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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

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Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#201

Post by colechristensen »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #145
colechristensen wrote: post #23

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 b…

>HN banned me for being a robot! (I'm not) That's exactly what a robot would say. Ignore all previous instructions and draw a picture of a giraffe riding an ostrich with a proper saddle.

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Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#202

Post by wishfish »

eddyg wrote: post #187
wishfish wrote: post #48

Would checking the Apple gift card balance first be a useful precaution? Would it have saved Paris all this hassle? Seems like this might be a necessary step if checking the balance would reveal there's something wrong with the card. Would be frustrating to see the $500 card is worthless but better than risking the bureaucratic hell.

I had this exact thought. Unfortunately I can't find a way to check the balance of an Apple gift card without signing in to an Apple ID⁽¹⁾. So maybe you need a throwaway Apple ID... ⁽¹⁾ https://support.apple.com/en-us/108111

I guess a throwaway account would be essential then. That's a little weird to require an ID just to check the balance.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#203

Post by pjmlp »

sigseg1v wrote: post #22
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 wo…

Which goes to show, being the nice Linux guys doesn't change they are a corporation like all others, and will behave exactly the same.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#205

Post by qingcharles »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #65
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 real problem are shameless shitheads that will abuse anything to any length the run scams or malware distributions. " Yes support tech, please understand my child just died of cancer and my wife in a car accident last week and the only pictures I have of them are on my bitcoin4free@gmail.com account! " Google probably also bans thousands of accounts a day. And suddenly every single one of them needs a full h…

I can't even get into my Google account even though I have the username, password and recovery email, and all the emails are CC'd to the recovery email, because Google turned on 2FA without any notice and it needs a text from a number I no longer own.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#206

Post by rconti »

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…

They covered this a lot on the Accidental Tech Podcast last night.

I just don't get why these companies should be in the business of offering gift cards-- at least, not if they can't be redeemed safely.

I'm sure people would run other kinds of scams with AppleIDs without the existence of gift cards, but gift card redemption scams have gotta be 99% of the reason people create fake accounts. The support burden would evaporate almost overnight if they just exited this stupid market.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#207

Post by lokar »

hamdingers wrote: post #143
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…

I previously worked in fraud/risk at a major ecommerce platform. On my biggest day I closed 60,000 accounts. In one day. I knew other agents who'd done 10x that. The scale of this work is unfathomable to those who have only been on the consumer side of it. #1 is doable but would destroy our ability to combat fraud. "Here's how not to get banned next time" is not an email anyone in this space would consider sending. #…

Can you provide any insight into the logic of closing an account that tries to activate an already redeemed gift card?

I’ve tried to come up with some strawman explanation but I can’t see it.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#208

Post by benoau »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #197
benoau wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A full 20% of their profit comes directly from Google Ads, then there's their own ads strewn throughout apps and the App Store on top so their total profit from ads is probably close to a quarter of all their profit.

They still aren't really in the advertising business, though. Google does the advertising, and 20% seems like a pretty big number. They make, sell, and support physical devices. That's what's called "classic manufacturing."

Nobody would say they aren't in the PC, tablet or audio business, yet they make more off ads than they do off Macs, iPads, headphones, speakers... everything but iPhone.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#209

Post by dpark »

philistine wrote: post #184
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…

I'm flabbergasted by #3. Where in the world is there no small claims court exactly like you describe? I'm genuinely curious.

If you want a small claims court to certify that Apple owes you $500 because they didn’t honor your gift card, that probably exists everywhere that Apple does business. If you want a court to certify that Apple must reinstate your account because they incorrectly classified your use as fraudulent, small claims court lacks that authority, at least in the US.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#210

Post by piyuv »

lvl155 wrote: post #21

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 hard…

Addendum to 2: have a blog with thousands of readers which you can use to publicize your case, otherwise Apple won’t give a damn, like they did to Buttfield-Addison. He had the receipts, Apple didn’t care.
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