Still having duplicate messages problem

So, basically...
I go on the bus, and since I don't have a data plan (yet), I am stuck with plain text messages. So go to send a message and then iMessages starts sending... and then it stops. Because duh, you can't send an iMessage without internet.

That behaviour, by the way, is quite annoying. Why wouldn't it default to sending as text message if you don't have internet?!

But anyways, so I long-press and send as text message. Dumb that I have to do that. Even if I do manually send it however, it waits for 5 minutes before telling me 'sending the message failed...' No duh, if you tried to send as an iMessage.

Well, apparently even if I send the message it'll attempt to send it as an iMessage anyways. So I suspect that's why, that when I send a message and the 5 minutes are up and I get to school and connect to wifi, suddenly it'll send it... again.

And this isn't just on my end. I receive my friend's messages (who has an iPhone 6s) twice on occasion.

So you'd say, then if you don't have a persistent internet connection, why don't you just turn off iMessages? And then lose the ability to text from my macbook? No thanks.

Is there no way to fix this?

 

No, iMessage is required to use message forwarding.
And no, that's not an ideal solution :/ Thanks anyways, though.

I think I need to raise this seemingly common sense issue up with Apple. Not that they'll fix it. I doubt anyone in Cupertino has ever turned off their unlimited data plans anyways.