Apple stole $100s from me, Customer Service says there's nothing they can do

https://old.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/15gechw/apple_just_stole_hundreds_of_dollars_from_me/

by lapcat • 3 years ago

345 230 3 years ago

old.reddit.com

ksec• 3 years ago

The CS Rep told him to create a new Apple ID. I am wondering what would happen to my iCloud with previous ID?

srvmshr• 3 years ago

I have never encountered this personally, but helped a few. There could be variations of what to expect, in response to your question. YMMV:

* If using the Web UI, it will be locked & probably will remain in some catatonic state, until Apple restores or purges its contents. The ID will not be reissued to anyone else, so it is a safe assumption no one will get any email, notes or photos that belonged to you. Apple support page will still be available in many cases (and probably the only thing) when you try logging-in

* On your device, syncing will stop. Local content will remain. Shared albums might disappear or seem broken i.e thumbnails will be visible but suspended account will not be able to fetch data. App purchases will stay but updates will probably be infeasible. iCloud dependent document access will definitely be broken.

throwaway2903• 3 years ago

It keeps working as usual. The poster said the account is specifically locked only in iTunes/App Store. That's why the complaint is about losing money and not everything I guess.

gurchik• 3 years ago

I don't think many people understand that when you "buy" a movie or book on Amazon lets say, you're just buying a license to that product and it can be taken away at any time.

I sometimes worry what will happen to my library on Steam if I ever get falsely banned. I have a lot more than $100 of content there.

pard68• 3 years ago

This is why I have switched to services like Bandcamp, Gog, etc. At least I can take the content with me.

qwytw• 3 years ago

That and maybe an iPhone and an iPad or two (do Macs also get bricked if you can't login using the connected account nowadays?) so $1000s at least.

Teever• 3 years ago

I don't think many people understand... ...you're just buying a license to that product and it can be taken away at any time.

And if that was a one-off sort of thing than I'd say "caveat emptor" but it's not a one-off, it's something we hear about all the time which makes me say "Holy shit sounds like fraud to me."

If so many people are walking away from a transaction with a complete misconception about what it is that they transacted I question whether or not we can call what went on as a 'meeting of the minds.'

ck45• 3 years ago

It kinda already happened. Many older Mac games on steam are 32bit only. You can’t just run them on newer macs.

nso• 3 years ago

What is the difference between that and having bought a physical copy that only supports 32 bit? Noone has taken away your game library. You have bought a system that doesn't support your old games.

tuwtuwtuwtuw4• 3 years ago

That's really not the same thing in my view. If you buy a game for Game Boy Color and try to put the cartridge into the USB-C receptacle then it won't fit.

browningstreet• 3 years ago

you're just buying a license to that product and it can be taken away at any time

..or transferred. Which should reasonably be available (and is absolutely technically feasible) in the redditor's scenario.

CoolGuySteve2• 3 years ago

True but this is exactly the sort of thing the FTC should be cracking down on.

Consumer protections in the US are a joke.

nickff• 3 years ago

How would the FTC fix this, other than by eliminating DRM (which is supported/endorsed by the US Government in legislation and by enforcement)?

joshstrange• 3 years ago

CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) Complaints are a _powerful_ tool that I highly recommend people take advantage of. If a company is giving you the run around then filing one of these will get someone reaching out to you (no holds, no wait times) and they are highly motivated to solve the issue.

black_puppydog2• 3 years ago

one of my favourite soap boxes. I'd like some ground-laying legislation about the use of the words "buy" and "sell". As a sanity-check, none of the "buying" and "selling" that happens on platforms like playstore, appstore, steam, prime video etc should be allowed to be called "buying".

Use "pay-once renting" or "lifetime rent" or whatever. "Buying" should be reserved for transactions where the other party cannot (not "must not". cannot!) take back what they sold without involving a third party like the state.

alpaca128• 3 years ago

when you "buy" a movie or book on Amazon lets say, you're just buying a license to that product

I have never seen an ebook product entry containing the word "license" in the name or description. And even if we assume that's fine, that still doesn't warrant taking away access to the product you bought. If you buy a DVD and stream the movie online you won't get raided and have all DVDs, CDs, vinyls and books taken away. Apple, Amazon etc are doing exactly that.

Imho it should at least say "buy license", or ideally: "rent for an unknown amount of time, do you feel lucky?"

sangnoir2• 3 years ago

I sometimes worry what will happen to my library on Steam if I ever get falsely banned

Losing game saves is a moderate inconvenience, the games themselves are easy to pirate - I wouldn't feel guilty about doing so for titles I've previously purchased on Steam

Edit: I just realized it will be different for those who play lots of multiplayer games or have accumulated a collection of "digital assets" on Steam

doctorpangloss• 3 years ago

Another perspective is that they aren't a brick and mortar retailer. After 30-90d, your money has been given to the people who made the thing.

