disable message "Your carrier may charge for SMS messages used to activate iMessage"

sickanpickan wrote:

The conundrum here is that I've never ever enabled Facetime to begin with, never logged in to it and have it totally disabled on my phone. So since I'm already "logged out" (cause I've never been logged in) and cannot use the solution Lawrence Finch suggests, I was wondering if anyone might know what to do here.

When you set up a phone it prompts for your iCloud ID and password. If you enter it the setup automatically logs you in to iCloud, iTunes & App Stores, iMessage, email, Game Center, and Facetime. So unless you never logged in to iCloud (which you need to do to enable Find my iPhone) you are logged in to Facetime. To check go to Settings/Facetime and turn it on. If you are logged in your iCloud ID will appear at the top of the display. If you are logged in tap on your ID and log out. You can be logged in even if it is turned off, and the only way to find out is to turn it on.

TThe solution has been posted several times. Go to Setting/messages. Turn it on if it is off. Tap on send & receive. Tap on your Apple ID and log out.

it will need to send a message to the apple server. Let it. That should be the last message.

Then follow the instructions I posted above. Which I will repeat here so you don't have to scroll back:

GO to settings/FaceTime. If it is off turn it on. Tap your Apple ID aand tap Sign Out. Do the same for messages if your Apple ID is visible. Deregistering removes your account from Apple's servers, but your phone does not know that you have done that. The deregister procedure is so users who no longer have an iPhone will receive messages from iPhone users as SMS.

Try the following method, I found it myself:

1. Go to Settings - iCloud.

2. Click on your's account first and last name.

You will see "Contact information", "Password & Security", "Devices", "Payment".

3. Click on "Contact information".

4. Add your phone number. Verify it. Its status will change to "Verified".

That's all. Now you will not get these nasty iMessage dialogs.

TThey may be disabled, but have you signed out also?

Ok, so I started getting these SMS carrier charge nags for. iMessage after a clean restore of my iPhone 7Plus to iOS 10.3.2.

This even though I always turn iMessage off and this time also turned FaceTime off immediately after setting up as a new phone.

I followed Lawrence's advice - go into FaceTime and message settings, turn FaceTime / iMessage on, click send and receive / account and sign out - which turns FaceTime and iMessage off.

Now I am still getting this stupid nag saying I'll be charged to activate iMessage. Worse I also now get similar nag messages about FaceTime.

Worse, I now have a permanent exclamation mark on my messages icon and get a message in every message conversation view saying iMessage is signed out and I need to go to settings.

I can chose "ignore" but the message comes back sooner or later.

iOS is broken (albeit still less annoying than android)

So what do suggest Lawrence ? CHALLENGE!!

GO to settings/FaceTime. If it is off turn it on. Tap your Apple ID aand tap Sign Out. Do the same for messages. Deregistering removes your account from Apple's servers, but your phone does not know that you have done that. The deregister procedure is so users who no longer have an iPhone will receive messages from iPhone users as SMS.

Did you try a hard reset?

did you try factory reset ?

We would have no way of knowing what Apple is doing about it. I suspect it is a local problem with your phone, and not a problem that Apple can fix, as I haven't seen any other reports of it. You should be able to stop it by going to Settings/Messages and Settings/Facetime and signing out.

Thank you Lawrence for that information. The thing is that I *want* to use iMessage, not deactivate it.

I am fairly sure the problem comes from the virtual mobile operator, as my wife has a "standard" (officially Apple approved) operator and she never has this popup.

I am having the same issue too (iPhone 6, iOS 9.2).

I have both iMessage and FaceTime turned off but keep getting the message which says "iMessage - Your carrier may charge for SMS messages used to activate iMessage." which is very annoying. I am an experienced iPhone user and have checked all the settings but the message just won't go away.

The message would pop up every day or every other day and I have the same feeling as Tingeltangelmike of being spammed by my own iPhone. I believe the message started appearing since I upgraded to iOS 9 but both iOS 9.1 and iOS 9.2 didn't resolve the issue.

And NO, I do not want to use Facetime / iMessage. I only want to be contacted via my mobile number, not my email address.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I believe this is a issue on 4s. I am also experiencing this problem on my 4s but not 6. This is not just irritating, but my carrier will charge us a global sms if i had accidentally pressed the OK button. Been charged a few times for this. Is apple support looking at this issue?

I have this problem too on both mine and my wife iPhone 6, iOS 9.2.1.

It's really annoying and once I pressed OK by mistake, and it enabled FT/IM by using 2 SMS for a total of 3€ (Italy)!

It's not the 3€ loss, but the non perfect functionality of iMessage, where once enabled becomes very difficult to use normal text messages when needed.

I don't want IM/FT enabled at this time and don't want to get those pop ups every day!