Yeah sounds more like the aunt and uncle once shared an Apple ID and then moved to seperate ones later.

Interesting. Do you know how they could fix it? I will send them this thread. They will love it.

This is by far the most plausible explanation. iMessage’s biggest surface area for problems is multiple/migrated associated emails.

Yeah, who knows? I am only brainstorming. Ever since I discovered the abysmal state of Apple's customer service after having my iphone stolen last year, I feel confident we will never know.

I’m just curious what you think Apple should do for a stolen phone?

For a stolen phone with AppleCare+ insurance that has been paid for every month since purchasing the phone, they should at least offer a way to file a claim.

The only way to submit a claim was to click on a button in my icloud account that did not exist. I live in a big city and visited 3 Apple stores and spent about 15 hours in them in total, but none of them were able to help me get the claim filed so I had to give up. One of the supervisors did refund the ~$15/mo that I had paid for the AppleCare+ insurance, but I had to buy a new phone.

AppleCare+ does not include theft coverage. For that you need to pay for "AppleCare+ with Theft and Loss", which I assume you didn't do: https://www.apple.com/support/products/iphone/

It's pretty easy to see why they wouldn't include theft + loss coverage unless you pay for it...