Moved to Android - People still sending SMS as iMessage

I've been fighting this battle for weeks. I too switched to andriod and did not sign out of iMessage before turning in my iPhone 4. I wish the guy at the Apple store would have warned me about this. I did all the tricks and got it working partially. I unregistered my phone from the support site. I changed my apple id password. I was not able to do the SIM trick because my new SIM (for LG G2) doesn't fit in the iPhone. I called apple support twice. They unregistered my phone number on their end.

Once they did this, iPhone users get an error when texting me directly. That's a good thing. This lets them know there's a problem and they switch to SMS. However, if an iPhone user sends a group text with other iPhone numbers and myself, it still goes out as iMessage and there is no failure message back to the user. I simply do not get the text.

This is very frustrating. I don't understand why this is so difficult. If an apple device receives an SMS from my number, that should be the trigger to stop trying to use my phone number with iMessage. I shouldn't have to jump through all these hoops just to get it working partially.

I have resorted to asking all of my family and friends who have iPhones to disable iMessage on their device. Is that ridiculous or what?!? This is the only solution I found that works in every scenario. Everyone has done this as nobody feels iMessage provides any value anyway. Everyone has unlimited texts these days. The only benefit is to be able to text someone with an iTouch/iPad with no phone service. I don't have that scenario in my circle.

Shame on your Apple for making this so difficult!!

Putting your sim back in the iphone, and turning of iMessages from Settings will do the trick. I appreciate your sim may not fit, but a piece of card will help it seat properly to deactivate. It's the only way that fully works without any weird issues!

Have to disagree there. I turned off iMessage on my wife's iPhone 4 yesterday and a few hours later did a full system restore on it as we were giving it to a niece.

Now when I try and send my wife a text message from my iPhone to her new Nexus5 it still try's to send as an iMessage first, immediately fails and I have the option to resend as a Text Message.

Major failing on Apples part here as I'm hearing of loads of friends with similar problems.

Gary

Just a way for Apple to force you to use their garbage phone

Go to

https://supportprofile.apple.com

Put in your apple id and password and remove your device and it removes it from the imessage database.

fastbagger wrote:

Just a way for Apple to force you to use their garbage phone

No Android phones are garbage. Why are you even in this forum.

I am this forum because I did a search on iMessage. I switched from iPhone to Note 3 and I do not receive any texts from iPhones. I removed my iphone, 2 ipads, mac from database no help.

Hey thanks for advice. You better get to bed don't want to be late for junior high school tomorrow

fastbagger wrote:

Hey thanks for advice. You better get to bed don't want to be late for junior high school tomorrow

Maybe you should learn how to properly reply. You really are technology challenged, aren't you?

Is this guy serious? The issue is clearly on Apple's end 😕 Talk about brainwashed

I too am having the same issues with Apple devices not understanding my device is not an Apple product. At this point Apple is basically distributing products that are not fully capable with the existing network of phones, which is a problem

I've tried resetting the password associated with the Apple account on file with no success. It's quite silly that Apple advertises simplicity in their products but doesn't consider that not every single person who ever owned an Apple device might some day move away from their product

Still in need of a solution, messages sent from iPhones to my phone number (not e-mail) are being sent as iMessages.

Alright, I contacted Apple support and the guy seemed to know what I was talking about. After confirming the number was in fact mine he was able to remove the number from the iMessage system in a few minutes. Although the changes took a few hours to propogate through the system, everything seems to be going good now and I'm receiving messages from Apple devices once again. 🙂

Why I had to go through this trouble for messages sent to my phone number (not e-mail as some have suggested..) in the first place is still beyond me. Apple needs to sort this out as it is entirely an oversight on their end; transitioning between phones should not require reclaiming your own phone number.

If you hit road blocks (I did) telling you you don't qualify for free support, try all the options and you'll eventually hit one that will allow you to talk to a human being.

Best of luck,

Taylor

@taylorveith

Try having an iPhone user send you a text in a group message with other iPhone users. Do you get it? I don't.

Been trying to fix this issue and going to the support site and unregistering the cell number worked! Been trying to fix this problem for days. Thanks!

Did it take a while for the changes to occur once you unregistered your phone/number? I did this earlier today and I am still having trouble getting emails from an iphone.

My son switched to android. He did everything Apple says to do to turn off iMessage. Nothing has worked. Every time I text him I have to press the bubble text and hit send as text message. What a JOKE. Apple: GET IT TOGETHER!!! How hard is it to detect that a phone is NOT an iphone? And on a technical note. This information should not be stored on a central server. It should be perr to peer. Let me decide to send a person normal text messages or iMessages. The problem is much simpler then. You only have the problem of someone selecting iMessage when it isn't available. But you already have that problem! And you (Apple) don;t seem capable of solving it.