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Apple card disabled my iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts (2021)

dcurt.is

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Re: Apple card disabled my iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts (2021)

#61

Post by bastawhiz »

notpushkin wrote: post #56
bastawhiz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I believe they never replied. The author missed an email saying their payment wasn't accepted and that all of their services would be disabled, that's pretty serious. I'm supposed to believe Apple just lost the ticket? I'm also not sure why the author didn't follow up: not following up has the direct consequence of being charged a substantial amount of money.

Yeah, I mean, I understand them being charged for the failed trade-in. Their credit card was charged, so Apple supposedly got the money (from Goldman Sachs). Why did they still block his account (owned by Apple) when he failed to pay his credit card bill (owed to Goldman Sachs)?

He didn't pay for the device.

The linkage between the card and the account doesn't actually seem important here. They locked the account that the unpaid iPhone was set up with. Why would Apple continue to provide service to an account that was being used by a device that was effectively partially stolen from them?

Re: Apple card disabled my iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts (2021)

#62

Post by II2II »

jms703 wrote: post #14

Why was this 4 year old article posted with no additional context? Lots of red flags here on the author's part. This seems like a case of someone not following through on their tradein, missing a payment due to a changed bank account, and then ignoring Apple’s emails about the issue. The author makes it sound like Apple acted out of nowhere, but the reality is they gave notice and took action only after the author fa…

I read the article from the point of view that Apple's response was at issue.

The missed notification is something that we have to take the author's word for, but it could very well be true. Perhaps I'm more sympathetic because I ran into a similar situation recently. I called a company because I hadn't received a bill, was told that they recently sold off the relevant division, and that they sent me an email explaining how to switch my billing information over to the new owner. I don't recall receiving such an email. If it did hit my inbox, it was likely deleted. I would have regarded such an email as a phishing attempt without a second glance. The situation may have been different for the article's author, but they may have still had a legitimate reason for missing it.

Apple's response was also excessive. I would expect them to lose subscription services, but not access to their accounts. At in my experience, my Apple accounts remain active even though my last hardware purchase from them was well over a decade ago. (Clearly I am not receiving subscription services, but the accounts still exist and my purchases are still accessible.)

While Apple's response is nowhere near Google's (e. g. the customer was able to find out what the problem was and resolve it), it sounds like Apple overstepped bounds.

Re: Apple card disabled my iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts (2021)

#63

Post by Zak »

edwinjm wrote: post #10

Getting a trade-in credit and then “forgetting about it”. What do you think would happen?

I'd expect a charge to my credit card, or a bill. If I didn't pay the bill, I'd expect another bill and a late fee. Eventually, I'd expect the debt to be transferred to a collection agency which would harass me about it for years and report my nonpayment to credit bureaus. If it was a large enough debt and I ignored all of that for long enough, I might expect to get sued.

I would not expect to get locked out of my cloud storage, app store, email, etc....

Re: Apple card disabled my iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts (2021)

#64

Post by benoau »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #60
benoau wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that in 2025 there is still no "rights" or "due process" for users is astonishing, you can be banned by automated systems, refused any reason, refused any actual recourse, and it's just forever. Thoroughly inadequate for platforms that have become entrenched in modern life.

> fact that in 2025 there is still no "rights" or "due process" for users is astonishing Most Google users don’t pay a dime for their services. I don’t think it’s reasonable to mandate customer service for free users.

Google generates nearly $200 billion a year in ad revenue off those users so I don't think depicting them as a charity is accurate.

Re: Apple card disabled my iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts (2021)

#65

Post by icebergonfire »

morning-coffee wrote: post #40
GuestFAUniverse wrote: post #5

That's why an all inclusive account like the X envisioned by EM is a pretty stupid choice, if you're a customer. Never go all-in, if you cannot win.

Or simply read your emails from them if you do.

> simply read your emails from them if you do

Certainly. Except their mistake had beyond-reasonable consequences, since account termination would result them losing access to: their phone, their laptops, their TV smart pucks, their tablets, their smart speakers, their photos, any accounts on websites if they logged in using Sign in with Apple, any accounts on websites if they were using Hide My Mail...

