Bakersfield.com: Kern County news, events, classifieds, shopping, & search

What are Bakersfield.com text message (SMS) alerts?

Text Messaging – sometimes called SMS (short messaging service) – is a way of communicating brief messages to and from your cell phone. Most phones can send and receive texts, though you might need to call your phone service carrier to enable the feature on your phone plan.

What kind of alerts do you offer?

Bakersfield.com provides a variety of text message alerts such as Breaking News, Freebies & Offers, Weekend Events, Condors Score Alerts and Classifieds. You can even track a specific keyword in Classifieds to be notified anytime an ad with that word in it is posted.

Which cell phone carriers support Bakersfield.com alerts?

Nearly any carrier that your cell phone operates on should work. Specifically, our alerts work on:
Alltel
AT&T (formerly Cingular)
Boost
Helio
Sprint
Nextel
T-Mobile
Verizon
Virgin
Most others work as well - just try it!

How do I sign up for mobile text message alerts?

You can sign up for alerts in two ways. If you are at a computer, visit www.bakersfield.com/mobile to sign up for as many alerts as you like.

You can also subscribe by texting in a keyword from your phone to 47645:

Text “News” to 47645 for Breaking News Alerts
Text “Freebie” to 47645 to win free stuff and grab great deals
Text “Events” to 47645 for Weekend Events
Text “Jobs” to 47645 to receive reminders for upcoming job fairs
Text "TBCdeals" to 47645 for our advertising deal of the day
Text “Condors” to 47645 for Condors Score Alerts from every game
For Classifieds alerts, please set up your alerts online at www.bakersfield.com/mobile to select the categories you are interested in and set any keywords for items you’re looking for.

How much does it cost?

Bakersfield.com does not charge any fees to use our SMS service. However, your mobile provider's standard rates for sending and receiving text messages still apply.

Depending on the text messaging plan you have with your carrier, you may be charged by your carrier for each message sent from and received by your mobile phone. Carriers’ text messaging charges vary, and your standard text messaging rates may apply to all messages sent and received, depending on your phone plan. Contact your carrier to determine what kind of plan you have.

How often can I sign up for alerts?

You can use our text message alert services as often as you like, and you may subscribe to as many alerts as you wish.

How often will I receive alerts?

Depending on which alert you sign up for, you might receive only occasional text messages, or several each day. For example, breaking news alerts are sent out whenever big news happens. On some days, we do not send any, and on others, there may be several newsworthy alerts that we will send to our Breaking News Alerts subscribers.

Classifieds alerts are sent only when there is an ad placed in the categories you select and/or if there is an ad that contains the keyword(s) you choose.

Can I set my alerts to arrive at a specific time of day?

Yes. When you set your mobile preferences at www.bakersfield.com/mobile, you can set the time of day you would like to receive your alerts. You can also opt to receive them as soon as they’re sent out. The only exception is Breaking News Alerts, which are sent out immediately as we learn of breaking news.

How do I unsubscribe from Bakersfield.com text message alerts?

It’s easy. You can simply reply “Stop” to the most recent alert received, However, this will unsubscribe you from ALL Bakersfield.com alerts.

If you would like to unsubscribe from only one alert, text "stop last" to be unsubscribed ONLY from the list you most recently received an alert from. You can also use stop and the signup keyword to unsubscribe from a particular list. For example, texting "stop events" would unsubscribe you only from the events list.

Alternatively, visit www.bakersfield.com/mobile and log in with your phone number to easily manage and modify all your alerts.

I sent in a text message to 47645 and I never received anything back. What happened?

Sometimes text messages may fail to be received or may be delayed for large amounts of time for various reasons over which we have no control. Carrier loads and network usage can affect text message delivery, and occasionally, messages may be delayed for hours or sometimes never received. While this is far from the norm, there are occasions when text messages have simply been lost in transition.

If you have repeatedly failed to receive a text message, please verify that you have text messaging enabled on your cell phone plan with your carrier. If you have never sent or received a text message before, there is a good chance that SMS was never enabled on your phone. Please call your carrier and ask to have text messaging enabled.

If you are sure that SMS is enabled on your phone and you still haven't received anything back after 15 minutes, verify the message you are sending and try again. If you are trying to sign up by sending a keyword, check to see you are sending just the keyword, such as “News” without the quotes.

If that still fails to work, please call your carrier and explain the situation.

If you have other questions not covered here, feel free to contact us at mobile@bakersfield.com.

Thanks for using Bakersfield.com!