Locked out: How a gift card purchase destroyed an Apple account

https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/12/13/locked-out-how-a-gift-card-purchase-destroyed-an-apple-account

by nonfamous • 7 months ago

70 41 7 months ago

appleinsider.com

gnabgib• 7 months ago

Discussion on original source (1708 points, 3 days ago, 1062 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114

PaulHoule• 7 months ago

Never have anything to do with gift cards, ever. If you get one as a gift give it back to the giver.

steve_adams_863• 7 months ago

They're essentially a scheme to collect cash in advance and reap unspent cards, right? I don't know why anyone ever thought they made more sense than cash.

koolba• 7 months ago

Because people are generally weak minded and have been brainwashed into thinking that it’s tacky to give cash.

rk06• 7 months ago

because you can gift them to others and ensure that they use it.

same for amazon gift cards

ryanjshaw• 7 months ago

I had a relative ask me to buy them an Amazon voucher as a birthday gift, because they lived on the other side of the world, didn’t want to eat the SWIFT charges, and didn’t know how to offramp cryptocurrency.

For some reason every card I put in wasn’t accepted, and then my 10 year old Amazon account was banned. I was even using a Fire TV at the time with the same account. Had to create a new account. Very annoying.

akkartik4• 7 months ago

Funny story: I can't get an Apple ID.

I tried around 10 years ago, repeatedly would provide a password, get a notification, click on it, get asked to type my new password.. and get told the password was invalid.

Anyways, I moved on with my life. I was only reminded of it this year when I got referred for a job at Apple.. and guess what, I still can't make an Apple ID. So now I can't ever get a job at Apple :) Oh well, first world problems.

3eb7988a1663• 7 months ago

This Kafka nightmare is somewhat funny when it does not impact your life, but with increasing centralization, I worry for the future. What happens when an AppleID/Google account in good standing is required to open a bank account? Go grocery shopping? Hold your drivers license? Apply for a job anywhere?

Big tech has repeatedly shown that they are willing to ignore life destroying account workflows so long as they only impact a minority.

akkartik4• 7 months ago

The best answer I have is: for those of us who start life with some level of privilege, it's important to make good decisions and manage your risk exposure. Life is geopolitics.

But yeah, I'm not looking forward to the day I need to show a Google or Facebook account to receive government services. US Visa applications are already going in that direction.

anonymousiam• 7 months ago

This sort of thing is already becoming a reality. Not necessarily with Apple/Google IDs, but with email addresses. As the owner of a few dozen Internet domain names, I use some of them with catchalls so I can create new and unique email addresses for various entities I correspond with.

Sometimes this has failed, because the entity uses some third-party validation service that can find no record anywhere of the existence of the new email address. So it's sometimes impossible to register a new account somewhere unless you use an email address that is "known" to the validation system.

I'm not sure what "problem" they were trying to solve by doing it this way, but they've created a new problem by doing it.

Also, sometimes I've tried to use very short email addresses such as: x@xxx.com, and they're flagged as invalid even though they're not.

I've also had valid accounts disabled without notification because the email address I used had the name of the entity within. E.g. google@xxx.com Some companies assume you're trying to impersonate them if you do this, and silently disable existing accounts. Usually the tech support staff aren't even aware of these restrictions, which makes it even more difficult to recover.

don-code• 7 months ago

Sadly, you don't even need to engage directly with these companies to be affected. Case in point: e-mail.

I host my own e-mail. Valid SPF, not on any spam blacklists, good reputation score on my static IP.

At the beginning of November, I lost the ability to send e-mail to Gmail - it was all rejected as, quote, "possibly spammy". Double checked SPF and DMARC... Double checked documentation... Spent time setting up DKIM on my mail server, even though I sent nowhere near enough mail to merit it. Nothing got through for two weeks.

Google Postmaster Tools were totally unhelpful, telling me _that_ I was being blocked, but not _why_ I was being blocked. There is a community support forum where I posted - it hasn't seen a response since I posted in November. There was also a support portal where I could, in theory, contact a human. I sent something in there, and am still awaiting a reply.

Now remember, Gmail isn't just for @gmail.com addresses. Gmail hosts my accountant's domain. Gmail hosts the domain for a club that I'm part of. Gmail hosts friends who also have their own domains. Gmail hosts... well, probably a solid half of the Internet's e-mail.

My only way out of this nightmare was to reach out to a contact at Google, who - having an @google.com e-mail - was also unable to receive e-mail from me, and made the case to the right folks internally that I couldn't send important messages to him. A few days later, I could magically send e-mail to Google again.

