Super Frustrated! Appstore and Mobile Me issues!

[Synergie]

I just purchased Mobile Me so that I could consolidate my several email addresses into one, and have my email synched over my iphone, macbook pro and also be able to read my mail online on the mobile me website when I am at sea (Navy) since many of the webmail hosts are blocked on our network (hotmail, gmail etc) and I cant add POP accounts to Outlook on the network because it's locked down.

So I got my brand new Mobile Me email address, set it up on my iphone and the Mail app on my macbook pro and everything works GREAT! It synchs instantaneously between my iphone / macbook pro / web! Awesome right? Now I can delete my old email accounts and use just my @me.com right?? NOPE!

I have a current Apple ID using my POP email address. I want to use my new Mobile Me address instead. Should be easy one would think but unfortunately this is a known issue (which I only just found out about). Mobile Me automatically creates an Apple ID for you. So I can't use it on my existing account. I emailed Apple asking to have my purchases transferred from the old account so I wouldn't have to pay for them again.

Now I know there is a thread about this issue already (and I have replied in there) but this post is more about the unsatisfactory customer service, in which their reply was spewed out like it was quoted from some manual without addressing my issue at all!

This was the reply I got:

Dear Wanda,

Thank you for contacting iTunes Store Customer Support. This is Noorulla. I will be more than happy to assist you today.

I hope your day is going well so far. I am sorry to hear that you are facing difficulty in managing your iTunes Store accounts. I certainly understand your concern over this matter and I am sure you would like this resolved as soon as possible.

Wanda, I'm glad to hear you recently got a MobileMe account, and I understand you'd like to use your new MobileMe account name as your iTunes Store account name.

It is not possible to merge or convert your iTunes account with or to your MobileMe Account as both are two independent Apple IDs. Each Apple ID must be unique.

If you create a new iTunes Store account with the MobileMe ID as the account's email address, it will be separate from your current iTunes Store account. They will have separate purchase histories, and you won't be able to transfer purchases from one account to another.

I want your iTunes Store experience to be as enjoyable as possible, so if you have any questions, concerns, or need any additional assistance with this matter, please don't hesitate to reply to this email.

I hope this information is helpful to resolve this issue. If not, please reply to this email. We're always happy to help. Thank you for your interest in the iTunes Store. Apple appreciates your loyalty. Have a nice day!

Sincerely,

Noorulla,
iTunes Store Customer Support

That didn't even remotely resolve the issue!! Basically I was told they were glad I shelled out 109.00 for a year of Mobile Me but sorry you will now have to buy all of your app store purchases again if you wish to use your mobile me address as your Apple ID. That's UNSAT! I probably have over 300.00 worth of apps / music etc! This was my reply to her:


This in fact has not resolved anything! I just paid 109.00 for a year of use of a Mobile Me account, and you are telling me basically that I still have to use my old email address for my apple id or else I will have to repurchase everything I have on my iphone all over again! I do NOT intend on repurchasing over 300.00 worth of apps and music when I already paid for them once.. just so I can use them on the SAME computer and iphone that I already use them on!

I got the Mobile Me account with intentions of getting rid of my old POP email accounts. This kind of makes that impossible. I wanted to use only my @me.com address for everything now. So I basically spent 109.00 on (for one year) on Mobile Me for nothing!

As I understand that you can not move my purchases of apps etc over to my Apple ID associated with my Mobile Me email address, and since I can not add my @me.com email address to my old Apple ID, and because my only option to using my new Mobile Me account is to redownload all of my apps again, I would be happy with this resolution which I think is VERY fair:

It is unfair to ask customers to pay for apps and music again, after they already purchased them! If it's not possible to merge the accounts to make an APPLE product work with an APPLE service properly, then I believe Apple should credit my new Mobile Me account with an amount that would cover me downloading all my appstore/itunes purchases again (which is well over 300.00 - one iphone app alone TomTom I spent 60.00 on!!) If my new Mobile Me ID was credited this amount, I could re-download my apps without having to PAY for them again! You could then close my old Apple ID to be sure that I am not using two accounts fraudulently. Apple would not be losing any money doing this, as I ALREADY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR these apps and music and ebooks etc!! I am only asking to be able to still use them!!

