Rereading it it does sound a bit unfair in tone, but it is not wisdom in hindsight to think of a heartbeat that provides affirmative notification that notifications are working, especially in a system that's got a lot of other data acquisition that could be provided on a heartbeat.

He shouldn't blindly trust that SMS will work for for his application, using his setup, either. What if he forgets to top up the account for the device sending out SMS? That would not be the fault of the SMS system.