If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts • Hacker News Board

Re: If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts

#161

Post by totalZero » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #144

totalZero wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very different argument from "this feels false," which is just some subjective bullshit. However, your argument is little better. You're saying "it stands to reason that a widely used product would have already hit this corner case by now." The problem with your argument is that it's a tautology. If in fact the statement by dcurtis is the first efflorescence of the problem, your line of thinking would reject…

> If in fact the statement by dcurtis is the first efflorescence of the problem, your line of thinking would reject it anyway. This is true, but we have to take it in context. How likely is it that this is the policy, and we’ve never heard about it before now? The card has been our for a couple of years. Millions of people are using it. This implies 10s of millions of payments. At a conservative estimate this would m…

Thanks, and I agree with you. But policies can change, so it's a fair conversation to have if in fact the stated thing happened. People seem to think that "is there evidence for what you said" is some kind of abusive reply but that should be table stakes for most claims. The guy in the tweet already said he'd write something up, but the people who said he is probably stating falsehoods just came up with that based on a gut feeling.

Me personally, Apple repeatedly locked (not disabled) my account earlier this year when they weren't able to process a payment. PayPal had authorized but not charged an M1 laptop I had ordered with a non-English keyboard, and somehow the order hung. My bank and PayPal showed the authorization, but Apple showed it as "hold" due to unsuccessful payment. Customer service wasn't able to push the order through without taking credit card information directly, and I ended up canceling the order, which means I lose my place in the order queue.

Based on my recent experience, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple had some issues with payment processing. The reason that I care about this particular topic is that I'm considering doing the re-order of the M1 laptop with Apple Card financing. That's why chaff like "it feels false lol" is not useful information for me.

Re: If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts

#162

Post by URSpider94 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

breck wrote: post #134

kevindong wrote: post #16

This *FEELS* (not saying it is) like a false claim. Much like the much upvoted (and later debunked) HN post from a while back when a iOS developer claimed that Apple always keeps it 30% commission, even on a refunded purchase. I consider it worrying that a claim wholly lacking evidence is getting so much attention. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995750

This is not a false claim. I didn't miss a payment, but complained about a $10 WaPost recurring charge via their chat support and they went ahead and locked my account (I think they were trying to be helpful but this fucked things up royally). This was many months ago. The support has been nice, but completely neutered. I have screenshots. I've spoken to 8 people and no one can figure it out. I can't log in, pay, or…

This has nothing to do with the Twitter complaint. Are you locked out of iCloud? If not, then it’s not the same at all.

Re: If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts

#163

Post by setr » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:15 PM UTC

totalZero wrote: post #151

setr wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem with your argument is that it's a tautology. If in fact the statement by dcurtis is the first efflorescence of the problem, your line of thinking would reject it anyway No its not; it's defining a probability. This report is most likely false, because it would be unlikely for this to be the first instance of it. It's not defining a logical proposition -- that's just you extracting more gaurantees from th…

You're conflating two different parent comments; I'll take them separately. If you think something "feels false" but you have no evidence for it, that's not a particularly strong basis for reasoning. >it's defining a probability. This is not true. It's classifying the first instance as false.

>If you think something "feels false" but you have no evidence for it, that's not a particularly strong basis for reasoning.

That's true, but an extraordinary claim without extraordinary evidence is also not a particularly strong basis for reasoning.

and from the original post...

>I consider it worrying that a claim wholly lacking evidence is getting so much attention.

That is, the conclusion reached by twitter is not well-reasoned, which gives kevindong the well-reasoned conclusion: it's probably false.

>It's classifying the first instance as false.

>This *FEELS* (not saying it is) like a false claim.

I'm not clear how you can read this as anything other than a probability. It says nothing about the premise, and it clearly specifies that the conclusion has not been [definitively] classified.

Otherwise, if that ain't the money-quote, I don't know what you're reading but it's not what I'm reading.

Re: If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts

#164

Post by totalZero » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #147

totalZero wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a claim too, kevindong. I'm just asking whether there's any meat to your claim. I can tell from your response that there is not. For example, evidence would be "this happened to me and I didn't encounter the same consequences for my Apple account."

> "this happened to me and I didn't encounter the same consequences for my Apple account." You can see other commenters on this thread saying exactly this. E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26307849

That comment is from a different user and was posted an hour after the one to which I replied.

Re: If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts

#165

Post by tzs » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

ljm wrote: post #74

caymanjim wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, little embarrassed to admit this, but: I plumb forgot to set up autopay on my Apple Card when I first got it. Why is that embarassing? Why on earth would you set up auto-pay? That's just asking for a headache if anything is every compromised, or if a vendor fraudulently or accidentally overcharges you. Reversing charges from your bank is a headache, and rogue charges can quickly cascade into a series of overdra…

So I guess this is a US thing. Is 'auto-pay' the same thing as setting up a monthly direct debit to pay either your minimum payment, a percentage, or to clear the full balance? If that's the case, and I can only speak for my experience in the UK and across the EU for a few years, I'll take the automated payment over the infinitesimal threat of being compromised and clicking a 'dispute this payment' link in my account…

> So I guess this is a US thing. Is 'auto-pay' the same thing as setting up a monthly direct debit to pay either your minimum payment, a percentage, or to clear the full balance?

There are a variety of things someone could mean when they say "auto-pay" in the US, including:

1. Authorizing a merchant to keep your credit card info on file and to charge that whenever they want to bill you,

2. Providing a merchant with your checking account information and authorizing them to take money from there whenever they want to bill you,

3. Many banks include a bill paying service for free with your checking account, which can be configured to receive bills electronically from many merchants, and to automatically pay them from your checking account. Many banks will allow you to choose whether to automatically pay the full bill amount, the minimum due amount, the full balance amount, or a fixed amount, and will allow you to set a maximum amount.

