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Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

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Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#321

Post by quesera »

ridgeguy wrote: post #134

The risk of this happening seems low, but the impact on my life as an Apple ecosystem resident would be catastrophic. It's an easy decision for me - I won't buy or redeem an Apple gift card again. Not an expert in the issues presented, but I see increasing numbers of single-point process failures, like what happened to Paris, being designed into our civilization.

Cards purchased at an Apple store, or apple.com, will be fine.

The general risk of getting your account disabled for infractions, though, persists regardless of this specific triggering mechanism.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#322

Post by bookofjoe »

Steve16384 wrote: post #161
ryandrake wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I want to know is why does it always have to go straight from 0 to 100? There's seemingly no concept of proportion. For most online services, your account can be in one of two states: Totally good and "banned for life". There's no warning, no investigative period, no concept of scale (was the fraud $10 or $10,000?), no way to serve your time and come back if you actually were bad. It's just instant, silent BAN H…

The same with Youtube. Broken an unknown rule on one of your vids? Your whole account and all the videos are deleted instantly.

My experience with YouTube was different. Two or three times, up to around five years ago, I got an email from them stating I'd done something wrong — used protected music/content etc. — and that this notification wasn't a strike but I should contact them and explain why they were wrong to put a hold on the video and they'd withdraw the notice. I did so and they then responded that the email was erroneous, all good.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#323

Post by lvl155 »

quesera wrote: post #305
lvl155 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that basically screws over loyal Apple customers who trade in an entire family’s worth of iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, Macbooks, etc over the years. Sometimes you just take a giftcard because you don’t want to buy a new thing. Fast forward a couple of years, you basically learn that you traded in your Macbook Pro for nothing. How’s that not a controversy? Perhaps they should give customers non-transferable stor…

Gift cards sold or issued at an Apple store are the safest kind. There is no opportunity for the kinds of large-scale fraud you see with cards purchased elsewhere. The only risks would be the same for any other bearer instrument, e.g. wallet theft.

That’s what I thought too but it’s not. Apple is refusing all gift card related hardware purchases in certain markets. Even what you already redeemed to your account. It certainly piqued my interest in what’s happening behind the scene.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#324

Post by pxeboot »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #168

They also need to let you transfer your purchases to a new AppleID under a new enail address. It is outrageous you're forced to choose between all your purchases from an email account name from when you were a kid or teen and getting to have an adult email address/handle and not having a data hungry company like Google or Microsoft seeing all your Apple activity in perpetuity

Apple does provide a way to transfer purchases to a different account you control [1].

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/117267

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#325

Post by quesera »

charcircuit wrote: post #251
paul7986 wrote: post #87

I just bought my niece a Visa gift card and she said she had the hardest time using it. Not many would accept it. What's up with this latest gift card scammed .. tampered gift cards. Has the media not done a blitz on this issue yet? It's the holiday season and many are going to be scammed! I will be giving a greeting card with cash or just cash app family members.

Visa gift cards never were widely accepted since they are so often used for fraud.

Visa gift cards have historically been widely accepted (anywhere you see the Visa logo), with a few exceptions, mostly online.

InComm is one of the two major program managers in the space, and they have had really severe fraud problems for a few years. They cracked down hard on prepaid card ("gift card") redemption about two years ago (right after the holidays).

This is an ongoing problem involving Visa, InComm, DHS, and a couple banks. Customers are being damaged, Visa's brand is being damaged, etc.

InComm is invisible to customers, but it was their action that made (most) Visa open loop prepaid debit cards difficult to use.

Notably, the other major program manager (Blackhawk Networks) also runs a few lower-volume Visa card programs, and they are still accepted normally.

Informed customers can make an explicit decision to purchase only Blackhawk-managed Visa cards. But that information is not trivial to obtain.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#326

Post by dobs »

cycomanic wrote: post #286
hamdingers wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. #…

> 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 send…

> > #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.

> Just imagine laws would work that way.

This is how "tipping off" law often works in practice.

As a support agent you often lack full visibility into the treatment or history of the person on the other end of the phone, especially if they're a bad actor. You can't tell them what is or isn't fraudulent behaviour, or what might be construed as such.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#327

Post by ragazzina »

SXX wrote: post #248
kmfrk wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also grey areas with Steam like when you buy a Steam key for a game outside of Steam through places like GreenManGaming and get your reviews discounted or otherwise flagged arbitrarily based on an opaque authenticity heuristic. https://www.greenmangaming.com

Valve get no fees from non-Steam key sales and developers can really request any reasonable amount of keys so tens and hundreds of thousands. It make a lot of sense to discount all these reviews to avoid abuse. A lot of developers would abuse reviews hard otherwise.

Why are hundreds of thousands keys a reasonable amount for a developer? I am not in the video game business so I fail to see the use case.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#328

Post by graeme »

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…

Apple actually does have pretty good support for this sort of case. I went wrong. Here is that the account was in a state where support even high-level Support was not authorized to unlock it.

I have personal experience here. I was gifted a meaningful chunk of Apple gift cards. I redeemed them to a secondary Apple ID as this ID is rarely used. It got locked when I tried to spend the Apple gift cards.

It took a couple tries over a few weeks, but Apple support were very helpful and able to unlock the account. Where I must've got lucky is the automated system must've allowed the Support to take this action and it sounds like in the case here whatever fraud flag triggered issued to far more severe response.

My case I should add the gift cards were totally valid. It just was rarely used to count. That might explain why it was easier to resolve in any event. They absolutely as human support. The real issue is when human support can't overrule the computer.

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#329

Post by dylan604 »

ndriscoll wrote: post #166
mariusor wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Steam versions of the same game (e.g. Skyrim) often require Steam to be running and enforce mandatory updates that aren't always desirable with no rollback ability. Yeah, but that's a developer choice. Steam doesn't force anyone to use their API for things like that. If that's a concern for someone as a gamer, they should probably support the companies that don't do it no matter the platform, not blame Steam for it…

The original question was "how do you know these things before you buy the game?" My answer was "You could buy from a provider that advertises non-use of DRM like GOG." Whether it's a developer choice is irrelevant. GOG tells you the information you need for your purchasing decision, so if you want to know what you're buying, buy from somewhere like GOG. Also, don't assume that because it's DRM-free on GOG, it is als…

> it provides an economic signal that there's some segment of customers that requires no DRM as a condition of sale

Do you just assume that's the reason someone uses GOG vs Steam? People could be using GOG for other reasons, and the lack of DRM is just bonus. So how does that signal really get interpreted correctly?

Re: Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?

#330

Post by quesera »

lvl155 wrote: post #323
quesera wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gift cards sold or issued at an Apple store are the safest kind. There is no opportunity for the kinds of large-scale fraud you see with cards purchased elsewhere. The only risks would be the same for any other bearer instrument, e.g. wallet theft.

That’s what I thought too but it’s not. Apple is refusing all gift card related hardware purchases in certain markets. Even what you already redeemed to your account. It certainly piqued my interest in what’s happening behind the scene.

This doesn't sound right to me. Apple is still issuing gift cards for hardware trade-ins as of last week, and obviously they are bound to honor them.

Specific accounts may be flagged, for sure. But a general ban on GC-related purchases would be a very big regulatory deal. Do you have links to a published source?

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