Apple Inc. has accounts called AppleIDs that allow access to Apple services, like product registration, Apple Developer Connection information, and many more things. When you want to use the iTunes store, you need an AppleID. Once you have entered the requisite payment information, your AppleID now doubles as an iTunes account.
AppleIDs are usually your e-mail address. You can easily change the ID name, the e-mail address associated with it, etc., with one exception. If you create an AppleID using a .Mac, MobileMe or iChat ID, you can never change the AppleID account name.
Years ago, I had an account at mac.com. That automatically created a new Apple ID for me with the same name. I already had an Apple ID that I had been using for Apple Developer stuff and registering Mac purchases and AppleCare. When I began using iTunes for the first time, it wanted an AppleID. Without thinking, I used the mac.com one, and proceeded to buy a bunch of music and eventually ipod touch apps. Somewhere along the way, (around the time they converted .Mac to mobileMe) I dropped my subscription to .Mac and lost the mac.com e-mail address. I was able to change the e-mail address associated with that AppleID/iTunes account, but when I tried to change the AppleID account name itself, it told me: "You cannot change this Apple ID because it is tied to a MobileMe account and/or an iChat ID."
So, everytime I purchase an iTunes song or download an app on my iPod Touch, I have to enter a mac.com address that I no longer have. I tried to get Apple to help me fix it, but AppleID support told me just to create a new AppleID. I told them I already had another one, but that the mac.com AppleID had all of my iTunes purchases on it. They told me to call iTunes support in that case. iTunes support says that there is no way to merge iTunes accounts, but I only have one iTunes account anyway (the mac.com AppleID), and if I need to change the AppleID account name associated with it, I should contact AppleID support. You can see where this is going.
This is such an utterly simple thing. I don't know why there is a restriction on changing the AppleID if it happens to at one point in the past have been associated with a .Mac account, especially since .Mac hasn't even existed for years.
About once every 3 or 4 months, I try to do something and type in the wrong AppleID and then try again to get Apple to fix it so that I can change my AppleID, get totally frustrated, and give up. This is probably the one thing that makes me hate Apple on a regular basis, since I get to deal with friendly customer service people telling me there is no way to fix it.
I am not the only person with this problem. Pretty much every one of Apple's most loyal customers who payed for .Mac accounts and then used them for iTunes purchases is in this situation.
Isn't there anybody at Apple who cares? Why would you not allow us to change our AppleIDs just because they happened to end in mac.com? Why would you not have a mechanism for merging iTunes accounts or transferring purchases from one account to another?
