iMessage trying to send when recipient is not online?

[meowr]

I'm having a strange iMessage problem right now.
My iPhone is trying to send messages to my wife's iPhone via iMessage (blue bubble), even though she is definitely NOT online. Her iPhone has wifi, cellular data and 3G are currently turned off.

My iPhone and iPad both say that the blue messages are "delivered", but they obviously are not being recieved.

Anybody else have this problem?

2 hours ago, the bubble was green as it should be.
and I called my wife up, to make sure that her phone's data were all turned off.

I wonder if there's a problem with the apple server telling my iphone that my wife's iphone is online when it actually isn't?

 

[Puonti]

My iPhone is trying to send messages to my wife's iPhone via iMessage (blue bubble), even though she is definitely NOT online. Her iPhone has wifi, cellular data and 3G are currently turned off.

My understanding is that your iPhone doesn't automatically know wether your wife's phone has data access or not. If you've ever sent or received an iMessage to / from her, your iPhone will simply remember that your wife is iMessage capable and will always try to use that first if you select a phone number or e-mail address that your wife has set as "Receive At".

What should happen is that once you send the iMessage, Apple's servers will try to deliver it for a few minutes (?) and if they can't reach the recipient, they'll inform your iPhone and it sends the message as SMS instead. This should be automatic and transparent to your and your wife, save for the delay in the message going through.

 

[meowr]

for more info:

Last night, I was able to send imessages (blue) to my wife without a problem. (we were both at home and had wifi on)
This morning, I was at the mall (I had wifi), and my wife was at her office (that has no wifi, and she doesn't have cellular data turned on), and my iphone messages to her were sending green (so far so good).

this afternoon, out of nowhere, the bubble turned to blue. But I'm online, and my wife isn't. The message sends out as blue, and of course my wife doesn't recieve it. A hour later, I call her, and confirm that she isn't online in any way.

My iphone didn't resend it via sms (though in the end, I did it manually).

I'm guessing it's something to do with Apple servers, since I'm assuming that my iphone pings their servers to see what contacts are online and available for iMessage?
If I turn my data off, my phone turns the send button to green....
I've done a hard reset on my phone, and I'm still having the same problem.