I sometimes worry what will happen to my library on Steam

Well are you going to go to Colossal Order and demand refunds?

The people who did this for Star Citizen occasionally prevailed. It's complicated.

Zambyte• 3 years ago

Unauthorized copying is not stealing if paying is not owning.

kube-system• 3 years ago

Unauthorized copying has never been stealing as far as the law is concerned.

bern4444• 3 years ago

When google shut down stadia they refunded everyones purchase.

ezfe7• 3 years ago

Many people forget that when iTunes came out, you couldn't redownload purchases. If you download your Music, Movies, etc. they work offline and can be played indefinitely (yes, Movies have DRM but that DRM works offline).

danillonunes• 3 years ago

It's not that people don't understand, it's they're lied to. The wording the companies use are "buy this movie", "purchase this digital book", etc. You don't see a big green button reading "buy a license valid for undetermined time, that can be revoked in the future at our discretion".

akmarinov• 3 years ago

Say goodbye to all your “Sign in with Apple” accounts

layer82• 3 years ago

That’s why one should never use “sign-in with XY”.

tuwtuwtuwtuw4• 3 years ago

Apple telling someone that their account has been disabled due to fraudulent patterns and then asking them to create a new Apple ID is another level of incompetence from that organization.

gregoriol• 3 years ago

I don't see a better way to get flagged again as fraudulent pattern

wmf4• 3 years ago

What specifically is wrong here? What should Apple have done instead?

dralley• 3 years ago

Creating new Apple IDs with the same contact info seems like it would be "potentially fraudulent behavior"

tuwtuwtuwtuw4• 3 years ago

Uhhh... there are 2 options:

* There is some kind of fraud performed by the guy. Telling the guy/fraudster to create a new Apple ID account makes no sense. Are you going to tell the bank robber to try again using another method when the first attempt fail?

* There is no fraud involved. Then the flag on the account should be removed.

bob-09• 3 years ago

They should have recognized this is a serious issue for their customer and done something to address the cause of the issue.

Instead they're saying "don't change the behavior that caused you to lose the account, just open another account and cross your fingers you don't lose that one too."

tolmasky6• 3 years ago

Something that doesn't also potentially destroy:

1. All your emails if you use iCloud for your email, and thus potentially locking you out of any other sites that use email as a 2-factor-auth.

2. All your backups on iCloud.

3. All your data on iCloud.

4. Every single login you have where you used sign-in-with-Apple.

5. Every app on your phone that you have a paid subscription for.

6. The fallback login mechanism on any of your Macs where you used iCloud as the login fallback.

The list goes on. They ask you to tie your life to iCloud. They tell you to make backups on iCloud. According to the reddit thread, this can happen if there was a fraudulent charge made with a credit card associated with the account... Not even done on the account. So then all of your data disappears? Is that enough wrong here?

Matheus28• 3 years ago

Indeed. Either the customer is fraudulent and you don’t want them again, or they banned a legitimate customer and should restore access.

baybal2• 3 years ago

Small claims court, I once got n-times the money frozen in my paypal account.

It works, because big cos almost universally settle. Attorneys cost many times more than your acc.

And another moment, small claims court judges are rarely some ideological cranks.

cjboco• 3 years ago

Isn't that why most "license agreements" contain arbitration clauses now?

lesuorac2• 3 years ago

Even if you go to arbitration Apple will still need to justify their actions to the arbitrator.

Literally smalls claims / arbitration works.

rationalist• 3 years ago

Wouldn't the company still need to show up and tell the judge that there is an arbitration clause?

Additionally (I am not a lawyer) arbitration does not override any court or have any authority unless authorized by a court. If a party does not cooperate with the arbitration, the other party still has to go to court to convince a judge that the arbitration was good and get the judge to enter a judgement against the noncompliant party.

If as a consumer, you agree to arbitration and it is grossly unfair, you can still go to court and the judge can decide whether or not to use the arbitrators ruling or make their own ruling. The other party would also have to convince a judge that their unfair arbitration was fair.

iso1631• 3 years ago

Big tech companies have made trillions on positioning themselves as gatekeepers to society.

It's about time governments actually legislated for this. If they want to ban you, then at the very minimum they need to prove it, to provide the evidence, evidence you can challenge. They need to prove their response is proportionate, and they need to be open to an independent person judging their response.

wolpoli• 3 years ago

There are consumer protection laws that apply to banks and telecoms already. You are right it might be time to have similar laws for these digital gatekeepers.

radious• 3 years ago

One of the commenters on the reddit post suggests that the financial information – credit cards, I assume – were stolen and used for purchases on another Apple account.