Do I have any idea what I did? No. Do I have any idea what they resolved? Also no. Can I prevent it in the future? Who knows!

userbinator• 7 months ago

What happens when an AppleID/Google account in good standing is required

At this point Big Tech is only scared of the government, so keep that in mind --- the Amish may be on your side.

somenameforme• 7 months ago

Amish 2.0?

I realize this sounds out there, but I'm not entirely joking. I feel there is a significant subset of all people that are not particularly happy with the direction of society at large. And the great thing about places like the US is that you're free to develop your own little sub-societies. There's no reason a group of like-minded people could not work to develop a technologically embracing society, but one that aims to focus more on decentralization, and utilizing digitization as a convenience rather than a necessity.

Think about something like a 'Google Smart City' except from an entirely different ideological foundation, such that the entire project doesn't sound like something out of Black Mirror. The reason this would be beneficial as a social project, instead of the vastly more viable independent one, is that a lot of tech is generally seen as undesirable, certainly in certain contexts (like smartphones at school), yet it spreads virally making its adoption a defacto necessity. Get rid of the virality and you could create a better life, and a better situation, for many people.

stevenwoo• 7 months ago

This happened to me when the local credit union, TechCU, overhauled their web interface and app. I called their help line and stumped them for a while. I finally figured out their interface allowed me to use a period in my password and confirmation field and accepted them but somehow their login process did not. To their credit the characters they listed as allowable did not list period which I did not read carefully and just skimmed the first time I saw it.

akkartik4• 7 months ago

This year I don't even get to the point of making a password. It's possible something about my attempt 10 years ago has polluted my phone number. So it goes.

Notice, too, that my story is about the utter lack of support like in OP.

davidw• 7 months ago

Sadly, companies like Apple don't have quite the resources that local credit unions do, so they can't do that kind of tech support. Apparently...

ZPrimed• 7 months ago

Companies that are limiting what characters people use in their passwords are almost definitely doing something incredibly wrong with security.

(passwords should be hashed...)

kevin_thibedeau• 7 months ago

I still can't make an Apple ID

Sounds like an egregious EEO violation then.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF• 7 months ago

I still can't make an Apple ID. So now I can't ever get a job at Apple

Is this actually a requirement to work at Apple? What is the legality of employers demanding their employees agree with unrelated-to-their-job terms and conditions? I mean, one of these conditions is that you settle all disputes with them through arbitrators of their choosing, that would be crazy if true.

kryptn2• 7 months ago

this happened to someone i was helping. we went to support. they now have an apple id.

akkartik4• 7 months ago

Ah cool. Did you go into a store?

iJohnDoe• 7 months ago

What’s the latest on this from the OP? Did Tim Cook’s team respond?

We live a dystopian world where a trillion dollar company can’t fix the account. Worse than that, out of their several hundred thousand employees, not a single one is capable or willing to fix it.

Speaks volumes about our species in general and where we are headed.

When the executives go on their spiritual retreats or their boondoggle get togethers to talk about company values to the employees; it would all seem so pointless and hypocritical when they can’t fix situations like this.

add-sub-mul-div• 7 months ago

Not having to provide customer service is part of the magic that allows these tech companies to get to this size in the first place. Customer service doesn't scale.

Ferret7446• 7 months ago

The irony is that Apple's selling point (as far as I know) is good customer support. e.g. with Google at least you know you aren't getting any support

paranoidrobot• 7 months ago

What’s the latest on this from the OP? Did Tim Cook’s team respond?

From their bsky account, maybe.

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/hey.paris/post/3ma3of537kk2d

hurfdurf• 7 months ago

So just another case of getting proper support only if you make a big enough splash on social media and news outlets.

ChrisArchitect• 7 months ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252114

beached_whale• 7 months ago

Since these companies have positioned themselves and infrastructure and are de facto utilities, we need to regulate them as such. If they are going to cancel an account there needs to be a transparent and open process that is fair, not autonomous fraud protection without recourse, just a goodbye. This is them pushing their costs, fraud protection, onto others who cannot stop it. Regulate them.

josefritzishere2• 7 months ago

My take away is never to buy Apple products. Their brand marketing. ng projects a level of quality they simply no longer have. This kind of support problem is unacceptable and Apple isn't going to improve the situation unless it impacts sales. (In all probability it will continue to get worse until it impacts sales.)

Locked out: How a gift card purchase destroyed an Apple account

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