How to Fix iMessage Bug That Prevents Messages From Being Sent to Users Who Have Switched From an iPhone

BY Gautam Prabhu

Published 5 Jan 2012

iMessage Icon

If you’ve family and friends who have recently switched to an Android (we hope you tried your best to convince them against it) then here’s a tip that you might want to give them.

It looks like iPhone users who switched to an Android based smartphone (or any other mobile phone) may not be getting text messages from an iPhone user.

Due to a iMessage bug when an iPhone user tries to send a SMS to an ex-iPhone user, the Messages app tries to send the SMS as an iMessage, but since the user is no longer using the iPhone, the delivery of the text message fails.

Ideally, even if iPhone tries to send the SMS as an iMessage the first time, it should try to resend the message as an SMS if the delivery of the iMessage fails to avoid this issue.

Apple discussion forums member Alphonsusjude has figured out the following workaround to fix the issue

  1. Go to: https://supportprofile.apple.com
  2. Log in if not already logged in.
  3. Click on “edit products”
  4. Click on the “x” to the right of the product.
  5. Click “unregister”

The workaround seems to have worked for several ex-iPhone users who were facing this issue. In fact, we think this workaround will also address the problem where stolen iPhones could still be receiving messages sent to the original user.

[via TechCrunch]