I've found having a conversation through the mesh impossible. Anyone have success?

Update: 3-5-2025 Afrer reading all the suggestions and trying separate private channels, DMs etc, updating to 2.6, frequency offsets and spending days coordinating with others on the NYC discord, sending messages over the mesh is still has zero reliability. Meaning something like 1 out of 200 messages actually finds the destination. And this is confirmed from everyone on the local discord as well. If you are interested in this technology for the peer to peer coms through hops I'd hold off completely until it can be impoved or shown to actually work. For now my two nodes are going in my drawer as it's just disappointing that it's so useless in the way it's been marked to work so well.

Original post: So after about 10 days of trying out Meshtastic I have a question. Has anyone successfully been able to message anyone through the mesh consistently? I'm in NYC and have only been able to message one person through the mesh after probably hundreds of attempts. This seems to be the consensus of every Meshtastic user I spoke to in NYC. No one can say they've ever been able to message someone through the mesh (meaning using hops) consistency for more than 1 or two messages.

Am I understanding the tech incorrectly? I've had good results messaging myself from my T-echo to WisBlock (direct device to device) with impressive range in a dense environment of building. I often try to DM someone who just shows up on my node DB as recently seen ("now"). And I never get a response. I've coordinated many times with NYC people on Discord who are in my node DB. We message back and forth on Meshtastic and nothing. Sometimes one message will work out of 20. And only in one direction.

Am I missing something or doing something wrong? My units are T-echo with a ANT-916-CW-HW-SMA and a WisBlock RAK4631 with a ALFA AOA-915-5ACM. I'm at 90' altitude, 20' elevation.