The only reliable fix I've seen for this is to have your friends remove and re-add your mobile number from their contacts.
iMessage purgatory
101–110 of 172 posts
Re: iMessage purgatory
#102I have read about these issues plaguing people. It is strange because whenever I have roamed overseas or have disabled data for whatever reason. People still can text me, albeit I am sure there is a delay between when they hit send and when I got the message.
Friends of mine have moved from iPhone to Android, when I send them a message it tries with iMessage - and I get the message failure exclamation mark. It then resends as a text and doesn't try iMessage again for some time. Haven't really had the black hole experience yet...
Re: iMessage purgatory
#103The easiest way to avoid this problem is to make sure you turn off iMessage on your iPhone before you switch devices then you don't have this problem in the first place. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3392014?start=15&tstart...
As someone who regularly switches between Android and iPhone, this is the answer everyone is looking for. It's as simple as turning it off before you switch to a device which is SMS-only.
Moreover, before you sell your device or give it away, make sure you turn iMessage off.
Re: iMessage purgatory
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The people with iPhones are still Apple's customers, and it's their messages that are disappearing. That's a perfectly good case for a CAL. Suppose that someone tried texting someone for medical assistance (silly, I know...), and that message was not delivered because the recipient changed their phone but kept their number, is that the fault of the person that changed their phone or is it the fault of Apple for not b…
They are, but they're not the people posting articles like this. Whenever I see someone bring this back up it's always "I went to Android and something happened...".
I think Apple would be much more likely to respond if a bunch of people posted "My friend went to Android and now my iPhone won't text him". Frame it as issues of current customers.
They've let it go this long, so I somewhat doubt they'll make it easier; they probably would have done it by now. Re-framing it might help push it though.
Re: iMessage purgatory
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't think it's good at all, it's a terrible experience. Even if someone is becoming an ex-customer you should treat them better than that in case they might come back to you later. Burning your bridge for an anti-halo effect is just a bad business decision.
Sadly it just doesn't surprise me. In some ways/places Apple pulls this kind of crap.
It's good that Apple has a way to fix this if you call support (a few years ago I don't think they did), but this should all be fixed.
Re: iMessage purgatory
#106I 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…
I would expect that the "totally wipe my phone" process would include an API call to Apple to disable iMessage for that phone so people don't have to make special calls.
Sounds like that doesn't happen.
Of course if you just throw the phone away without ever doing something to indicate it's no longer in use (to Apple, not your cell carrier) then the results are more sane. That can't happen to every one of these people though.
Re: iMessage purgatory
#107Same story here. Switched to an android decide and no one could text me for months. Months! It's almost unbelievable.
Re: iMessage purgatory
#108Earlier 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.
Or when the first message fails to go green just turn off data?
In my experience after a while the phone will say that it couldn't send the message and give you a little option to resend as SMS.
It would be nice to have that done automatically, but at least it's there sometimes.
Re: iMessage purgatory
#109Earlier 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 would expect that the "totally wipe my phone" process would include an API call to Apple to disable iMessage for that phone so people don't have to make special calls. Sounds like that doesn't happen. Of course if you just throw the phone away without ever doing something to indicate it's no longer in use (to Apple, not your cell carrier) then the results are more sane. That can't happen to every one of these peopl…
Not really -- it's a complex problem.
If my phone is stolen, so I wipe my phone via MDM. I still need to communicate, so I can use my Mac or iPad to do so transparently to the other parties.
This is a common issue whenever you do caching. Outlook fubars contacts whenever you migrate Exchange users to or from a system.
Re: iMessage purgatory
#110This happened to me when I got my android phone with a new number. When my friends with iPhones texted me, the text always shows up as iMessage and I would never receive it.
The thing is, I have not owned ANY smartphone before this one. My guess was the previous owner of this number had an iPhone and registered for iMessage service. iMessage route sms through its own server it never reached my carrier's network. I tried to get help from Apple store technician, but since I am not an apple customer, past or present, employee did not see a need to help.
Problem is I really liked that number. After 2 months of struggle I gave up and changed to a new number.
I will admit I never liked Apple and do my best to purge iProducts from my life. But I guess you just cannot avoid being screwed, anyway.