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Comment by Reich | Hacker News Reader

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, but the fact is that you chose to use iMessage for the features. It could have been turned off at any time, they are not forcing you to use it.

It would be great if there was a way to fix this without having to call (or unregister your phone number from your apple id), because of not being able to know that it's happening. But it's not like Apple is deliberately trying to keep your messages hostage. Besides, you've already switched phones.

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I wouldn't be so quick to say it's just an excuse to bash Apple. According to the writer's tweets Apple doesn't even see his phone number registered in the iMessage registry, so there could be something even worse going on here.

Source: https://twitter.com/adampash/status/466316191230087168

Ah, thank you for the link. I guess I was the one that was quick to judge.

It also just sounds like there was a bad experience with a particular tech support rep, who may be new. In my experience, these issues are ALWAYS exceptions to the $20 fee. If the 'standard' workarounds don't fix it, they will escalate you to a supervisor and put in a ticket with engineering who will resolve the issue within 48 hours.

Maybe OP will see this and give their tech support another shot. If not, the token expires in about 28 days.

*This information is less than a year old, but rules may have changed.

EVERY time someone calls with this issue, it is fixed with the click of a button that deauthorizes their iMessage token.

This is false. I just called 1-800-MY-APPLE (details in my reply to GP) and they said I had already deactivated iMessage for the number and that I needed to tell all of my friends to delete their existing threads with me. And then even that did not fix the problem.

I switched to a Nexus 5 recently. I deactivated iMessage, ensured my phone was no longer registered with Apple and asked friends to delete existing conversations.

It has been about a week and I still cannot receive text messages from iPhone users I've iMessaged in the past.

What is perhaps most frustrating is that Apple seems incapable of changing the situation. Adding insult to injury, Apple is requiring that I pay a $20 fee to speak with a technician.

In my case, my new number (for my android phone) is associated with someone else's iPhone. I could not de-authorize that person's iMessage token. I handpicked that number but had to give it up thanks to iMessage's implementation.

> Besides, you've already switched phones.

This does not follow.

If I change water providers, the previous water provider does have the right to stop me from receiving more water.

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.

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.

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