Apple ID Apple won't allow me to enter my gmail address

[ghanwani]

Apple won't allow me to enter my gmail address.

I use my alumni address as my Apple ID. That is going away.

I'm trying to replace it with my gmail address but Apple won't allow me.

Based on the little research I have done, it looks like there's someone that has created an Apple ID using my gmail address. Is there a way to fix that?

Any ideas on what I can do?

 

[ghanwani]

I went to iforgot.apple.com and entered my email address.

I found that it won't allow me to reset the password because there is a phone number associated with my email address that I don't know.

If anyone has any other tips, please let me know.

 

[Bigwaff]

There is nothing you can do except use a different email address. Consider this Gmail address burned.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

If it’s an Apple Account you created some time ago and just forgot the phone number - yeah, you’re out of luck.

If that’s NOT the case, call Apple and ask to “dispute ownership” of that email. At one time, at least, Apple had a process for that… used to be, you could set up an Apple ID without “verifying” the email, and someone might fat-finger entering their email wrong and accidentally put in yours (e.g. “fred123@“ instead of “fred1234@“). That’s been fixed but I’d “guess” that the dispute system is still in place, to clean up old mistakes.

 

[ghanwani]

If it’s an Apple Account you created some time ago and just forgot the phone number - yeah, you’re out of luck.

No, this was definitely not created by me.

If that’s NOT the case, call Apple and ask to “dispute ownership” of that email. At one time, at least, Apple had a process for that… used to be, you could set up an Apple ID without “verifying” the email, and someone might fat-finger entering their email wrong and accidentally put in yours (e.g. “fred123@“ instead of “fred1234@“). That’s been fixed but I’d “guess” that the dispute system is still in place, to clean up old mistakes.

I called Apple Support and they said they can't help me. The acknowledged the existence of the other account but said they can't do anything to allow me to associate that email address with my Apple ID.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

No, this was definitely not created by me.

I called Apple Support and they said they can't help me. The acknowledged the existence of the other account but said they can't do anything to allow me to associate that email address with my Apple ID.

So one of two possibilities:

1. Apple no longer has the Email Dispute mechanism
2. Apple DOES have the dispute mechanism, but it's so seldom used (since they fixed the verification bug years ago) that the Advisor you spoke to, doesn't know about it.

I'd certainly try calling back, ask to speak to a Senior Advisor, see if you get lucky. But if you continue getting the same result ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe they HAVE removed it. I don't see WHY they would - surely those old, stuck accounts still exist - but I guess it could happen. If that's the case, you could either create an @iCloud.com email for your Apple Account, or you could create a new gmail (or other email) to use for it.

 

[ghanwani]

So one of two possibilities:

1. Apple no longer has the Email Dispute mechanism
2. Apple DOES have the dispute mechanism, but it's so seldom used (since they fixed the verification bug years ago) that the Advisor you spoke to, doesn't know about it.

I'd certainly try calling back, ask to speak to a Senior Advisor, see if you get lucky. But if you continue getting the same result ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe they HAVE removed it. I don't see WHY they would - surely those old, stuck accounts still exist - but I guess it could happen. If that's the case, you could either create an @iCloud.com email for your Apple Account, or you could create a new gmail (or other email) to use for it.

I got a follow up call today and this time the rep did mention they can put the account in dispute. They said I'd hear back in 2-3 days. Keeping my fingers crossed. For now, I have switched my Apple ID to my icloud email.

So you were right about the dispute option. The rep in the previous call didn't know about it.

 

[ghanwani]

I got a follow up call today and this time the rep did mention they can put the account in dispute. They said I'd hear back in 2-3 days. Keeping my fingers crossed. For now, I have switched my Apple ID to my icloud email.

So you were right about the dispute option. The rep in the previous call didn't know about it.

I never heard back so I called in today. The rep said I got misinformation from the rep on the previous call. I asked for it to be escalated and got what I thought was a clown rep that preceded literally every sentence with "Let me be honest with you..." and basically told me there was nothing they could do.

So now, looks like I'm stuck with using my icloud address for life for Apple ID and contact, while everywhere else I'm using my gmail address for contact/ID.

Something is really broken if Apple can't allow someone to use their own email address as their contact for their Apple ID.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

What's the process if that used to be your phone number, but isn't any more?

 

[ghanwani]

What's the process if that used to be your phone number, but isn't any more?

Not sure. I'd have to get past the step where I could guess the number correctly to know what happens. 🙂

Because clearly Apple employees themselves have no idea what is and isn't possible and no one at Apple has thought through these scenarios.

At least 5 times on the call the recent rep suggest I should just go ahead and create a new Apple ID and I had to keep reminding them that I have a working Apple ID and I just need to get my email address back to where I can use it for my Apple ID instead of it being tied up by an account created years ago by a hacker and that is now just sitting around.