Once you are in Apple jail, it's on Apple to have a good process to follow to try to go back to good standing. OP was met with a black box that may or may not read their internal Apple mail. They may or may not reply either.

The moral to draw from this blogpost is to be careful of putting too many eggs on the same corporate basket. Though in theory you are good as long as you pay your bills, there is no banhammer with an accuracy stat of 100%!

I've been on the receiving end of a false-positive fraud flag on my Amazon account (literally undeserved), it ended with my account being terminated and me being banned from the store. The blast radius was bigger than expected:

- It forced a factory reset on all my Amazon Echos at 03:00AM (fun to be woken up to a house-wide symphony of smart speakers OOBE-ing at the same time).

- It immediately negated my ability to exercise warranty consumer rights on most of my tech devices, as they were purchased on Amazon.

- It also blocked from cancelling my Amazon recurring subscriptions, so I spent two more weeks receiving things like soap and cat food despite the account termination supposedly cancelling all outstanding orders. Support was unresponsive the whole time.

- It immediately terminated my (luckily personal!) AWS resources, as these are also umbrella'd under the same account.

No amount of email reading could have saved me since I did nothing wrong (still have all the receipts, but I'm a stranger on the Internet so caveat emptor). All I ever got back from the different tiers of customer support were different ways of saying you are bad and we don't need to listen nor explain, we are done bye bye.

Re: Apple card disabled my iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts (2021)

#66

Post by j45 »

thanatosmin wrote: post #30
jms703 wrote: post #14

Why was this 4 year old article posted with no additional context? Lots of red flags here on the author's part. This seems like a case of someone not following through on their tradein, missing a payment due to a changed bank account, and then ignoring Apple’s emails about the issue. The author makes it sound like Apple acted out of nowhere, but the reality is they gave notice and took action only after the author fa…

Because today is the day that I read the blog post. I agree with you that Apple taking action on the account is not wholly unreasonable. What I found shocking was the inability to contact someone who could resolve the situation. I know this is a common issue with Google, but had expected Apple to be different.

Lose the ID and you lose access to so much.

Identity services from the large companies are very convenient, but the citizens of Google, or Apple, or Microsoft are largely faceless and rightless citizens of a corporation with no ability to contact anyone for anything.

The story and lesson is simple is to tie as little as possible to identity systems using a domain you don't own.

This isn't a statement of expecting perfection from any group, just the opposite, of knowing that things can happen unexpectedly, where is the middle ground in a relationship that impacts the user more than the company if the ID is lost.

Re: Apple card disabled my iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts (2021)

#67

Post by brundolf »

Apple's online services have always been a shitshow for me. Tiny details are bad or broken in ways that would never be acceptable on other major online services (or Apple's non-services software!)

I don't know what's rotten- it can't be a lack of expertise, it must be a separate department with a broken culture. But I don't rely on them for anything crucial

Re: Apple card disabled my iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts (2021)

#69

Post by pqtyw »

bastawhiz wrote: post #61
notpushkin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I mean, I understand them being charged for the failed trade-in. Their credit card was charged, so Apple supposedly got the money (from Goldman Sachs). Why did they still block his account (owned by Apple) when he failed to pay his credit card bill (owed to Goldman Sachs)?

He didn't pay for the device. The linkage between the card and the account doesn't actually seem important here. They locked the account that the unpaid iPhone was set up with. Why would Apple continue to provide service to an account that was being used by a device that was effectively partially stolen from them?

Presumably same would apply to all other devices that user might have had? Disabling those seems quite unreasonable..

Re: Apple card disabled my iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts (2021)

#70

Post by jillyboel3 »

jms703 wrote: post #14

Why was this 4 year old article posted with no additional context? Lots of red flags here on the author's part. This seems like a case of someone not following through on their tradein, missing a payment due to a changed bank account, and then ignoring Apple’s emails about the issue. The author makes it sound like Apple acted out of nowhere, but the reality is they gave notice and took action only after the author fa…

not paying for a new phone in full does NOT warrant retaliatory action against all of the author's accounts.

block the device, sure. send collections after him for the unpaid amount, sure.

retaliating by blocking all his unrelated, paid for, accounts is yet another reason apple should be broken up. it also doesn't sound like they refunded him for the days of usage that were lost that surely still had to be paid for.

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