RCS messaging is often touted as the future of SMS messaging, finally bringing some modern features to classic text messaging. The new technology also adds a few more pitfalls, though. In rare cases, messages just disappear for days until they reach their receiver, and a few people are reporting issues when switching phones, with RCS messages no longer showing up. It looks like Indian RCS users are in a special kind of hell, though, with spammy advertisements reaching those who dare activate RCS messages on their phones. Things actually got so bad that Google had to intervene and disable RCS promotional messages in India.

As extensively covered by Android Police and later Android Authority, enabling RCS in India can quickly lead to a bad experience, despite all the features it adds to the texting experience. Upon activating the feature, users in India routinely get promotional messages from various businesses right in their chat app, with no option to unsubscribe other than manually marking every single one as spam. Since most of the businesses sending promotional messages are part of Google’s verified businesses, this approach might be futile, though.

Just a few of many examples

After widespread outrage against the increasing number of spam messages, Google has reacted with a drastic measure, as it shared with Android Authority and Gadgets 360 in a statement: “We are aware that some businesses are abusing our anti-spam policies to send promotional messages to users in India. We are disabling this feature in India while we work with the industry to improve the experience for users.” This should be a short-term solution for those who still rely on RCS in the country, but it’s safe to assume that many have probably simply turned off RCS altogether to avoid the messages.

Theoretically, business messages are a good idea. It allows companies to offer support or relay important information to customers in a much more robust manner than what SMS could do, like detailed itineraries or supporting imagery right in the RCS chat app. In fact, WhatsApp Business has perfected this model, with many businesses outside the US using the de-facto standard chat app for support queries and other customer communication. However, when spam is raging, it’s understandable that people are turning off RCS, and that’s a big problem for Google on its quest to modernize SMS messaging.