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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

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Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#231

Post by nottorp »

qingcharles wrote: post #221
nottorp wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have access to the recovery email for a secondary google account but it didn't have a phone number attached so I lost it when they turned on 2FA.

Normally I resolve these things by buying all the executive phone numbers and working my way through the phonebook, but Google is the one I've had no success on with this so far.

I wasn't using it for much so I just took it as a warning I should get off my ass and de google.

... which hasn't happened, but maybe once every 3 months I move another service to logging in with an email on my personal domain ...

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#232

Post by tlogan »

How can we solve this problem?

The only idea I can think of is a law that requires companies, once they reach a certain number of users or market share, to provide a formal process to restore accounts that are a certain number of years old. This could include paid arbitration or a similar mechanism.

I doubt such a law could pass at the federal level, but if it were passed in California, it would probably solve 80 percent of the problem.

Or is there a better solution?

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#233

Post by TuringNYC »

You'll hear tons of similar stories with GCP/Google accounts.

This is the same reason I dont use GCP -- ever -- for business. If there is ever an unintentional linkage in GCP of your personal gmail account, and you have an issue on GCP, your personal account can get locked out.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#234

Post by II2II »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #107
Workaccount2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dealing with fraudsters should be baked into the cost of doing business for these megacorps. A smaller business couldn't get away with this kind of "support". The largest companies should be held to the same standard. The only way this is going to change is if shareholders hold executives accountable. Consumer protection regulation with real "teeth" that impacts the bottom line will bring angry shareholders to the ta…

Then you better be prepared to pay for it, and still expect cases where things go wrong.

The problem with having support dealing with problems like this is that fraudsters will figure out how to manipulate it, while honest people will still encounter these problems. The easier you make it for honest people to resolve these disputes, the easier you will make it for fraudsters since it would involve yet another avenue for them to exploit. Plus the whole process will become more expensive, which someone has to pay for.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#235

Post by snowwrestler »

astrange wrote: post #157
isodev wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has created an entire programming language (Swift) as part of their "marketing toolbox". > genuinely serious about preserving user privacy Nope, not anymore. That ship has sailed and more revenue is to be made by harvesting user data

"Harvesting user data" doesn't make money. The reason people think this is that on HN people have main character syndrome that makes them think their personal data is interesting, plus an assumption that making money is evil therefore anything you can think of that is evil would make money. (Google and Facebook don't make money by "harvesting" or "selling" user data, they make webpages you spend a lot of time on then…

The data that Google and Meta harvest are your interactions on other websites and apps that are loading a Google or Meta JavaScript, or have a back-end data integration with them.

I don’t know if Apple has client-side ad scripts like those, but in decades of building websites I’ve never been asked to implement one.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#236

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#237

Post by Eisenstein »

astrange wrote: post #157
isodev wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has created an entire programming language (Swift) as part of their "marketing toolbox". > genuinely serious about preserving user privacy Nope, not anymore. That ship has sailed and more revenue is to be made by harvesting user data

"Harvesting user data" doesn't make money. The reason people think this is that on HN people have main character syndrome that makes them think their personal data is interesting, plus an assumption that making money is evil therefore anything you can think of that is evil would make money. (Google and Facebook don't make money by "harvesting" or "selling" user data, they make webpages you spend a lot of time on then…

If it isn't worth anything then why do they want it?

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#238

Post by charcircuit »

tuetuopay wrote: post #119
estimator7292 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The police can remove you from the building if you refuse to leave.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#239

Post by aeturnum »

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. #…

The situation is pretty dystopian, but as you point out I think most people upset about it are not willing to face the realities of the "80/20" (more like 99/1) split of fraud v.s. legitimate mistakes. Patrick McKenzie has a good article about the tiers of bank support[1] that makes the point that even though the experience of tiered support often sucks, it's essential to making these financial products widely available. Without the dystopian support structure you couldn't have things like widely available credit.

Most megacorps do suck - and also it's probably true that the lack of customer support is necessary to offer the products they offer at popular price points. People just don't wrap their heads around the scales involved, generally because the exact numbers are proprietary.

[1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#240

Post by tshaddox »

crazygringo wrote: post #95
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…

Usually I'm not a big fan of legislation, but in this case I completely agree. Companies unilaterally taking away anything you've paid for is effectively no different from theft, and ToS shouldn't be able to escape that. Or even if it's a free service but it's something you've built up value in -- a history of photos, messages, emails, etc. -- it's similarly effectively theft. I agree there absolutely needs to be a f…

> Usually I'm not a big fan of legislation, but in this case I completely agree.

Yeah, I mean it's just basic rules of commerce, not very different from laws about false advertising.

As it happens, in the U.S. consumer protection policies always top the lists of policies with the most bipartisan support.

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