This is really scary as my credit cards #s were already stole a few times and it was never an issue larger than 15 minutes on phone with my bank rep. However, if this could lead to me losing my iCloud account (or Google, Amazon, etc.), this is a much bigger deal.

brewdad3• 3 years ago

If this is really the reason for losing the account, I can't understand why Apple wouldn't just blacklist the credit card and leave the account owner to deal with their bank. Closing their account seems excessive. Especially after contacting them. I doubt too many CC thieves are calling up Apple to explain themselves.

xyst2• 3 years ago

I stopped using Apple/Amazon/Microsoft stores for this exact reason. Have switched to personal media server with access via WireGuard vpn

scarface_742• 3 years ago

And when your house burns down or is broken into?

sigio• 3 years ago

Backups to some (non google/apple) cloud provider or something like rsync.net / hetzner storage box / backblaze b2 / online.net storage / etc etc. Or trade off-site backups with a friend/family that also self-hosts all their own stuff. It's all encrypted anyway, so no problem ;)

layer82• 3 years ago

Restore from backup, of course.

xyst2• 3 years ago

if broken into, data encrypted at rest/on disk so idgaf there

if house burns down, I restore from an offsite backup that syncs on a nightly basis

no worries. fuck "the cloud"

manuelabeledo• 3 years ago

Summary judgments are way too common in the era of digital services. This is the kind of anti-consumer tactics I expect the EU to take a deeper look into.

As a side note, for all the good PR Apple gets for their customer service, my experience with their digital services and payments support has been subpar.

The Apple Card support is particularly atrocious, with a two-level support hierarchy where Apple cannot do anything but answer basic questions, and pretty much any serious request has to be handed to Goldman-Sachs advisors. Payments are a bit better, but half of the time I had any issues, I ended up sending an email to tcook@apple.com for the lack of responses.

hinkley4• 3 years ago

Someone needs to legislate an autosuspension algorithm. Maximum number of consecutive hours an account can be suspended, max number of hours per unit of time (week, fortnight, month). Beyond that a human should be required to adjudicate the claims of the automated system.

What we've done is instead of reducing the staff requirements by 10x or 25x we've reduced it by 500x, which is not okay. We can't afford purely manual fraud detection, but with the stakes this high humans should have the final say. But then that's always been a thing with ergonomic business software versus poorly designed business software - whether a human is allowed to override the system or not.

derefr5• 3 years ago

We can't afford purely manual fraud detection, but with the stakes this high humans should have the final say.

The human would make the same final judgement that the heuristic did, because the human doesn't have access to any more information than the heuristic does. (If they did, the heuristic's programmers would tap into that info to improve the heuristic as well.)

As you say, the only real solution is to make un-suspension — upon presentation of additional evidence of account authenticity — easy. (Perhaps even automated.)

tolmasky6• 3 years ago

Forget the movies you lose, if your AppleID is disabled, you also lose:

1. All your emails if you use iCloud for your email, and thus potentially locking you out of any other sites that use email as a 2-factor-auth.

2. All your backups on iCloud.

3. All your data on iCloud.

4. Every single login you have where you used sign-in-with-Apple.

5. Every app on your phone that you have a paid subscription for.

6. The fallback login mechanism on any of your Macs where you used iCloud as the login fallback.

The list goes on. They ask you to tie your life to iCloud. They tell you to make backups on iCloud. According to the reddit thread, this can happen if there was a fraudulent charge made with a credit card associated with the account... Not even done on the account. So then all of your data disappears?

mrweasel2• 3 years ago

Interesting and terrifying observation. Who exactly would one go about making backups of ones iCloud data. The internet is of no help, it's all about backing up TO iCloud.

HWR_142• 3 years ago

Apple has instructions [0].

Looks like there is a download link accessible via the web interface on icloud.com. But you can also set an auto-syncing folder on OSX/Windows and copy them from there using standard OS commands.

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204055

switch0072• 3 years ago

There is also https://privacy.apple.com/ and "Transfer a copy of your data" (photos/videos) to Google Photos.

Plus a data export feature for the other data. That can take up to 7 days. Not exactly a backup in the traditional sense however.

ezfe7• 3 years ago

While true, as observed elsewhere there's no reason to believe Apple restricts these things if you get banned for fraudulent transactions. The linked post doesn't make that allegation.

Mo3• 3 years ago

Also holds true if you str_replace iCloud for Google

sangnoir2• 3 years ago

Do Apple services have an equivalent of Google's Takeout[1]? Local backups of online services that can be severed at anytime is advisable. If you're paranoid about continued access to your email - use a domain you control! Regaining access to your email address will be one mx-record update away.

