Methods of Texting - RCS

[GTW]

Why do some of my contacts default to RCS text messages, while others default to SMS?  And how do I change this for each contact?  Thanks.

GTW

[WelshTerrier]

Good Day & Welcome to the Bell Community Forum.

@Lb11 @Haycam936 Thank you for posting your question.

I did some further investigation & follow up on the Samsung support website & the problem you are experiencing is a well know device issue.

Please have a look at the following web links. There are a couple of suggested fixes mentioned in links 3 & 4 below.

1. Samsung S25 Ultra: RCS Messages, Unable to Receive Group Texts - Samsung Community
2. RCS not working on new S25 - Samsung Community
3. How to turn off RCS chats
4. Turn on RCS chats in Google Messages - Google Messages

Have you contacted Samsung Galay S25 Ultra tech support & reported the issue that you are experiencing?

 FYI Only. There has been a similar issue reported with the Samsung S24 Ultra. Please Go to the helpful replies with the Green ✅.

Take care.

[Shubhlaskar]

Hey. Tried doing this step. When opened again, it did prompt for the option to add the number. But, it was to no avail. 
Same thing. Maybe waiting is the answer for the time being!

[RCS Chat not available]

PLEASE HELP!

I switched from Rogers to Bell 15 days ago. They gave me a temporary phone number and ported my existing one. Since then I haven't been able to get RCS chat. I have called bell 3 times and have spoken to 3 different people. None of them were able to help and gave me different information. 

I have a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra phone, the RCS chat function is available and I have used it before, however my phone now goes between telling me that the feature is not available for my device or is stuck "verifying" the number. So far I have spent 6 hours trying to trouble shoot. I have read every forum and have called Samsung as well, where they logged into my phone and tried to help but couldn't. 

Note that I have cleared the cache, cleared the data, forced stopped the apps etc. Nothing has worked! 

Is this a problem on the back end with Bell? Is it a Google problem? I don't know what to do! 

Appreciate your help!

Luben

[dks]

Thank you for your question. I invite you to look at the helpful replies with a green check mark as a starting place. 

[Hogfather · Accepted solution]

So, I have been struggling with this for a couple of days and tried a lot of other steps before finding this page:

Sign in to your Google account and make sure your phone isn't set to auto verify. Within 1 minute of turning auto-verification off, turning RCS off and on in Google Messages on my phone and I was connected.

[wmorran]

I have been having the same issue ever since an update and a  trip to Cuba where bell messed with my account to get the Caribbean package to work. Tried turning off all pending and phone verifications in google cleared cache and storage in messages and carrier services after and before force quitting the applications and disabled the RCS toggle in messages and still wont enable. Waited 10 days to even retry setting it as the work around Does anyone have any suggestions before I call Bell and get bounced to google support who will then refer me back to bell as no one takes ownership of the issue,

[Shells]

Honestly I hate this company with a passion. The reps they don't have a clue what there talking about! My RCS hasn't worked for a week now. They keep insisting that I change from an esim to a Physical Sim. And still doesn't work.. when my contract expires I will be moving over to Telus. My husband has Telus and no problems with his RCS and he has an esim.. nothing but problems with this company!! 👎🤬🙄

[WelshTerrier]

Good Day & Welcome to the Bell Community Forum.

Thank you for posting your comments & concerns. Have you tried to do any troubleshooting beside calling Bell Mobility Customer Service?

Which mobile device are you using? Make & model? Have you checked out the Helpful replies marked with Green checkmarks ✅ on this thread.

I did some further investigation & follow up on the Samsung support website & the problem you are experiencing is a well know device issue.

Please have a look at the following web links. There are a couple of suggested fixes mentioned in links 3 & 4 below.

1. Samsung S25 Ultra: RCS Messages, Unable to Receive Group Texts - Samsung Community
2. RCS not working on new S25 - Samsung Community
3. How to turn off RCS chats
4. Turn on RCS chats in Google Messages - Google Messages
5. Can't turn on RCS chats - Google Messages

Have you contacted Samsung Galay S25 Ultra tech support & reported the issue that you are experiencing?

 FYI Only. There has been a similar issue reported with the Samsung S24 Ultra. Please Go to the helpful replies

Take care.

[dks]

Thanks for your concern. I understand your frustration. You don't say what type of phone you have or the operating system, but as @WelshTerrier has pointed out there are specific phones which don't play well together when using RCS. I can echo that. A family member with a phone with another operating system sends messages to me using RCS that never set off the message tone on my phone. While we can easily blame the carrier, experience suggests there may be underlying reasons for problems with RCS. And yes, I share your frustration.