By Charles Miller
Last week I opined on how life just keeps getting tougher and tougher for careless people who forget passwords. Not having the right password can be difficult, frustrating, and very inconvenient, but is not entirely hopeless. In some lucky cases, a lot of patience can eventually let things work out.
In a closet I have “the stack.” This is a collection of Apple iPads and iPhones belonging to forgetful owners who have lost all their passwords, making the thousands of dollars’ worth of devices worthless. The circumstance of one couple was that over a period of years they forgot the password for their email and, as it was impossible to recover, they got a new address. They never notified Apple about their change of emails. They also lost their cell phone and replaced it with another number. Again, they failed to inform Apple. Then one day their iPad required them to enter the password for their AppleID, and of course they had forgotten that password too. I had to tell them that, without access to the lost email account or the lost phone, Apple would not unlock their iPad.
I told them I would do what I could, and I did just that. Every month or so I would call their old cell phone number. Then one day, after two years, a young female voice answered. Telcel had finally recycled the disconnected number, and now it was being used by someone new. I tried to explain that the previous holders of her cell phone number needed her help. She hung up on me. Undeterred, I enlisted the help of a girlfriend to call and propose that if the señorita would be willing to let Apple send a confirmation code to her phone, I would be glad to pay her for her trouble. In due course, we met at a coffee shop, the young lady with her grandmother as chaperone. I got Apple to send a confirmation text to the señorita’s cell phone, and that was enough to let me begin Apple’s 28-day waiting period for account recovery. The señorita and I agreed to meet again a month later. At that second meeting, after the 28-day wait, I was able to complete the recovery process and access my client’s AppleID, whereupon I promptly updated the email address and phone number on that account to working ones.
My clients had already given up and purchased a new tablet (not Apple), but they were still pleased to get their old iPad back. They admitted that, not trusting me, they had spent hours on the phone with Apple, only to be coldly rebuffed at every turn. They even apologized for having doubted what I had told them two years earlier.
So, with patience and perseverance, it is sometimes possible to reclaim a lost AppleID even after Apple has said the account and the devices registered to it cannot be recovered. All it takes is a persuasive Mexican girlfriend, the cooperation of the new owner of the lost cell phone number, a grandmotherly chaperone, $500 gratuity, coffee, the patience to jump through all of Apple’s hoops … and a little less than three years to do all this. What could be simpler? Answer: Simpler would be to be more responsible and not forget your Apple password.
Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981, and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 415 101 8528 or email FAQ8@SMAguru.com.
