iPhone to Android iMessage bug fix

DuxburyDad wrote:

It would be appropriate for Apple to remove a phone number from their iMessage servers within a reasonable time such as 24 to 48 hours after the customer shuts of iMessage on their device, removes the device from iCloud then activate an Android.

Asking the customer to ask his or her iPhone contacts to do anything is unreasonable. The customer may or may not know which of his contacts have an iPhone.

To the best of my knowledge,there are two very unattractive solutions:

1 - Change your phone number

2 - Wait for 30 days or so for the phone number to drop off the iMessage servers.

After the year or so this problem, there is no excuse for Apple not having fixed it.

I would ask again where would I be able to find infromation about what is appropriate by the company when people stop using their technology?

I have no idea what Apple has in writing but I would think common courtesy would be a start.

If you can not see that Apple's conduct in this matter is simply wrong and arbitrary, we simply have no need to discuss further

DuxburyDad wrote:

I have no idea what Apple has in writing but I would think common courtesy would be a start.

If you can not see that Apple's conduct in this matter is simply wrong and arbitrary, we simply have no need to discuss further

We don't. I personally do not see anything wrong in Apple conduct and do not discuss, but inform. If I am wrong I would be happy to review the material where Apple would promise anyone who leaves Apple, assist and any problem resolution within your common courtesy time frame. As soon as I see it I may change my mind and recognize that you are correct.

The issue is iMessage is an instant message app similar to yahoo IM or aol IM. When an iPhone user has it on, their number gets registered and when other iMessages users text someone register in iMessage, it goes through IM rather than normal text. Users that switch to droid are still registered and can't get the Imessage on their droid until un registering. Untegistering is the hard part. Thanks appke

u could always just call apple (1-800-apl-care) and have them revoke ur # out of the imessage/facetime system. after thats done people should be able to send u messages without them turning into imessages automatically.

if that doesnt work for whatever reason have that means that those iphones did not receive the "this # was unregistered from imessage" message and they will need to delete u as a contact and delete ur entire conversation. then re-add u as a contact and start a new conversation with u.

follow those steps and ur issue WILL be resolved. jeez, i dont understand why everyone is trying to make this so complicated and clutter these forums up with complaint after complaint. everytime i see a complaint in this forum from now on i will repost those fix it steps from now on.

This doesn't work. I wish it was that easy

I have done all these steps and nothing works. I am texting from my daughter's iPhone to my nexus 5 and after I deleted my contact from her phone and reentered it my number cones up blue and the message is sent as an imessage. It hangs for 15 mins and finally sends as a text. And yes her iPhone has send as SMS on. I have apple everything and this is my first time I have ever hated them. They are holding my phone number hostage.

For the record, I've done all of these things too. For all of you for whom it worked, that's great. I spent a month and a half with a Senior Genius (who spent a month and a half with the Apple engineers) trying to release my phone. And, yes, they also deleted my phone number from their server.

That solution worked for some, but certainly not all, of my friends with iPhones. The engineers said that they are very aware of the problem, but don't know how to fix it yet. To be fair, the Senior Genius I worked with was awesome and really worked hard to try to resolve the problem.

However, the fact is, Apple still hijacked my phone and made it so impossible to port my phone number to another phone (hello, isn't this an Antitrust violation???????), that I finally sold my Android and got another iPhone!

So, now I'm back in the Apple fold, right? No problem? Well, now I don't get iMessages from folks!! Seriously? I assume this has to do with them removing my number from their servers, but it is beyond frustrating that I feel that I can't win in this phone situation.

Even though I already own 5 Apple products, so obviously I have liked their products, but this experience has left a very bad taste in my mouth regarding Apple. I'm about to replace my laptop, and I hate to say it, but it's probably not going to be another Apple product.

tking399 wrote:

The engineers said that they are very aware of the problem, but don't know how to fix it yet.

Once again when your friends get message that they may have to pay for messages to you and they may have to pay for those, apple engineers can not make them to choose "send". Another way to do that would be to wipe your friends phones(to delete cached in memory that you use to have an iphone), but as I mentioned before - Apple would be crazy to wipe 50 iphones of current customers for one of former.

dumaz79 wrote:

I have done all these steps and nothing works. I am texting from my daughter's iPhone to my nexus 5 and after I deleted my contact from her phone and reentered it my number cones up blue and the message is sent as an imessage. It hangs for 15 mins and finally sends as a text. And yes her iPhone has send as SMS on. I have apple everything and this is my first time I have ever hated them. They are holding my phone number hostage.

Try to reset network settings on your kid's phone - couple people in that thread reported it worked.

Settings - general - reset - reset network settings and she will have to reconnect to wifi.

Tried resetting network settings and it didn't work. This is so frustrating. I might have to switch back to IOS. Not even by choice.

That's what I ended up having to do. I tried everything (and annoyed all of my friends and family with constant requests for them to try everything on their devices to make it work. No luck whatsoever.

I feel like I've been completely extorted by having to come back. Not a good experience, and one which I've shared with everyone who will listen. I wish I could recommend an iPhone, but wouldn't recommend it to anyone at this point, solely because of this iMessage problem.

I tried all suggestion i could find online:

• Turning off iMessage on my old iPhone
• Signingout of iMessage on all iOS units and MacOS
• Resetting account password
• Deleting unit from my Apple account
• Calling Apple support with no luck - they could not see my number in their system

The guy from Apple support was not helpful at all and insisted it was not a problem at their side or my side - but at all iPhone users side. He suggested i tell ALL my friends that they should contact Apple care so they can "help them change a setting" which would probably be to turn off iMessage. I tried to explain the guy that I simply cannot tell every single iPhone user to change their settings if they want to contact me - and it is truly my problem now since if I never used an apple product in the first place with that simcard this problem wouldn't have existed.

I am out of ideas now - after i spent 5 hours on this. It is super super frustrating and I am considering buying a changing plans / changing number to escape from Apple's hostage situation here. Can anybody confirm the number will be dropped from iMessage after a while or is it not going to change over time?

somehow this seemed to be work for me(or specifically worked for the iphone users) its definitely a glitch on the Apple side. "gasp"!!!

No clue which step did it but I tried everything. Turning ON "send as SMS" was the final step and once this works, your then able to turn this OFF and it will continue to work.

Jump throgh the following hoops and it might work.

-I turned imessages off on my old iphone before switching to Android Note3

-De-registered my number(itunes managed devices and confirmed with 1800myiphone)

-Changed AppleID password

-Create a new message instead of using a old message. This was a suggestion from apple support and they didnt know if you had to delete previous messages or simply creating a new one(which still shows old messages) was enough.

At this point only some people could message me, mostly people with iOS6. but still randomly doesnt work.

For folks with iOS7 the following seemed to do the trick.

-Turn OFF imessaging > then create new message and send > once it sent turn imessaging back ON. This didnt work but it may have done something mysteriously.

-Turn ON "send as SMS" . This definitely worked at this point. but we did all the previous steps so who knows.

once it works you can turn "send as SMS" OFF and it continues to work.

now please, how is this not a Apple problem? notice I didnt do anything in Android.

UPDATE: now messages dont work unless "send as SMS" is ON. LOL works for awhile then suddenly stops.