1. https://takeout.google.com/

derefr5• 3 years ago

All your emails if you use iCloud for your email, and thus potentially locking you out of any other sites that use email as a 2-factor-auth.

...but you can use iCloud Mail through regular POP3/IMAP and thus have a local copy of all your mail. (And, as far as I know, this is what Mail.app itself does, save for some push-notification optimization; am I wrong here?) There's no walled garden here. It's email.

ozim• 3 years ago

That is why I don't use webmail I rather use Thunderbird.

Second reason I use Thunderbird (or whoever wants whatever else) is that I have 10 or 20 mail boxes like separate for shopping separate for more important stuff separate for stupid stuff.

You don't have to have a single mailbox with a single provider.

tolmasky6• 3 years ago

If they disable your account, you're not going to get any new email. So if a website uses your email address for 2-factor-auth, then you are straight out of luck, as I'm sure they also use that email for any sort of account changes. To be clear, "don't use email for 2-factor-auth" isn't a real answer here, there are plenty of services that don't give you an option.

Additionally, you can't send email. That's also a pretty important part of the whole "email" thing. Any ongoing discussions will just be cut off.

Seems pretty walled garden-y to me, considering the entire framing of this is that nothing bad was done with said email. It was because Apple has a unilateral switch that turns everything off if anything bad happens to an associated credit card. That is to say, if your credit card number is stolen, completely outside of your control, this could happen to your email. I'm not aware of any other email service where that is the case.

mrtksn3• 3 years ago

AFAIK you should be able to request a copy of your data under EU regulations.

But honestly, it freaks me out that Google might someday disable my account. Unlike the Apple stuff, Gmail is a gateway to all my internet stuff since 1st of April, 2004. Lately Apple is also trying to be that middleman and IMHO account blocking should be more like denying anything new but providing a clear path out or a clear path for re-activation.

Another thing that I can't stand is the policy of not disclosing the reason for account blocking or rejection. This should be straight out illegal, it creates real stress and even trauma on people and I don't believe that the justification on making their job easier by hiding their methods to fight bad actors is a reasonable one.

A number too small to show up in the analytics dashboard is someone very upset, maybe crying maybe going through life changing situation due to a glitch or bad design in the system. These things happen all the time and get resolved when gain traction in social media.

The tech companies need to understand that they are dealing with real people and the outcomes of their actions are real and that's why they are paid so much in first place.

TimCTRL5• 3 years ago

Shameless plug; I'm building FaangSupport[0] to try to solve this issue, did a Show HN[1] to try and get some feedback but It didn't get enough traction; Most Important Feedback I needed is whether my idea is even legal. But I believe we have to democratize accesss to customer support for Faang.

[0] https://faangsupport.com

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36899787

malepoon2• 3 years ago

But honestly, it freaks me out that Google might someday disable my account.

Then don't wait. There are plenty of alternatives such as Fastmail. You pay a small amount of money but you can talk to a human being if anything goes wrong.

I also don't get why people put all their eggs in one basket. I'm so glad that my email, password manager, YouTube profile etc are not the same account.

spacechild1• 3 years ago

But honestly, it freaks me out that Google might someday disable my account. Unlike the Apple stuff, Gmail is a gateway to all my internet stuff since 1st of April, 2004.

Then don't use gmail? It is very much possible.

EGreg2• 3 years ago

I don't understand the netizens of HN sometimes. Can someone explain to me what is going on in their mind?

On the one hand, they complain constantly about this or that centralized service that they are throughly dependent on, and admit to being terrified of that service doing something "unaligned" with their interests. A few days ago, it was Stripe, before that it was Twitter, Reddit, now it's Apple, Google, etc. They complain and throw their hands up in despair, and Cory Doctorow even recently coined the word "enshittification" showing that this will always happen to for-profit platfoms. And Google Chrome's new client attestation API has everyone freaking out.

On the other hand, a lot of them gang up en masse on any decentralized and open alternative, especially Web3-related, that actually solves the problem technologically. They fight tooth and nail arguing that it isn't popular yet, and never should become. Because only centralized, government-regulated platforms that had years to become entrenched, are good, the rest is bad and should not belong on HN.

So what is the alternative?

Also this same group of people, seemingly, is totally nonchalant about the prospects of AI destroying human civilization, despite its own creators consistently giving that a 10-20% chance. They say that you shouldn't be worried so much. I just don't get this crowd, honestly. It seems like insanity.

PS: It's not all people on HN, just the most activist and vocal ones, and the ones with the silent downvote button trigger finger with massive hyperthrophy from constant use.

kelnos3• 3 years ago

But honestly, it freaks me out that Google might someday disable my account.

I moved my email to Fastmail over a year ago. I was able to do this easily because I used GSuite with a custom domain, so it was just a matter of updating MX records and moving my old mail.

