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iMessage purgatory

adampash.com

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Re: iMessage purgatory

#71

Post by axanoeychron »

MBCook wrote: post #33
gdeglin wrote: post #26

Mashable wrote about this problem months ago: http://mashable.com/2013/09/16/imessage-problem/ A lot of my friends have complained about this problem as well. I'm surprised Apple hasn't moved faster to come up with a solution. Seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

They're not Apple customers anymore. It's not a problem (in that it's not effecting their customers, it IS their fault). The best way to get this fixed would probably be for iPhone users who lose the ability to message their friend to complain to Apple, not the former customer. Sad though. Apple is so good at customer service in many contexts. But sometimes they seem to decide on one of these seemingly purposeful bli…

Scary rationality.

An ex-customer who is being irreconcilably inconvenienced by your product through no fault of their own may not produce any additional revenue for you but seems pretty unnecessarily disrespectful to treat them that way.

It would be like a restaurant refusing to increase food standards because you stopped being a regular.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#72

Post by axanoeychron »

Reich wrote: post #62
jc4p wrote: post #30

I went through this last month when I switched to the Nexus 5, had no clue I wasn't getting messages until someone with an iPhone tweeted at me asking why I as ignoring them. However, all it took from me was a call to Apple's customer service, I told them I had just switched off my iPhone and no longer got texts from people with iMessage and they immediately sent me to a tech that fixed the problem for me. Have you b…

This is the proper response. I feel like the linked post is just a reason to bash Apple. As someone who used to work in their tech support (and has no real feeling about the company good or bad), EVERY time someone calls with this issue, it is fixed with the click of a button that deauthorizes their iMessage token. I know a lot of people are saying that this shouldn't even have to be a step when you switch phones, bu…

> Besides, you've already switched phones.

This does not follow.

If I change water providers, the previous water provider does have the right to stop me from receiving more water.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#73

Post by oalders »

__david__ wrote: post #57
oalders wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister has an iPhone, but no data plan. So, if she's out and I want to text her from my iPhone, she needs to make sure she doesn't have iMessages running on her computer at home. If it's on, I text her a bunch of times and I just get the blue bubbles. Then I get a bunch of SMS messages from her saying "where are you? why aren't you texting me back" and hilarity ensues. I guess I could just call her.

She could disassociate the phone number from her computer's iMessage account (Preferences -> Accounts). Then messages to her number would always go to her phone, and messages to the email account would go to the computer.

Thanks -- that's a good idea. I'll have to point that out to her.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#74

Post by Reich »

jc4p wrote: post #67
Reich wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the proper response. I feel like the linked post is just a reason to bash Apple. As someone who used to work in their tech support (and has no real feeling about the company good or bad), EVERY time someone calls with this issue, it is fixed with the click of a button that deauthorizes their iMessage token. I know a lot of people are saying that this shouldn't even have to be a step when you switch phones, bu…

I wouldn't be so quick to say it's just an excuse to bash Apple. According to the writer's tweets Apple doesn't even see his phone number registered in the iMessage registry, so there could be something even worse going on here. Source: https://twitter.com/adampash/status/466316191230087168

Ah, thank you for the link. I guess I was the one that was quick to judge.

It also just sounds like there was a bad experience with a particular tech support rep, who may be new. In my experience, these issues are ALWAYS exceptions to the $20 fee. If the 'standard' workarounds don't fix it, they will escalate you to a supervisor and put in a ticket with engineering who will resolve the issue within 48 hours.

Maybe OP will see this and give their tech support another shot. If not, the token expires in about 28 days.

*This information is less than a year old, but rules may have changed.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#75

Post by joshstrange »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #21
joshstrange wrote: post #15

There was a story posted the HN that was very similar to this semi-recently, in fact I though it was a repost until I saw this was published today. I can't seem to find the previous post, does anyone else remember that/have a link? Thanks!

