Anomalous Apple One Premier / iCloud+ problem

[Dennis Kane]

You can tell from the subject that this is a rather obscure problem. Still, there may be a chance that you will encounter some problem like this. I’ll use bullet point format since otherwise it might be even more confusing.

1) Had a subscription to Apple One on my address and shared with my family.
2) My wife had iCloud+ on her address and shared with our family.
3) I upgraded to Apple One Premier for added services and cancelled my wife’s iCloud+ to save an unnecessary $9.99 cost. I anticipated problems that she might experience data loss, so I did this with the aid of an Apple rep. After an hour of experimentation, the rep and I worked through a process where we were pretty sure that her data would be associated with our Apple One Premier 2 TB.
4) Now, a few weeks later, my wife says that her computer keeps nagging her that iCloud doesn’t have space. I tried to fix things through her account, turning off her iCloud family sharing thinking that would make it so her account could use our family share from Apple One Premier - no dice. Additionally, I noticed that none of our family members, including myself, had access to the 2TB. We all had only 5 GB.
5) Finally, I found an option on my iPhone Settings>Subscriptions>Apple One >Manage iCloud+ to change the email address associated with iCloud+ to her address. That fixed it. Now everyone has access to 2TB through Apple One Premier with her address being the main address. The rest of our Apple One services are shared through my address.

This sounds like a kite string/chewing gum solution, but it is working. I could try to clean this up and run everything through one main account, but I don’t think that’s as easy as it sounds. I called Apple a few years ago to try to do some clean up because all my purchases and subscriptions were through my Yahoo account and my calendar and some devices were owned by my mac.com account. The rep said that the best solution was to put both my accounts on my Apple family grouping and call it a day.

I know that this sounds like a drunk-text fever dream, but this is what happens when you’re old as dirt and you have numerous email addresses/AppleIDs and devices.

Dennis Kane