But it doesn't have to be a huge chore even if you have an @gmail.com email address. You can register a domain, and sign up with Fastmail (or some other mail provider where you are actually the customer and not the product), and move things slowly. Set up forwarding from your GMail account to your Fastmail account. Start using the new email address for new accounts. Slowly start changing the email addresses on old accounts. You don't need to do it all at once; just maybe set aside 15 minutes a day, or maybe an hour on a weekend, and gradually change things. Focus on the important things first, like financial accounts. Eventually you'll stop getting email that you care about through the GMail address.

I'm now worried about my other Google-held data, like photos and documents. Some of them are backed up, but I still haven't made sure everything is.

JohnFen2• 3 years ago

it freaks me out that Google might someday disable my account.

Any time you are utterly dependent on any provider, you are at risk. This is something I was taught about being in business, but it holds just as true for personal things.

That you are nervous about this is entirely reasonable, and you should channel that nervousness into finding a way to reduce your exposure.

talkingtab2• 3 years ago

You can at least download all your data from google. See this:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?sjid=1769...

It might take a long time, but do it. Hey, I'm going to do it right now and I don't even use google that much!

websap• 3 years ago

I'm so worried now, I think there's a bigger problem to be solved here. Sounds like I need to use the Apple Credit Card only with my Apple ID, remove all other payment instruments and make sure my Apple Credit card isn't used anywhere else.

greedo• 3 years ago

I've had fraudulent charges on my Apple card multiple times. They were almost always detected by Goldman Sachs. I was issued new cards (and virtual cards) immediately, and nothing happened to my Apple ID. I think there's far more to this post on Reddit than we're seeing.

FireBeyond3• 3 years ago

And then, one of the replies...

"They can't tell you, but trust me, if they were allowed to tell you why, you'd understand and even thank them."

Wuh?!?

wmf4• 3 years ago

People who work in anti-spam and anti-fraud are all like that. "I can't tell you how, but we're the only thing keeping civilization from collapsing."

totallywrong• 3 years ago

That's crazy, how the heck is every Apple user comfortable with that.

chung8123• 3 years ago

I wonder how many use those services. Google is the same way.

shuckles• 3 years ago

As described in this post, they don't disable your iCloud account for fraudulent transactions. They block you from their app and media stores.

tzs• 3 years ago

Forget the movies you lose, if your AppleID is disabled

How does Movies Anywhere fit in here? If I buy a movie at one of {Apple, Amazon, Google, Xfinity, Microsoft, Vudu, DirecTV, Verizon} that is from a studio that participates in Movies Anywhere and then lose or close my account at the place I bought the movie, does it remain on Movies Anywhere for me?

mihaic• 3 years ago

Honestly, that's the sort of terror that keeps me still using GMail, but at the same time at least my email is on a domain I control, and worst case I'd just need to hard migrate to another provider while keeping the address.

ubermonkey• 3 years ago

I'm pretty tied to Apple for lots of things, and I generally trust them (or I wouldn't be tied this way), but even I won't put myself in a position where a single vendor can utterly cripple me.

My email isn't at iCloud. It's at Fastmail.

My iCloud data -- contacts, calendars, etc -- is backed up locally.

My login to my Mac isn't run by Apple.

Regardless of how much you trust a vendor, you should never create a single point of failure, right?

alexwasserman• 3 years ago

From the discussion on the Reddit link this was related to financial issues and limited to app store and iTunes accounts, not all iCloud.

arp2422• 3 years ago

I ask to talk to a manager. Apple support manager calls me and confirms everything that the rep said. She keeps on saying that she "understands my frustration". Gee thanks. She says that it's frustrating for her too as this is something that happens frequently. That's when I start laughing. I ask her "This happens frequently and you haven't come up with a solution yet!?!?" She just keeps on apologizing and tells me that maybe I can post on the customer support forum and maybe if enough people do so, a change will be made.

From this account the manager sounds like a nice person who is essentially powerless to do anything. Seems like an incredibly frustrating position to be in.

My comment from a few days ago fits pretty well here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36933489

Whenever people say that "AI will replace all the jobs": remember these stories.

stepupmakeup• 3 years ago

That's basically the support Google provides for consumer service subscribers. "24/7 support" isn't really useful when all they can do is refer you to their help portal and come up with titles when you ask to talk to a supervisor, manager, etc, in addition to swapping around the communication medium, so from live chat with 2 minute response times to emailing with two day response times, and eventually flat out ghosting (no "your ticket has been resolved") because the support "manager" understands that the conversation is going nowhere.

