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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

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Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#21

Post by lvl155 »

I experienced something similar recently. There’s something going on with gift cards at Apple. It’s a bit fishy. As in they don’t want you to use it so they can report higher holiday season sales. Or they’re experiencing a huge uptick in scams involving the cards. I started wondering if the system they use is actually secure from a cryptographical pov.

My lessons were:

1) if you’re going to accrue gift cards for hardware purchases, use a separate Apple ID. Do not use that ID for anything else and especially not as family organizer.

2) save paper trails for all your gift cards. That’s your only way out of this.

3) be prepared to be treated like a scammer by Apple Support. They will even question where you got the devices you traded in at the store. Some support staff will basically say you stole them without any evidence.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#22

Post by sigseg1v »

oidar wrote: post #7

I'm glad that got resolved for Paris, but what the hell is a normal person supposed to do. Not every one has that kind of public reach to get a satisfactory resolution. First he had understand what happened technically, then he needed a public platform to tell people about it, then that writing needed to get reposted by others, than PR needed to get involved. Not something that's going to happen for a normal user. Ap…

Agreed. A situation similar to this happened to me with Steam over a payment issue with their service. They banned me even though I had thousands of dollars of games and an account since Sept 2003. I had to go to my bank and escalate multiple times to get letters providing the info steam wanted about my account and credit card to prove it was legitimate. Eventually after contacting them enough times they said they would do a "one time good faith" gesture by unbanning me but warned if it ever happens again they cannot help and that my account will be flagged with this. In the end I didn't do anything wrong and the bank didn't do anything wrong, it was all on steam. It was over $10 by the way.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#23

Post by colechristensen »

Recent customer service experiences:

- HN banned me for being a robot! (I'm not)

dang unblocked me 1 hour 4 minutes after an email (thanks dang!)

- A Marriott hotel clerk booked me a duplicate room instead of using my third party paid reservation

After 45 minutes on the phone on hold and arguing with robots, I got a person who hung up on me in the middle of investigating the issue, I issued a credit card chargeback because I wasn't going through that again

- Comcast billed me $200+ weeks after I closed my account

After 30 minutes going around and circles with their AI phone operator who kept directing me to the broken online portal which said nothing I gave up and issued a credit card chargeback, I'm presently ignoring the advances of a debt collector

- A Kraken withdrawl of $16k worth of BTC has been "On Hold" for 28 days now

Their email support stopped responding 15 days ago. I have filed complaints with the CFTC and my attorney general.

- My Corporate Amex was flagged for fraud (which is fine) I was on the phone for an hour and a half with customer service who could not figure out how to unblock the card, they wouldn't admit to me out loud but it was pretty obvious their fraud systems were down in the middle of the night and the phone people could do nothing

I hung up on them and paid for my corporate travel with my own card which of course caused stupid headaches later. I hate AmEx now.

---

The best customer service? A free online forum that I can't possibly ever give any money.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#24

Post by sneak »

I've been using all of my macs for years now without Apple IDs. I use them only reluctantly on iOS devices to install apps, and don't use iCloud (it's a privacy nightmare).

Relying on Apple to remain benevolent when the incentives are so misaligned is a fool's errand.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#26

Post by exitb »

estimator7292 wrote: post #17
freedomben wrote: post #8

Genuine question: if your Apple account is locked, and you're unable to create a new one, is your iPhone still usable?

If you read the other posts about this, the author explains that the phone technically still works, but you can't access iMessage or anything. Probably basic text and calls only.

The author did mention though that they were unable to log out of iCloud, as that requires to be logged in to iCloud. That would prevent reuse of the device with a different account.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#27

Post by sneak »

Apreche wrote: post #18

The real problem is that companies do not offer any accessible, powerful, and intelligent customer support. Even if they have real humans to talk to, they simply follow a script. Those agents do not have the ability to investigate a situation or the power to use their discretion to take meaningful action. We should impose, by law, the following rules on all companies that offer accounts to their customers. 1. If they…

> The real problem is that companies do not offer any accessible, powerful, and intelligent customer support.

No, the real problem is that we have no reasonable alternatives when companies misbehave. There is no meaningful way to exist in society today without an Apple or Google account, and that's actually insane. It's doubly insane for people who aren't citizens of the United States (although the CCP addressed this by requiring Apple make a separate iCloud for them).

The solution isn't to legislate a right to a bank account, it's to preserve the usefulness of cash so banks don't get too far out of line.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#29

Post by catlikesshrimp »

SirMaster wrote: post #25
freedomben wrote: post #8

Genuine question: if your Apple account is locked, and you're unable to create a new one, is your iPhone still usable?

Why can't you make a new one?

You forgot to add /s and the reference, because you come up as conceited, when you are being critic of previous Apple statements.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#30

Post by huslage »

estimator7292 wrote: post #15
DannyPage wrote: post #14

> Update 18 December 2025: We’re back! A lovely man from Singapore, working for Apple Executive Relations, who has been calling me every so often for a couple of days, has let me know it’s all fixed. It looks like the gift card I tried to redeem, which did not work for me, and did not credit my account, was already redeemed in some way (sounds like classic gift card tampering), and my account was caught by that. Obvi…

Banks frequently completely freeze accounts for no discernable reason and with zero communication, support, or recourse. You're just lucky that it hasn't happened to you. That does not mean it doesn't happen to anyone.

Yes. But that doesn't make it right.
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