4. For merchants that can not send bills electronically to your bank's bill paying service, many banks will let your configure the bill paying service to send the merchant a fixed amount on a regular schedule.

5. For bills for credit cards issued by the same bank where you have your checking account, there is often an auto-pay feature to automatically pay your credit card from that checking account.

This often means that there are several ways to auto-pay a given bill. For example, I could auto-pay my electric bill by method #1, method #2, or method #3. If I used method #1, I could auto-pay that credit card with #2 and maybe #3.

Re: If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts

#166

Post by 0x0 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

temp667 wrote: post #77

davismwfl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a bug, this is by design. There is no possible way this wasn't spec'd as a test scenario to force payment compliance. They know they have leverage that a bank wouldn't have so they are using it.

"This is not a bug, this is by design." Please provide some clearer support for this statement of supposed fact. We've got so many MUCH MORE likely scenarios. These are the common ones that disable or lock account: * Repeatedly entering an incorrect Apple ID and password. * Not using your Apple account for an extended amount of time * Billing issues such as unpaid iTunes or App Store orders * Security reasons * Charg…

Are you saying anyone can disable anyone else's appleid by just hammering https://appleid.apple.com with their email address and bogus password?

Re: If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts

#167

Post by jefftk » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

wbronitsky wrote: post #103

dcurtis wrote: post #83

I didn't expect that tweet to get so much attention. I plan to write more about what exactly happened when my accounts are re-activated. But to clear a couple of things up: 1. I've since learned that the reason this happened could be due to an unusual confluence of events including Apple Card, autopay, and the online Apple Store. 2. The disabling of iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts is actually an Apple Card p…

This poster continues to fling accusations at Apple and has yet to provide any proof of any of these suppositions whatsoever. I’m not sure why the commenters are so eager to believe a comment from a random Twitter account posted to HN. Confirmation bias is strong, I guess. This is a heavy accusation and I think the burden is heavily on the accuser to provide clear evidence that lack of payment for anything somehow lo…

> I’m not sure why the commenters are so eager to believe a comment from a random Twitter account posted to HN.

dcurtis isn't a random Twitter account; he's a regular here (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dcurtis) and made svbtle.

He has credibility here, and I think a lot of the upvotes (including mine) are based on expecting he wouldn't say something like this without a good reason.

Re: If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts

#168

Post by selfhoster11 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #86

I don't have a US credit score because I never had a credit card in my life and always bought everything with money I knew I had (including my little home). That never fails to completely throw financial institutions for a loop; they can't conceptualize it. Ironically it means that if I was to apply for a credit card it would be very difficult to get it.

In other countries at least, there are score-builder credit cards that come with relatively high interest (and presumably capped credit limits) to allow high-risk borrowers such as yourself to build up their credit history. Once you use one of these for a while and pay it off every month, you would start building up a credit history/credit score that would allow you access to better lending deals.

Re: If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts

#169

Post by vineyardmike » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:35 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #86

I don't have a US credit score because I never had a credit card in my life and always bought everything with money I knew I had (including my little home). That never fails to completely throw financial institutions for a loop; they can't conceptualize it. Ironically it means that if I was to apply for a credit card it would be very difficult to get it.

> always bought everything with money I knew I had

You can do this with a credit card, fwiw, but i'm sure i'm not the first to tell you this.

I don't think we should glorify debt avoidance, and avoidance of financial tools (like CCards) as the only, or best, way to be financial responsible. It works for some people, but that doesn't mean its for everyone or should be a goal.

Re: If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts

#170

Post by manicdee » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #143

nullserver wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A surprise 17,000 electric Bill? I don’t hear about it much anymore but for years was terrified of making a cell data mistake and ending up with a 40k+ bill.

Not sure I understand this, because autopay or not, if you accrue a 17k bill for a service then that's what's due unless you negotiate otherwise, and the lack of autopay is irrelevant. If you're worried about funds disappearing unexpectedly, many major U.S. banks wave checking account fees with direct deposits setup. It's trivial to setup a bank account with multiple checking/savings accounts, where one account is fu…

> if you accrue a 17k bill for a service then that's what's due

Au contraire: every time I have had a large bill it has been because the biller stuffed up.

Water utility couldn't read the water meter because of the dog so they estimated based on past usage. I don't have a dog. They estimated using someone else's meter. They overcharged me by an order of magnitude.

Electricity utility couldn't read the meter because of the dog, so they too estimated based on past usage. Again, I don't have a dog and they estimated based on the average usage of a house my size (typically a family of 4 to 8). They overcharged me by a factor of three or so.

At one point I changed my mobile phone plan to one that had a special offer going. It took three months for the company to get the amount right, and then it took another three months to get my money back for the first three months they billed incorrectly.

With any system that has variable costs (such as usage fees) I far prefer to receive a bill and pay it by hand because it only takes one error to completely wipe me out financially.

Note about the dog above: at one point the utility company wanted access to my yard to perform some maintenance on the electricity transmission lines (in my town the aerial electrical services are in the back yard to improve the street aesthetic). I asked them to please call me so I can lock up my chickens. The person I talked to didn't have a box to tick for "chickens" so they ticked the box that said "dog". Since then I have not had a meter reader actually read my meters, every bill is "estimated because of dog." I have to take a photo of the meter and send it in to them because they're too lazy to read it themselves.