This would be my suggestion for a resolution. And even this way, I would still have to spend a lot of time downloading everything again, however I am ok with doing this if this is the only solution.

If you can not work with me on getting this resolved, I intend on requesting a refund for Mobile Me since it's basically useless if I can't associate it with my Apple ID - what's the point of having a consolidated email solution that synchs over all your Apple devices, if I can't use it for an APPLE service, forcing me to keep an outside email address!!?? I only bought Mobile Me so I could get rid of having several different email addresses!!

If you can not resolve this issue for me, I request that you forward this to a supervisor or someone at a higher level.

Thank You,

Wanda McDonald


I have not received another response yet!! I love my Macbook Pro and my iPhone but this issue has me seriously peeved at Apple!! Mobile Me is useless to me if I can't get rid of my other email address, I may as well just keep using that one then!

Has anyone ever gotten anywhere with this issue at all??

 

[Mal]

You're being a bit OCD, aren't you? You can change your contact email with your old iTunes account, but you don't really need access to it to continue using the apps you purchased with it. Why the heck would you even think about repurchasing all your apps?

Basically, you're worried about something that's absolutely unimportant. If you'd looked first, you'd have known that you can't merge iTunes accounts, but it doesn't really matter because you can have multiple accounts authorized on any particular device.

jW

 

[flyfish29]

I don't see why you can't just use your current iTunes login info, buy apps in the future using this info, and still use your mobile.me email for email. I am pretty sure you login on iTUnes through your old apple ID in iTunes and when you set up your email through the Mail app you simply enter your new mobile me info there. So no need to transfer purchases. Just use the old apple id as usual, but your mail is different. It will still sync no problem.

 

[Synergie]

I don't see why you can't just use your current iTunes login info, buy apps in the future using this info, and still use your mobile.me email for email. I am pretty sure you login on iTUnes through your old apple ID in iTunes and when you set up your email through the Mail app you simply enter your new mobile me info there. So no need to transfer purchases. Just use the old apple id as usual, but your mail is different. It will still sync no problem.

The problem with that approach is that I wish to close my other email account. And besides that I still want to receive the receipts from itunes from things I purchase. I can't use an invalid email address for an Apple ID... it checks to see if it's valid and it uses that email address to send receipts.

My only solution as of now was to create an entirely new email address in Gmail and named it the same as my mobile me account (except that it's @gmail.com) and that email is now set for my Apple ID only.... and I am not using it for anything else. Then I set Gmail to forward emails from that account to my mobile me email address so I can get them on my iphone / mail app on my macbook pro without having to have multiple accounts set up on there (I was trying to get away from having multiple accounts!). And to keep things organized in mobile me, I then had to create a folder specifically for that gmail account forwarded emails and made a rule for mobile me to dump them in that folder.

I got rid of the original POP email account because it started to be inundated with Spam so I didn't want to keep it open. Since I wanted the email receipts coming in on my iphone, if I'd kept that old email address on there, I would still be inundated with spam!

But it still sucks that I am forced to maintain a second email address... although I guess it's good in case I ever forget my mobile me password.

And yes I am a bit OCD about organization... probably because I am a Virgo lol

edit: And for Mal: Yes I could still use the apps on my iphone without the old account being logged in, but you can't get any updates that way because it will prompt you to log back in. Or on the computer if you try it through there while logged into the new one you get the error "Not Authorized because you don't own the apps purchased" (or something similar to that)

 

[flyfish29]

So why don't you set up your other email to just forward any apple.com emails (but nothing else) to your mobile me email, keep the other account open only because you want to receive receipts, but you won't need to ever really check it on your iPhone, etc. I assume that you can apply rules like this to Gmail, but perhaps not.

By the way- I can understand totally- I am a Virgo as well. Although OCD is the wrong way to describe what we suffer, it really should be "CDO" You know- the letters MUST be in order from A to Z!!

 

[Synergie]

So why don't you set up your other email to just forward any apple.com emails (but nothing else) to your mobile me email, keep the other account open only because you want to receive receipts, but you won't need to ever really check it on your iPhone, etc. I assume that you can apply rules like this to Gmail, but perhaps not.

By the way- I can understand totally- I am a Virgo as well. Although OCD is the wrong way to describe what we suffer, it really should be "CDO" You know- the letters MUST be in order from A to Z!!