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

My sense isn’t that they don’t have a solution, it’s that the people you talk to, including “managers” are just fancy drones who have not been granted any nontrivial decisionmaking power by the Company. They just follow decision trees and act as a car bumper for small collisions.

llm_nerd• 3 years ago

It's pretty common that the front line don't and can't know the underlying details, especially in situations that might have overlaps with law enforcement / crime.

Apple gift cards are a massive vehicle for fraud, both in extracting value from stolen credit cards, and in scams ("the IRS has frozen your SS number...send iTunes cards or get arrested!"). There are places that sell Apple cards 80%+ off face value, the use of which is a very good way to get your account locked. Stolen/scammed Apple cards should have a market value of nothing.

I know nothing about this particular case or whether such gift cards played a part. And ultimately getting completely locked out of a digital identity without recourse is ridiculous and demands legislative remedy. However I'm pretty cynical about these sorts of stories at this point. Perhaps it's years of playing in first person shooter games where it's normal to see cheaters/hackers wail about their innocence when banned, to eventually changing their story and just going radio silent when they're proven cheats. Apple has absolutely no benefit to arbitrarily banning random people for fun. Not that it couldn't happen, and errors absolutely happen, however it usually isn't random.

deltarholamda• 3 years ago

My issue with this is that the CS rep reframed what is essentially theft--assuming it's a straight up error on Apple's part--to the tune of hundreds of dollars as "frustrating," and then suggesting that oh yeah, "it's frustrating to me too".

This is handling on the part of the rep, and it's not "frustrating," it's infuriating.

To take the example to the extreme, imagine if you get a call from a cop who tells you that your child has been killed, and they say "I know it's terrible, but it's terrible for me too, I had to call you about your dead kid."

Even if it's broadly accurate that it is "frustrating", the CS rep will go home that night not short a few hundred dollars because a giant multinational corporation just... took it.

arp2422• 3 years ago

I think I'd rather be locked out of my Apple account and lose access to some stuff than be stuck in a job where I have to powerlessly tell people that this has happened to them every day.

I get where you're coming from. But in the end we're all powerless "cogs in the machine" with much of our autonomy stripped by, ehm, who even? Apple Management? Some Apple engineer who wrote this? The Algorithm (which may or may not be comprehensible and may or may not be able to explain its decisions)? Someone/thing else? I feel we need think about this on a higher level than just "customer X was kicked in the teeth" and even "customers regularly get kicked in the teeth".

black_puppydog2• 3 years ago

I just "love" how the apple fans go right to the victim blaming. From the thread:

I'm not sure if OP doesn't use the right communication.

How much clearer could it be? They clearly understood the situation, and they're clearly unwilling (not unable!) to do anything about it. "They" being apple the corporation, not any individual who may well be unable to do what's right with the tools/permissions they're given.

That is simply because the "situation" is only a "problem" for the customer. For apple, it's just that, a situation. Not bad enough to warrant a solution.

FireBeyond3• 3 years ago

My favorite was "the apple rep told you more than they were meant to. they're not allowed to tell you things, but if they were, you'd totally understand why they did it and even thank them".

To which someone at least calls out the laughability of this: "Uh, I'm not thanking any company that just deletes my account and loses me data, apps and money, with no recourse".

ryandrake• 3 years ago

It has now been [0] days since the last [cloud service cancels my account and won't tell me why] article. We should all be working to minimize/eliminate our dependence on cloud service accounts that can simply disappear due to bad automation or at the whim of the service provider. How many articles like this need to be posted before we are all convinced?

scarface_742• 3 years ago

As opposed to keeping all of my data at home where it will be lost if stolen or there is a fire?

And individuals doing their own automation couldn’t make a mistake?

That being said, the only thing I really care about are my photos and videos and they are synced to

- iCloud

- Google Photos

- Microsoft OneDrive

- Amazon Photos (photos only not videos)

dahwolf• 3 years ago

An unlimited amount because your advise does not scale.

Society has rapidly digitized. We now have billions of people using big tech account systems to access things. And the things are no longer toys, they represent things of real value.

We need legislation. It should be illegal to randomly deny service, to not disclose a reason, to not have a sane appeal process.

gumby3• 3 years ago

If the reddit poster is in the US this is perfect for a small claims court claim. No lawyer, just file and show up and most likely win even if Apple sends someone to contest it.

Then if they don't pay judgement you can literally go to the Apple store with a sheriff and take things off the shelf up to the value of your claim. Or take one of the display tables.

THAT would get Apple's attention.

One of my favorite events from the (horrible) Great Financial Crisis was a case of this: the winner of a claim against one of the big banks (I think it was a bogus foreclosure, or some fees or something) couldn't get the bank to cough up, so they walked into a branch with the sheriff and just started removing furniture. Got a lot of attention in the press and then in the Florida Legislature.

kmeisthax• 3 years ago

Don't take anything with a computer chip in it, Apple can iCloud lock it.

