Troubleshooting

I got a text with a numbered list instead of a call

That is working as intended. Once you connect a phone for text messages or link Telegram, the morning becomes a text rather than a call — TelePost asks which story before it rings, and no reply means no call that day.

Reply with a number to see what that story is about, or TALK to be called straight away about anything. MORE adds stories, SWAP gets a new list. The menu is sent once a day, not repeated, and expires after twelve hours — after that, send MENU for a fresh one.

Nothing happened at all, and I was told nothing

There are a few reasons, and most of them are quiet on purpose.

• Nothing worth calling about. If your feeds turned up nothing in your field, TelePost does not ring and does not message. A daily “nothing today” would train you to ignore the message that does matter.
• You are out of calls for the week. On a scheduled morning this is silent; press a call button and you will be told exactly, including when it resets. Your week resets Monday, in your own timezone.
• It was outside your calling hours at the appointed minute. Note the hours close at the time you set — 22:00 means the phone is already quiet at 22:00.
• Your timezone is wrong. An unusable timezone falls back to America/Chicago without telling you, so the call lands hours off. Check it under Profile → How TelePost reaches you.
• A typo in your Days box. That field is free text and is not checked, so mondya,tue silently removes Monday.

If none of those fit, tell us — we can see the record of what the scheduler decided that morning, and you cannot.

“TelePost could not make your morning call”

That email lists exactly what is missing. The five possible reasons:

The first three are yours to fix, under Profile. Both a name and a job title are needed — one is not enough. The last two are ours; if you see either, tell us.

“TelePost couldn’t reach you”

It rang, nobody answered, and it has stopped trying. The email names which rule stopped it: retries switched off, the attempt limit reached, the retry window closed, or the next attempt would have fallen outside your calling hours.

Change any of those under Profile → How TelePost reaches you, in If you do not pick up. By default it tries roughly every twenty minutes until 12:00, four attempts including the first. Retries are never exactly on the interval — a call arriving at the same minute every time is how a number learns to be ignored.

One thing that is not retried: a call you answered and ended. “Not now” is treated as an answer.

The call went to voicemail

The dashboard will say Voicemail or call screening took it. TelePost cannot tell those two apart, which is why it names both.

Press Call again — the questions are already written, so it costs nothing and does not use another call. Then save the contact card, which is what stops it happening every morning.

“Nothing came of that call”

There was not enough in the transcript to write from. The floor is 120 words from you — enough to prove you picked up is not the same as enough to write an article from.

Press Call again and talk for longer.

“Your call ended early”

The line dropped before the end. Nothing is lost — everything you said up to that point was captured and is being written up, and you do not need to repeat it. If it keeps happening, tell us; it is not supposed to.

“TelePost could not complete your call”

A fault on our side stopped the call. Nothing you did caused it and nothing was lost. TelePost deliberately will not ring you back in a substitute voice — a stranger’s voice arriving unannounced is not a degraded TelePost, it is a worse one.

Your next call is the one already scheduled. We are told automatically when this happens.

Every call button is greyed out

Something in the list above is missing. Press Interview me now and the modal shows them under Not quite ready:.

“Your questions are ready, but TelePost did not call”

Writing questions takes about a minute, and your calling hours closed inside it. The questions are saved, not wasted. Press Call me anyway to override your own hours just this once.

“That is a lot of interview requests in an hour”

There is a ceiling of twelve call requests an hour per account, shared between the story calls, the live call and the Comment Builder. Wait a few minutes. Your scheduled morning call is never rate limited.

Typing in the search box does nothing

Fewer than three characters is ignored, with no message. Type a longer query.

I published, but it did not reach my own site

The article is live on TelePost either way — a failed push never un-publishes anything. The publish notification names the reason. The common ones, and what each means:

• “GitHub rejected the token” — it has been revoked or has expired. Create a new one and paste it in.
• “does not have permission to write” — the token needs Contents: Read and write on that repository.
• “GitHub cannot see…” — either the owner/name is wrong, or a fine-grained token was not granted that repository.
• “The branch moved while TelePost was writing” — harmless. Press publish again.
• “refused the commit” — most often a branch name that does not exist on that repository.

Fix it under Connections, then press publish again. It retries.

My site connection stopped working and I was not told

You should have been: TelePost warns at ten days, five days and one day before a GitHub token expires, and again once it has.

The exception worth knowing: a classic token, or one set never to expire, sends no expiry date at all — so there is nothing to warn about and no warning is ever sent.

A destination says it is not connected when I filled it in

Connecting is all-or-nothing on the required fields: a half-connected destination that fails when you press send is worse than one that says plainly it is not connected. The message names what is still missing, for example “Still needed: Access token, Person URN.”

Nothing posted to LinkedIn when I published

That is correct behaviour. TelePost never posts to a social account for you. Publishing puts the piece on your own blog and hands you a share sheet; posting is always you pressing a button.

My card failed — have my calls stopped?

No. A bounced renewal changes nothing you can see: you keep your full allowance while Stripe retries, because a card that fails on Tuesday usually works on Thursday and cutting you off for a bank’s fraud heuristic would be wrong.

But TelePost does not email you about it, so fix the card at Billing → Change plan, card, or cancel before Stripe gives up. When it does, you drop to the free allowance of 0 calls a week — quietly, on the scheduled mornings.

I am suddenly only getting one call a week

That is the free allowance, which is what a cancelled or fully lapsed subscription falls back to — less, rather than nothing. Check Billing.

I cancelled during the trial and lost access immediately

Removing your card during the 14-day trial cancels the subscription outright, by design — no card means no plan. Cancelling through the Stripe portal instead leaves you on the free allowance.

I am not getting any email from TelePost

Check your notifications first — every message is written there before it is emailed, so nothing is ever only an email.

Email only goes to active users on an account, so a suspended member gets nothing. If the notifications page has messages you never received by email, tell us — that is ours to fix.

I texted STOP and now the phone just rings

STOP unlinks your phone, which is honoured exactly and without a reply. The side effect is that the morning goes back to dialling you directly rather than texting a menu first, because there is no longer a channel to ask on. Re-link your phone under Profile → How TelePost reaches you to get the menu back.

A feature the pricing page promises is not on my account

Some features are switched on per account. If you are paying for a plan and cannot find something listed on the pricing page, tell us and we will turn it on — that is not something you can do yourself.

Something said it “came back malformed” or “ran out of room”

That is a fault on our side rather than anything about what you said. Trying again often works, because it is not deterministic. If it happens twice on the same material, send us the article or the call and we will look.