iPhone 6 128 IOS 8.4 Update SMS over 160 won't send

I updated to IOS 8.4 yesterday on my iPhone 6 128. Since then if I try to send a text message greater than 160 characters I immediately get an error of "not delivered" and if I try to "try again" after clicking on the exclamation point it also says not delivered. Sometimes it will not send text messages of any size or I have to try again several times, but it never sends if over 160 characters.

I have iMessage turned on an these are to non iPhone users. It only started happening after the 8.4 upgrade as I regularly send non iMessage users texts greater than 160 characters.

I've completed a hard reset, toggled iMessage off and on and reset my network settings. I've googled and can't seem to find this issue period, let alone on 8.4. Any help would be greatly appreciated. As a workaround I've turned on my character count and I manually split them up, but as a solution that is not acceptable in the long term.

It is not signal related as it has happened consistently whether I'm at home or work (15 miles apart) At home I get 3 bars of LTE and at work I get a full 5 and have never had a single issue sending a text from this phone (or any other) in these two locations.

The service is on Verizon and I do have advanced calling turned on (if that matters).

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to do a factory reset as I don't want to lose all my texts.

Thank you!!