's phone number increases by one digit with each reminder. What would be ideal would be if Sandy's phone number stayed the same - then I would have an SMS thread with all her reminders. When they get stale I can delete the thread and a new one will start with the next reminder.

Also a single phone number can be put into the address book, then my iPhone will identify Sandy by name instead of by a meaningless number.

Email reminders are not a replacement for SMS. The SMS causes my phone to chime which is an active reminder. Email, I have to check for to receive a reminder - defeats the purpose.

In my tests over 2 mobile providers (Verizon and AT&T), this has nothing to do with Iwantsandy.com, and everything to do with the provider. If you'd like this to change, you would need to change cell providers.

I saw your comments above, but it is not consistent with my experience. Other users SMS messages to me all land neatly in the same thread. ATT does not seem to alter their messages to create different IDs that land in separate threads. What is different about Sandy's SMS messages that would cause ATT to treat them differently, and if so can Sandy change them so ATT does not. I don't see how this lies with ATT alone.

I also use my AT&T cell for server notification emails. The real email sender never changes, but I get the same results: The SMS sender is a number that increases by 1 each time. Sending to my Verizon cell just reports the email sender.

so your server notifications are not actually coming from a phone number then? What is your server sending - an email? And how is that email addressed to your cell phone?

No, we don't have an SMS gateway and I don't have the "Enterprise Messaging" or whatever the AT&T package is that allows you to send messages via TAP. I'm simply sending email to <mobilenumber>@txt.att.net. Likewise, on my personal VZW cell, I have sent to <mobilenumber>@vtext.com.</mobilenumber></mobilenumber>

Yes - which I am sure is the same thing that Sandy is doing. For whatever reason ATT handles these emails in a manner that we get this ascending number. I don't expect ATT will change their practice for the few Sandy users, but Sandy can alter the way an SMS is sent and perhaps that means it does not originate as an email but as a legitimate SMS. In any case I think the issue lands back with Sandy to resolve or speak to ATT about it.

Has any progress been made with this? I'm using an iphone too and I really want the notifications coming into my text messages because I respond to text messages on an individual basis where I don't automatically respond to each received email. And with all the problems I've read here with Twitter, I'm very hesitant to commit myself to using that service as an intermediary between myself and Sandy.

Has this been fixed?