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Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

hey.paris

421–430 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a financial gimmick. The company realizes the income immediately while service is rendered later. This has positive impact on the finances.

That's backwards. The company treats the GC as a liability. It cannot recognize the funds as revenue until they are spent. This is GAAP and law (but see exception below). GCs are valuable to brands because they are marketing tools. Recipients are prompted to go to the merchant to spend money, and they usually spend about 40% more than the face value of the card. Also, GCs are valuable to merchants for breakage . This…

But all those GC funds sit in investment accounts until they are used. It's genuinely profitable to have millions in unredeemed gift cards (and mobile app dollars) sitting around unused.

I've never had my $100 GC be worth $104 a year later, but for the issuer it is. They just keep the $4.

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#422

> I am not a casual user. I have literally written the book on Apple development (taking over the Learning Cocoa with Objective-C series, which Apple themselves used to write, for O’Reilly Media, and then 20+ books following that). I help run the longest-running Apple developer event not run by Apple themselves, /dev/world. I have effectively been an evangelist for this company’s technology for my entire professional…

I am surprised that evangelists keep thinking they are safe from the evil of big corporations.

There's no reason to presume that the author 'thinks' that.

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#423
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think so either in the sense we are seeing in this case. As in there should be some legal protections like sure Apple can choose to close his accounts but should allow him a reasonable amount of time to export his data. But one should in best practice always have their own redundancies as too many times we have seen companies lose data for various reasons.

Yes, therefore it is better to stick with services that have open protocols, so you can rely on FOSS tools to handle redundancy for you.

Using FOSS solutions and setting redundancy is not going to work for average users.

I think you’re missing the point here, which is we need regulations to protect consumers against big tech.

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emailing jeff@amazon rapidly solved the problem for me when I was in the exactly same situation. Of course it'd have been nicer to tell them to fuck off, but living without Amazon would simply be far too inconvenient.

Are you in the US? I'm just always a little surprised to read things like "i couldn't live without Amazon," and i wonder if there are no other alternatives for two day shipping on other countries or what it is that keeps people stuck on Amazon instead of using other next-day deliveries

People in my circles in the US (in an area with tons of alternative options) look at me like I have two heads when I say we don’t have Prime and never shop on Amazon. For many, I think, Amazon has simply been the default option to buy anything for long enough now that it’s ingrained muscle memory.

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#427

This is horrible and a big reason why I refuse to go “all in” on Apple, Google, or Microsoft (among other reasons). Apple is the one I’m closest to given my hardware, though. Given how invested you are in the Apple ecosystem I can’t fathom why you would go get an Apple Gift Card from a store to do this kind of transaction, though. It wouldn’t even cross my mind to do it that way.

I can't wrap my head around that as well. Given OP's expertise and experience with technology, how was this option better than using a credit card.

Obviously I'm not claiming it was OP's mistake, that wouldn't make me any better than the guy who was telling people "you're holding it wrong™".

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#428
post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised that evangelists keep thinking they are safe from the evil of big corporations.

There's no reason to presume that the author 'thinks' that.

“This isn’t just an email address; it is my core digital identity”

If he doesn’t think like that, then why does he act like it?

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#430

It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. What's the rationale? It would make more sense if they just locked the person out of redeeming gift cards or something, not the entire account. But reading horror stories like this is is why I only use the very bare minimum of any of these cloud services. Keep local copies of everything. For developer accounts, I always create them under a separate email…

Not only local copies but also at least own and use one device where you have your important data that is not on the same OS ecosystem as the other device(s) - also helps with things like 2FA, password manager, etc., if shit has hit the ceiling fan on the other device. In addition, I always suggest people to: - Not use big tech's cloud services - ever - But if you must, do not use many cloud services from just one pr…

Cryptic hints only work while your memories remain intact, unexpected health issues can render them useless
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