As for if they would blatantly reject the sovereignty of their host country by locking legally stolen property, who knows. We've been sleepwalking into anarcho-capitalism for decades.

m463• 3 years ago

Don't take anything with a computer chip in it, Apple can iCloud lock it.

if they did that, could you take them to small claims court?

flutas• 3 years ago

One of my favorite events from the (horrible) Great Financial Crisis was a case of this: the winner of a claim against one of the big banks (I think it was a bogus foreclosure, or some fees or something) couldn't get the bank to cough up, so they walked into a branch with the sheriff and just started removing furniture.

Yup, he walked out with a check that same day too.

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclo...

Highlights:

The Florida incident arose when the bank foreclosed on Warren and Maureen Nyerges of Golden Gate Estates in Naples. This surprised the Nyerges, since they had no mortgage--not with BofA or with anybody else. They had paid cash for their home in 2009.
Finally he hired an attorney. Two months later, the foreclosure had been dismissed.
Nyerges then sought to recover his attorney's fees, and got a judgment against the bank. Five more months passed: more phone calls, more letters; no payment. Nyerges went back to court and got a writ of execution, which gave him permission to seize bank assets in payment for his judgment.
On June 3, Nyerges, two sheriff's deputies and a moving truck showed up at the local BofA branch. The deputies informed the manager that he could either pay the Nyerges' legal fees— $2,500—or the movers would start taking away the bank's furniture and cash. The manager, after conferring with his superiors, gave the deputies a check.
Bank of America later apologized to the Nyerges in writing--but managed to misspell their name.

the_jeremy• 3 years ago

The TOS you agree to when you create an iCloud account say they can close your account and that you are not entitled to refunds for purchases you've made when they do this. What does going to court accomplish?

dundarious• 3 years ago

TOS do not negate your rights. They often contain unenforceable (i.e., incorrect, illegal) provisions. Part of their purpose is to muddy the waters for the consumer, convincing them that they do not have the rights they do.

throwaway_ab• 3 years ago

Many ToS have many illegal parts.

Repeat after me: You cannot:

... contract away... / ... agree away... / ... accept ToS away...

... your legal protections & ... any law

Illegal ToS are literally scary stories to scare people, but if any part of that ToS goes against laws/ your rights, then that part is null and void.

Courts often have cases where a ToS section or section of a contract is not legally enforceable, and the court simply sets that aside as if it never existed.

gumby3• 3 years ago

My developer account is not connected in any way with my personal apple ID.

The dev appleid is so old it is not an email address -- in fact it has a space in it. That occasionally breaks things but I figure that might help in a case like that too :-)

PlunderBunny• 3 years ago

Assuming the case where your credit card (that is linked to your iCloud account) is stolen (I.e. just the credit card details) and then used fraudulently by someone else, and that this causes Apple to lock your account, would it be better to use an entirely separate card for iCloud and for iCloud only?

cesarb3• 3 years ago

(I.e. just the credit card details) and then used fraudulently by someone else [...] would it be better to use an entirely separate card for iCloud and for iCloud only?

I've already once had a card used fraudulently as a credit card, but it had never been used for anything other than being initially unlocked at the bank's ATM (it was the card for the secondary owner of that bank account), and its credit card function hadn't even been enabled (which meant that the attempted misuse was immediately rejected). So I wouldn't expect that using a card for iCloud and iCloud only would be enough to prevent it from being used fraudulently somehow.

indigodaddy• 3 years ago

For my non-MoviesAnywhere direct movie purchases and code redeems, I’m starting to use Vudu a lot more than iTunes, as the having your account disabled or suspended for some vague reason is pretty much not a thing with Vudu. All Vudu does is movies and TV, nothing else, and they want to keep you as that customer.

worik2• 3 years ago

Apple took $USD100 from me for a "developer license" I never received

I fought back but realized they had all the power. The power to ruin me and my employer's business.

FTC

CoastalCoder• 3 years ago

Could you sue Apple in small-claims court?

Nothing says "please pay attention to me" like having a sheriff's deputy put a padlock on a nearby Apple store.

pier253• 3 years ago

My father got hacked and lost access to his Apple account. The hacker proceeded to delete the account and tried to take control of his devices.

At no moment Apple sent an email to my father to confirm anything. Once the account was deleted, there was nothing Apple could or would do. Everything was lost.

Taking control of the devices back was quite the odyssey as Apple required invoices and whatnot.

oidar• 3 years ago

Can you tell me more about this?

pier253• 3 years ago

I wrote this Twitter thread when it happened.

https://twitter.com/pierbover/status/1574875206220488705

Let me know if you want more details

turquoisevar2• 3 years ago

Are you sure it went the way you described here?

