This device is already associated with an Apple ID.....er no it's not

I've been having this problem for a while but until I subscibed to iTunes Match it didn't really matter so I let it slide. Now it's an issue; I have two Apple IDs as I've been a customer for a while; the @me.com account issued as I was a Mobileme user and the @gmail.com account I use for everything else including all my iTunes purchases.

I've had the iPad 2 for a while and under the store section it's correctly associated to my gmail Apple ID as it receives auto-downloads if I purchase on any other iOS or Mac devices. So to me that says it's associated to the correct ID.

However now when I add in the iTunes Match info and I go to the music player where it would normally see all my gmail Apple ID associated purchases it just errors and says that the device is already associated to another Apple ID and I have to wait another 26 days to change it, this is stupid and actually wrong.

All of the similar reported error dicussion threads refer to users who want to effectively merge differing IDs to get content from store, this isn't the case for me so I'm sort of stuck now as it seems to be an incorrect Apple ID association rather than anything else.

I thought it may be that I log into iCloud with my me.com Apple ID but it seems that is completely seperate and shouldn't affect what I'm trying to do with my purchases.

Any thoughts/help would be appreciated.

Neil