After spending 3 hours with Apple chat online, what finally worked was wiping out my iPad & using my iPhone backup. After doing this I did have a brief GC glitch the next day where my friends disappeared, but they soon reappeared. Using any iPad backup, even one pre-dating the iOS update, resulted in the same GC problem that's been discussed in this & other threads. The downside to doing this is all the additional time you'll have to spend setting up your iPad again, putting in your passwords, arranging/adding/deleting apps, setting up your mailboxes, etc. Apple released a bug fix yesterday, but it mentions NOTHING about GC. I don't know about you, but I ain't downloading the update. Apple needs to fix this!