You can’t take control of devices after deleting the account, and notifications are send out per email for every little thing from logging in from a new device to changing trusted devices and phone numbers to changing the address on file.

pier253• 3 years ago

I was as surprised as you are but AFAIK he didn't receive any email from Apple and he certainly didn't agree to having his account deleted.

I guess one possibility is the hacker might have accessed my father's email but it seems improbable. AFAIK my father didn't store passwords on the keychain and didn't sync it with iCloud.

themagician• 3 years ago

I had this happen with both Facebook and Google.

With Facebook it took 6 months to get fixed. Then it happened again in 2020 and I was only recently able to get the flag removed a few months ago.

With Google I took it much more serious. Took about 6 days of non stop calls and emails. Probably put in 4-6 hours a day just trying over and over again.

The trick is to just keep trying. Again and again. Don’t waste time talking to people who can’t help. You start to get a feel for it. Eventually you can find your way to “Risk Management“ and a human will review your account. Same response from both Facebook (multiple times) and Google, which is some derivation of, “Sorry. Our algorithm was overly zealous and accidentally flagged your account. The flag has been removed and your access restored.”

Of course no one uses a real name or last name and everyone uses an ephemeral email address so it’s impossible to ever reach back out.

pdonis• 3 years ago

This is why I never have my only copy of anything on any online/"cloud" service.

hackan• 3 years ago

Stop throwing moneyz to them, they will never change...

pluc• 3 years ago

You don't get to 394 billion in revenue by being nice

retrocryptid• 3 years ago

hunh. turns out the cloud is someone else's computer. who knew?

chinabot• 3 years ago

I wish I could make a hackernews post that went viral everytime I got screwed over by a company

talkingtab2• 3 years ago

If your state allows small claims court, then file an action. This is typically pretty easy. Small claims court is your friend. Apple can tell you all day long there is nothing to do, but it will cost them a lawyer to act respond to your small claims filing. EVERYONE should file a small claims action whenever you suffer a loss and someone says "there is nothing we can do."

And please, post what happens.

notpushkin3• 3 years ago

Reminder that it is completely ethical to torrent a movie you already bought. (Not saying it's legal, but IMO it should be.)

OptionX• 3 years ago

Well, at least there's one less person willing to sell their entire digital soul to a singular big corp. Shame OP had to learn it like this.

This of course if s/he don't just make another AppleID, because fool me once and all that.

pasc1878• 3 years ago

Well done HN reddit is not responding.

Espionage724• 3 years ago

Ok I get what the title's purpose is, but that implied something totally different than what I actually read.

Yeah you lose access to the content you technically rent from Apple if your account gets disabled. Same with other major providers. Go to your financial department and refund it, but even they would be doing you a favor since you've agreed to the provider's terms.

Local files > cloud providers

djbusby• 3 years ago

Had an account booted from Amazon Affiliates. Vague reasons given. Appealed, denied, stated it final.

But they have arbitration clause, so maybe that's an option? Arbitration costs $2000 USD.

These kinds of situations need something of regulation. Not heavy, just let us get a hold of a human to explain and review these cases.

turquoisevar2• 3 years ago

These fraud prevention actions are nothing new sadly.

Apple does it, Google does it, your bank does it and you’ll never receive any details because they all heavily lean on security through obscurity, out of fear that any information might be helpful to game and circumvent detection.

In the case of online services it’s also partially because they don’t know if they’re dealing with the scammer or the legitimate account holder and they don’t care to setup a process to do identity verification.

The only difference is that with a bank you usually at least get your money (although Revolut has shown to not even do that in certain cases), with services you can pound sand because nothing is owned and it’s all based on licenses that can be revoked at any time for no reason.

That’s why the small claims revenge fantasy is so silly, nothing will come of it. Yeah sure ToS don’t trump law, but the law has shown time and time again that it’s entirely ok with revoking licenses for pretty much any reason conceivable, because licenses aren’t held in the same regard as property rights.

So far, every example I’ve seen with Apple has been a case in which the person redeemed thousands of dollars of gift cards, triggering the fraud algorithm in the process. A few of them managed to get their account reinstated by emailing the executive team. This is the first case I’ve seen in which the person insists that this isn’t the case and that they’ve done nothing to trigger the fraud algorithm.

As an outsider I don’t have the details either way, but I’d be more concerned about the loss of data than the monetary value of purchases, if only because those can be charged back without worrying about the consequences (which normally be the closure of the Apple ID).

I’d also reach out to the executive team, mainly because I have good experiences with them myself.

Whatever the case, this is a risk that isn’t going to go away soon when dealing with companies.

Apple stole $100s from me, Customer Service says there's nothing they can do

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