Haha @ CDO LOL that's funny!

The original email address was actually one I created on my own domain... not Gmail. I couldn't apply rules like I did with the new one. It was either forward em all, or none. And then even though they were forwarded, it only forwarded a copy - there was no way to tell it to delete the original. (It was all through the CPanel for the site) So I'd actually have double spam to delete! And it really did get out of hand! The junk mail controls couldn't keep up!

Its fine with the new gmail address as my Apple ID for now. I just didnt want to have to maintain a second email address

Oh and us trying to find ways to get around the issue don't excuse Apple from ignoring it! I know I am not the only person who would like to use their mobile me email addy for their Apple ID. Actually most people who would sign up for Mobile Me I would say (and with great confidence) that most would already be Apple Customers already, and therefore already having Apple IDs and would run into the same issue as me!

 

[flyfish29]

Haha @ CDO LOL that's funny!

The original email address was actually one I created on my own domain... not Gmail. I couldn't apply rules like I did with the new one. It was either forward em all, or none. And then even though they were forwarded, it only forwarded a copy - there was no way to tell it to delete the original. (It was all through the CPanel for the site) So I'd actually have double spam to delete! And it really did get out of hand! The junk mail controls couldn't keep up!

Its fine with the new gmail address as my Apple ID for now. I just didnt want to have to maintain a second email address

Oh and us trying to find ways to get around the issue don't excuse Apple from ignoring it! I know I am not the only person who would like to use their mobile me email addy for their Apple ID. Actually most people who would sign up for Mobile Me I would say (and with great confidence) that most would already be Apple Customers already, and therefore already having Apple IDs and would run into the same issue as me!

Woops- sorry- I forgot about your own domain thing. yeah, that sucks. I agree that Apple needs to make it possible to merge- is it possibly due to the licensing thing with music and movies to allow transfer? Even with that they still should be able to make it work. What if an email provider went out of business- someone could be screwed I suppose??

So based on your gmail comment are you saying that you CAN change the email address associated with your old itunes account? If so, can you simply put the .me email in for that even though it won't be your itunes log in?

 

[Synergie]

Woops- sorry- I forgot about your own domain thing. yeah, that sucks. I agree that Apple needs to make it possible to merge- is it possibly due to the licensing thing with music and movies to allow transfer? Even with that they still should be able to make it work. What if an email provider went out of business- someone could be screwed I suppose??

So based on your gmail comment are you saying that you CAN change the email address associated with your old itunes account? If so, can you simply put the .me email in for that even though it won't be your itunes log in?

You can change your current Apple ID to ANY valid email address.....except a @me.com one!!

So basically my mobile me email is firstname.lastname@me.com I cant use that as my Apple ID. So I created a Gmail account of firstname.lastname.appleid@gmail.com (because of course someone already had my firstname.lastname@gmail.com ) I am only using that email address for my Apple ID and nothing else so it won't get spammed. So that's now my log on for itunes and app store! I set that gmail addy to forward to my Mobile Me account. But even GMail only has the option to forward all emails. I didn't see an option to forward only emails from a given sender. Hopefully since I wont be using it for anything else, I wont get any spam.

You can't even put the @me.com address as a secondary email on an existing Apple iTunes account Same error comes up as when trying to use it as the ID itself.

 

[flyfish29]

You can change your current Apple ID to ANY valid email address.....except a @me.com one!!

So basically my mobile me email is firstname.lastname@me.com I cant use that as my Apple ID. So I created a Gmail account of firstname.lastname.appleid@gmail.com (because of course someone already had my firstname.lastname@gmail.com ) I am only using that email address for my Apple ID and nothing else so it won't get spammed. So that's now my log on for itunes and app store! I set that gmail addy to forward to my Mobile Me account. But even GMail only has the option to forward all emails. I didn't see an option to forward only emails from a given sender. Hopefully since I wont be using it for anything else, I wont get any spam.

You can't even put the @me.com address as a secondary email on an existing Apple iTunes account Same error comes up as when trying to use it as the ID itself.

Now I understand- thanks for clarifying. I agree- it is not right. It is almost as if they do not want someone to begin using @me.com really! Makes no sense.