Errors 131016 and 133004 mean a WhatsApp Business Platform service is temporarily unavailable. The cause is on Meta's side. Check Meta's platform status page, wait a few minutes and retry. Nothing in your template, number or account needs to change.
Symptom
Sends fail across many recipients and message types at the same time, with 131016 or 133004, and then succeed again without any change on your side.
Why it happens
- Meta's WhatsApp servers were overloaded, in maintenance or having an incident. The error is returned instead of a delivery.
- Because it affects the service, it hits everyone sending in the same window, not one recipient.
Fix
- Check Meta's WhatsApp Business Platform status page for an incident.
- Wait a few minutes and retry a single message from the inbox. If it goes, the incident is over.
- For a broadcast that failed during the incident, use Retry failed once a single test message succeeds.
- Do not resend in bulk repeatedly while the service is down: the retries fail and add load.
- If the status page is green and the error continues for more than an hour, contact us with the time and the number. Open Support in the app and send the exact error text, the time and the number it happened on; the thread keeps the history.
In VGraple CRM
VGraple CRM records the code on each failed message. Our own monitoring of send failures shows when many start at the same time, which is how an incident on Meta's side looks, so we can tell you whether it is theirs.
Related errors
All codes are listed in the WhatsApp error codes reference.
Frequently asked questions
Will messages that failed during an outage be sent later automatically?
Messages sent through broadcasts can be resent with Retry failed. A single inbox message that failed is shown as failed and can be sent again.
Does an outage affect my quality rating?
No. A failure caused by Meta's service is not counted against your number's quality.
How do I know it is Meta's outage and not mine?
If many unrelated messages fail at the same moment, and the same sends work shortly after without any change, it is the service. Meta's status page lists incidents.