Issue adding friends

My gf is having what sounds like the exact same issues, only she's on iphone. I have android and can see her town, but on her phone all of her friends (including me), just appear in the crappy origin friends list as not having TSTO, which makes no sense at all. I can't really find a solution but for her she can't add any friends at all so it's really ruining the game. The closest thing I have found to an official solution is EA informing people having difficulty adding friends using the game on droid vs. ios via their origin id only (rather than their email), but she was doing that so that definitely isn't a solution. A few threads like these popping up...
http://answers.ea.com/t5/The-Simpsons-Tapped-Out/iPhone-Can-t-add-Android-friends-but-they-can-see-me/td-p/1016812
so hopefully a solution will be made soon...