From 100 days ago, 398 points: iOS holding my phone number hostage = the worst bug I’ve ever experienced (blog.benjaminste.in) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166955

Apparently I need to re-evaluate my usage of the term "semi-recently", thank you very much for the link! I bow to your superior searching skills. I used the HN search site [0] if you don't mind me asking what did you use to find or did you just have it bookmarked?

[0] http://hn.algolia.com

Re: iMessage purgatory

#76

Post by mikestew »

MBCook wrote: post #33
gdeglin wrote: post #26

Mashable wrote about this problem months ago: http://mashable.com/2013/09/16/imessage-problem/ A lot of my friends have complained about this problem as well. I'm surprised Apple hasn't moved faster to come up with a solution. Seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

They're not Apple customers anymore. It's not a problem (in that it's not effecting their customers, it IS their fault). The best way to get this fixed would probably be for iPhone users who lose the ability to message their friend to complain to Apple, not the former customer. Sad though. Apple is so good at customer service in many contexts. But sometimes they seem to decide on one of these seemingly purposeful bli…

> They're not Apple customers anymore.

That a fact? There are still 3 Macbooks, an iMac, my wife's iPhone, two iPads, and an Apple TV in the house that didn't just up and disappear when I switched to an Android phone.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#77

Post by thedrbrian »

oalders wrote: post #18
saurik wrote: post #9

What is interesting to me always is that my experience trying to send iMessages to people is usually the opposite: if someone's phone runs out of batteries or they start a phone call (on CDMA, which can't do voice and data simultaneously) I nearly instantly am forced to send them text messages. I also have found the "Delivered" notices very reliable: AFAIK they require a device to actually receive the message. Note h…

My sister has an iPhone, but no data plan. So, if she's out and I want to text her from my iPhone, she needs to make sure she doesn't have iMessages running on her computer at home. If it's on, I text her a bunch of times and I just get the blue bubbles. Then I get a bunch of SMS messages from her saying "where are you? why aren't you texting me back" and hilarity ensues. I guess I could just call her.

Or when the first message fails to go green just turn off data?

Re: iMessage purgatory

#78

Post by btgeekboy »

shurcooL wrote: post #49

I find it interesting how so many people still find it acceptable in 2014 to be using a "phone number" as their id. It's a number you can't even pick yourself: you _pay_ to get a randomly assigned digits, at best with the ability to reroll (also not always free). To me, it feels like someone using an `@aol.com` email in 2014. Or a rotary phone.

The phone number is a backwards compatibility feature. We have modern ways of locating a user (see SIP, Email), but those won't be compatible with POTS.

The use case here, Apple's iMessage, in fact allows users to use alternate methods of user lookup, including multiple email addresses.

If you don't find it acceptable, what do you propose as an alternative?

Re: iMessage purgatory

#79

Post by w1ntermute »

gonehome wrote: post #19

Even more frustrating, reading this just reminds me how much better the google voice solution to this problem is and it predated iMessage by several years. Google has just let it atrophy - then they introduced hangouts late (relative to other chat apps in the market) and still have not integrated the google voice features or pushed them with android. Does anyone who works at/worked at Google know why this happened? W…

Word on the street is that they're going to kill Google Voice soon and integrate its functionality into Hangouts. They've taken the first step by integrating regular SMS into Hangouts, so it can't be hard now. I hope it happens soon, but until then there are client-side hacks (such as XVoice+) that you can use to achieve the same functionality.

Re: iMessage purgatory

#80

Post by mikestew »

mrcwinn wrote: post #28

For what it's worth, I switched to Android and did not have to pay Apple $20 to disable my iMessages, despite not having an active support contract. I did, however, have to do a quick Google search, log in to my iTunes account through the web, and de-register my Apple devices. The problem was solved relatively quickly and for free. This should be simpler, but I'm not sure how much easier Apple can make it. They can't…

> This should be simpler, but I'm not sure how much easier Apple can make it.

You have to keep in mind that your steps don't work for everyone. There is no definitive set of steps that consistently work. I say this is as someone who has gone back and forth between iOS and Android a couple of times. What worked last time doesn't necessarily work the next time.

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