Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem? • Hacker News Board

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#111

Post by Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

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.

patio11 wrote a great article and podcast about debanking and anti-money laundering processes last year, it was eye opening how kafkaesque these things are: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#112

Post by wrxd » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #39

The vast majority of people have no problem using them or else we'd be reading more posts similar to that one

Yet I don’t want to play lottery with hardware I paid thousands of dollars for and with an account that holds hostage a lot of my data and digital purchases.

I’m even fine with big tech having great powers but that needs to be counter balanced by regulations forcing them to be accountable

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#113

Post by bbkane » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

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…

You might enjoy https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/

It has a REALLY good section about why customer service is very hard to get right

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#114

Post by SoftTalker » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

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.

A bank might freeze an account for suspicious activity but you can walk in to a any local branch and talk to someone about it.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#115

Post by crazygringo » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

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…

> 1) Why would redeeming a bad gift card result in a complete shut-down of the account?

Because they assume you stole the gift card and are therefore a criminal. As to why they're making the assumption that you are the criminal, not the actual criminal who successfully redeemed the gift card first, you've got me. Since either situation is possible.

> 2) Why is it seemingly impossible to get any support now unless you drum up a ton of press?

I'm as infuriated as you are.

> 3) Should companies be restricted from growing too large where they can’t support their customers?

Size has nothing to do with it. Plenty of small companies ignore their customers too. So I don't think this is the right solution.

> In my personal and professional experience, banks are the only companies that seem to actually know how to handle these issues appropriately when it comes to fraud or access.

There are plenty of horror stories with banks too. I'm not sure they're that much better at all.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#116

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

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…

#2 doesn't scale. If you guarantee access to a human, the system will absolutely be effectively DoS'd by scammers trying to social engineer their way into access to someone's account.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#117

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:20 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #36

tiffanyh wrote: post #34

I don’t want to minimize the pain people experience here, but it’s worth calling out just how hard this problem is for retailers and issuers. Gift cards are the #1 fraud vector in payments ... because it lets stolen cards be converted into a cash-like equivalent with zero traceability. So fraud/risk system are highly sensitive to gift cards. It's not an excuse, but I see in this thread people minimizing the problem a…

It would be a suboptimal UX potentially (vs live funds on a physical gift card), but Apple could tie the gift card to an Apple ID at purchase with a QR code or something similar, and then permit gifting through the existing Apple ecosystem primitives. Apple could then enforce stronger controls as the value is transferred internally on their internal ledger. In financial services, its all about tradeoffs. The optimal…

I remember that article. It's wild the extent to which "anti-fraud" has captured companies, destroyed their UX, and seemingly directs all their actions. And when you criticize it, they blame KYC/AML and cry and act as though they have no agency. A very small tail is wagging the dog!

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#118

Post by Habgdnv » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:20 PM UTC

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…

And also it would be good to limit the ban duration with a law. For example manslaughter can be 5 years in prison. So if google decide to ban your account because you send your doctor a photo of your son for medical purposes, they are not allowed to ban you for more than 5 years and then they must restore full access to your account.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#119

Post by tuetuopay » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:23 PM UTC

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.

Well for banks your account is usually tied to a local brick-and-mortar agency, where it's definitely someone's problem if a customer comes in and refuses to leave. It's one of the reasons I'll never go with fully online banks.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#120

Post by SoftTalker » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:23 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #102

SoftTalker wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not only in their iPhones. And not in the same cloud storage provided by the phone. The only backups you really control are the ones in your possession, so you must keep offline local backups of anything really important to you. The big marketing point of cloud storage was that you would not need to worry about owning and maintaining local storage, but they conveniently downplayed the fact that they could lock…

Actually in this case, the danger is in the cloud storage not the phone's. The user still can access/use his phone, just not the cloud-connected functionalities.

Only because Apple didn't remotely lock the phone as well, which they surely have the technical capability to do.