Webtext stripping line feeds in sent messages

[PGargan]

Hi,

Messages sent using Webtext are having line feeds removed with no warning. Sending a message such as:

This is line 1.

Here is line 2.

... results in a text that reads:

This is line 1.Here is line 2.

Watching the form submission in the browser shows a payload such as:

message=This+is+line+1%0D%0A%0D%0AHere+is+line+2

So it's definitely sending the URL-encoded line feed sequence, albeit with a Windows representation (0D 0A)

I've no idea how long it's been happening for. Tested against iPhone (latest iOS) and a generic Nokia-brand dumb phone

Thanks.

[Three_Stacey]

@PGargan I have spoken to the webtext team and they have confirmed that they are currently looking at a solution for the character issues that you have highlighted,. At the moment I don't have a definitive timeline in place as to when this will go live. I will be keeping a close on this and as soon as I have confirmation I'll post it here for you.

[PGargan]

Hi @Three_Stacey ,

Just checking in on this ... Webtext still can't send newlines, or commas, or quotation marks. They're just silently discarded, meaning the recipient just receives a wall of text without paragraph breaks or punctuation.

[Three_Stacey]

Hi @PGargan, yes the team are still working on the special characters. I'm keeping a close eye on this and as soon as I have an update I'll post it here  for you. 

[PGargan]

Hi @Three_Stacey,

It's now been over 2 months since this was reported, and 2 weeks since your post above.

With respect, I'm struggling to understand how it can take 2 months to revert a code change. It was working fine before February 2024. Indeed, it was working fine for years before that, all the way back to the O2 era. One presumes the webtext portals of all the other CK Hutchison subsidiaries across Europe are working fine too. So why is it taking the Three Ireland team so long to fix this?

I appreciate situations like these must be frustrating for you as a front-line rep who has no power to actually fix anything. And I've no doubt the community here appreciates how promptly you reply to posts. But I beg you: please don't just respond with another generic "we're working on it" placeholder. Those make it sound like Three either doesn't know how to fix this, or simply can't be bothered to. Neither is a good look.

Thanks,

Paul.

[PGargan]

Hi @Three_Stacey 

Is there any progress at all here? Webtext is still broken. Line feeds and commas are still being silently dropped. We've had no updates, and worse, no warnings added to the Webtext portal advising users not to use it.

Can you please share Three's plan, with timelines, for getting this fixed?

Thanks,

Paul.

[Three_Stacey]

Hi there @PGargan I would love to be able to share a confirmed timeline with you on this but at the moment we are currently  waiting on updates from our webtext partner so that a timeline can be confirmed.  I'll keep pushing for these updates to get a timeline or a resolution for you. 

[PGargan]

Hi,

Any updates you can share? From what I can see:

• Newlines and double quotation marks are still getting dropped.
• Commas now work, whereas they didn't originally. So I guess that's progress 😀
• Accented characters are still getting replaced with non-accented versions.
• There's still no banner on the webtext portal warning users of these bugs.

This has been ongoing for 4 months. At this stage, I'd almost prefer if Three came out and simply said "This isn't a priority for us, so we're not going to fix it." At least then subscribers would know where they stand.

[Three_Stacey]

@PGargan  I've passed along your suggestion to the webtexts team. 

[Three_Stacey]

 @PGargan I am grateful for your patience while we have been investigating this and I'm happy to say that we plan to deploy an update next month that we expect to resolve the difficulties with webtexts special characters.

@Three_Niall & I will be keeping a close eye on this and as soon as we have any updates we'll let you know.

[PGargan]

Hi @Three_Stacey 

We're making progress!

• New lines now work as expected! Hurrah!
• We still have problems with quotation marks, accented characters, and some punctuation.
• Backslashes are being treated as C-style escape characters.

Specifically:

• "double quotation marks" are getting dropped.
• [square brackets] are getting dropped.
• `Backticks` are getting dropped.
• Some accented characters are dropped (café is sent as caf)
• A backslash will be dropped along with the subsequent character (\back is sent as ack)
• Other punctuation character combinations cause the message to fail completely (e.g. using the sequence \")

Thanks again for the work so far. Let's keep it going and get this fully fixed!

Paul.