Adam Pash

I’ve gotten many, many helpful emails and tweets with tips for how to fix my iMessage purgatory problem (people are great). Unfortunately, I’ve already tried everything that people have suggested (so far, at least).

For the record, I still have my old iPhone, so I can easily swap the SIM card back into it and perform common fixes. Here are at least a few of the things I’ve tried:

• Reset my Apple ID password
• Turn off iMessage in the Settings app
• Log out of Messages and FaceTime on all my devices
• Text STOP to 48369
• Remove my device from My Support Profile (https://supportprofile.apple.com/)

The phone number in question is not associated with my Apple ID anymore. If I log into my Apple account in the Messages setting, that number doesn’t show up as a send/receive option. But on the iDevices of my friends and family, that number still appears to be associated with iMessage.

If you’ve got a suggestion I haven’t listed above, let me know! I’ve tried a lot over the past week, so I’m sure there are a couple I’ve forgotten about. I’m also not including terrible solutions, like “have everyone you know delete you as a contact and re-add you” or “have everyone you know delete all previous conversations with you.” Incidentally, I’ve tried these things on Ellen’s phone and she still can’t send me a text.

Update: I was able to fix the problem on a per-phone basis by doing the following:

1. Open Settings > Messages.
2. Toggle iMessage to Off.
3. Send a text to the black-hole number. (It should send as SMS.)
4. Turn iMessage back on in Settings > Messages.

Of course, the only phone I have access to is Ellen’s, and I’m not about to ask all of my contacts to do this. At least now Ellen can text me, but that’s nothing close to a solution.

(I’ll try to update this with any new fixes worth mentioning — and hopefully, eventually, one that works.)