If you’ve registered to be notified by text message when there are COVID vaccine appointments available and have heard nothing but a combination of silence and chatter from your friends about how quickly they were able to book their own times, this may be why.
The region is asking Telus customers who preregistered for a vaccine appointment with the Region to reregister if they opted to receive communications via text messages and have not yet received a notice.
This includes people who use other phone service providers, such as Koodo, that operate through the Telus infrastructure.
The region’s Vaccine Distribution Task Force says it confirmed Friday that although text messages about booking appointments had been sent, Telus had been blocking them from reaching people.
This was “due to the perceived volume of texts being sent,” according to a release from the task force.
“Once notified of the problem, the block was immediately removed by Telus,” the release continues.“The Region of Waterloo is not able to determine which Telus users did not receive their notification as the booking system indicated all messages were successfully sent,” says the release.
“Any Telus users who preregistered for the vaccine and haven’t received notification to book an appointment are asked to preregister again.”