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

hey.paris

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

#481

Post by Aurornis »

jasode wrote: post #239
x3sphere wrote: post #32

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…

>It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. It's also the buying of gift cards that can get Apple accounts locked: https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/r8b1lu/apple_will_pe... If enough of these horror stories are publicized, people will learn to never buy/redeem Apple gift cards because of the real possibility of account bans. - Don't give Apple gift cards to family and friends: You're potenti…

I skimmed some of the comments from that giant Reddit thread. A lot of people responded that they’ve been buying even more Apple gift cards without problem.

One commonality among the stories in that thread from people who had problems was either switching their App Store country or using their App Store account primarily from a different country than the setting.

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

#482

Post by Aurornis »

franga2000 wrote: post #324
wink wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so much not a fitting comparison. The most money I have ever had on my PayPal account was 100 bucks from a reversed transaction (like, double booking of a hotel room or wrong item sent), otherwise it's just a gateway. It would be annoying if my PayPal account was locked, because I use it a lot to order pizza online and a few small purchases. I could just use my credit card or something else but it's more click…

There are a good number of freelancers of various sorts that get paid via PayPal and only occasionally pull that money to their bank accounts to avoid the fixed fee, or even prefer to spend much of it straight from PayPal to avoid the percent fee. People also use it to send money between family members in different countries because it's often cheaper than an international wire. It's quite easy to build up a few hund…

> and only occasionally pull that money to their bank accounts to avoid the fixed fee

You have a fee for transferring from PayPal to your bank account?

It’s always been free for me, as long as I don’t opt for the instant transfer option.

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

#484

Post by mistercheph »

Nevermark wrote: post #390
dariosalvi78 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An even better advice: Don't buy Apple.

This isn’t a solution for many people. And in fact, a prohibition is never a solution, it is a reduction in solution options And this advice takes into account exactly zero aspects of the particular problems a given person may have to solve, besides “problems with Apple”, in a world where most people have “problems with X” for each of the few large ecosystems. Freedom of choice would mean for N choices, being able to…

LOL it’s not some sisyphean task to not use big tech products, its slightly inconvenient and takes some time to adjust, don’t talk about it as though it were something that only the great men of the ancient times could do, take your iPhone and throw it as hard as you can against the concrete, you will be fine.

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

#485

Post by sodafountan »

mcv wrote: post #474
sodafountan wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You don't care that massive unaccountable corporations control all our data, devices and connectivity, and can lock us out of all of that on a whim or accidentally, and refuse to fix the problem? This could happen to anyone. It can happen to people trusting Apple with their data, to people using Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or any other big cloud platform. This deserves everybody's attention, and also a massive lawsuit…

[flagged]

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

#486

Post by vladms »

shelled wrote: post #297
subscribed wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had Amazon close my old, almostt-unused account in Amazon-in-another-country because I dared to add a new payment method. I proved them who I am, that the new payment method (virtual card from a well-known organization) is mine, everything. After lots of back-forth I've been informed their decision is final. I HAVE NOT BREACHED TOS. I wish I has a major law company behind me to force them to admit that. Very happy…

I am in a situation right now where Amazon delivered a fake product. Support suggested they can also try redelivery, and when I asked what if it happens again, they said it should not happen. It happened - fake again. Now the customer support flow is: you upload images of the product (max. three), and the system approves the verification or rejects it, and then you have a way to contact customer care. System rejected…

The system works as long there is user trust in the system. It is sad and annoying when something like this happens, but occasionally the best thing you can do is tell your story and never use a service again. I find there are still reasonable alternatives to Amazon, maybe not at the same price, but at least they deliver less fakes.

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

#487

Post by Aurornis »

generic92034 wrote: post #251
jasode wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. It's also the buying of gift cards that can get Apple accounts locked: https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/r8b1lu/apple_will_pe... If enough of these horror stories are publicized, people will learn to never buy/redeem Apple gift cards because of the real possibility of account bans. - Don't give Apple gift cards to family and friends: You're potenti…

> If enough of these horror stories are publicized, people will learn to never buy/redeem Apple gift cards because of the real possibility of account bans. If you are trying to be a bad person you could weaponize that approach. You do not like person x, send them some Apple gift cards... :o

> You do not like person x, send them some Apple gift cards... :o

99.999% chance they happily redeem them and go about their lives.

These stories, while frustrating, are clearly edge cases. Yes I know you can find more if you search social media, but I don’t think a lot of these HN commenters realize the volume of gift cards Apple sells and redeems without problem every day.

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

#488

Post by cameldrv »

alper wrote: post #398
jasode wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. It's also the buying of gift cards that can get Apple accounts locked: https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/r8b1lu/apple_will_pe... If enough of these horror stories are publicized, people will learn to never buy/redeem Apple gift cards because of the real possibility of account bans. - Don't give Apple gift cards to family and friends: You're potenti…

It’s against money laundering. Onerous regulations being interpreted highly defensively create these kind outcomes. Neither the people creating the legislations nor the people at Apple responsible for these flows care very much about collateral damage.

I think it's a combination of money laundering and phone scams where people are told they owe money to the IRS or something and are tricked into buying a bunch of gift cards.

That said, if buying and redeeming gift cards are such an indicator of fraud that people are legitimately afraid of getting their accounts permanently locked, why doesn't Apple just stop selling them?

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

#489

Post by evanelias »

lapcat wrote: post #469
evanelias wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> That sentence smells like AI writing, so who knows what the author actually thinks. The author has been a professional writer since long before LLMs were invented: https://hey.paris/books-and-events/books/ LLMs were trained on books like the ones written by the author, which is why AI writing "smells" like professional writing. The reason that AI is notorious for using em dashes, for example, is that professional a…

I didn't mention em dashes anywhere in my comment!

If this isn't AI writing, why say "The “New Account” Trap" with then further sub-headers "The Legal Catch", "The Technical Trap", "The Developer Risk"... I have done a lot of copyreading in my life and humans simply didn't write this way prior to recent years.

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

#490

Post by franga2000 »

Aurornis wrote: post #482
franga2000 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a good number of freelancers of various sorts that get paid via PayPal and only occasionally pull that money to their bank accounts to avoid the fixed fee, or even prefer to spend much of it straight from PayPal to avoid the percent fee. People also use it to send money between family members in different countries because it's often cheaper than an international wire. It's quite easy to build up a few hund…

> and only occasionally pull that money to their bank accounts to avoid the fixed fee You have a fee for transferring from PayPal to your bank account? It’s always been free for me, as long as I don’t opt for the instant transfer option.

Last time I had to deal with that was 8-ish years ago and there was definitely a fee. Can't check now because they blocked my account due to a failed Spotify payment and I don't care enough to deal with their phone support again to get it unblocked
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