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 failed to respond. If you don’t return a trade-in and your card goes past due, it makes sense that Apple would revoke access to services tied to that purchase. Framing it as Apple “holding accounts hostage” feels misleading—it looks more like the natural result of missed obligations and poor follow-up.
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.
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.
To be fair Apple didn’t respond to the reply that they hadn’t received the trade-in kit and it’s some kind of hostage situation. No other credit card company could block all these services because a payment was 15 days overdue.
I have an appleid that I’ve had for over 15 years. A couple months ago I bought a Mac and I decided to do it by getting an Apple Card and financing it at 0%. I made the apparent mistake of not creating a new Apple ID for this new machine, because it’s quite a shock to me that if I miss an Apple Card payment, my 17 year old Apple ID that controls my long-paid-off phone is at stake. That’s an unusual amount of leverage for a company to have.
the idea here is that Apple Card is owned by gs. Being delinquent with AC shouldn’t have any impact to currently leased/paid for digital assets such as Music/Movies.
Good job blaming the victim. Hail corporate, I guess
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.
This was from 2021 and in the end he was at least able to talk to some humans and solve the issue. As bad as it was, it was still miles ahead of what you could expect in a similar situation with google.
We have had contact with Apple support about three times since 2007 and every time they were both reachable by phone and extremely helpful. Last time there was an issue with ordering Apple Care for a MacBook leading to the amount getting subtracted from our account twice. It took only a few minutes to escalate it from the first line of support to their financial department. After the issue was solved, they called back after a week to make sure things were also good on my end. Same thing happened when my wife had an issue about 10 years ago, not only were they very helpful, they also called her a week later to make sure everything was up to her expectations. (This was in NL and DE respectively.)
The only other large company that I have similar experiences with is our ISP (KPN in NL) who are also really easy to get hold off and very helpful (down to helping you hook up your own fiber equipment).
I was automatically blocked by Google when I was a teenager, lost data that meant a lot to me… I even wrote a letter to the local Google office asking for help, to no response.
To no surprise, there’s no Google in my life since then, except when my work mandates it.
Apple support is amazingly good. It’s stark when most other companies have “optimized” customer service to discourage users from using or achieving anything through it. It’s also often an interesting glimpse into Apple’s behind the scenes tech support tools which are quite extensive.
It has always seemed unwise to me to go all-in on ecosystems where multiple services that aren't inherently related are provided by the same company. If there's a problem ranging from a missed payment to a fraud-detection false positive, someone who does might lose access to multiple services.
I don't want to log in with my Google account, pay with Apple, get phone service from Paypal, or use my bank's app store. It's much less hassle to deal with a problem affecting only one of those than losing them all at once.
Agreed. Every time I sign up for services I imagine how I would fare if I lost access to everything from this company. It's why I ended up de-Googling my life. The horror stories of people losing access to their Gmail accounts led me to purchase my own domain and migrate all my accounts with that email across. That ended up being a multi-year project, but now if my host ever cuts off access to my emails, I can be back online within an hour.
I don't get why anyone is defending Apple here. Suppose for the sake of argument that Apple did everything right at first, and the author just chose not to pay his credit card bill for no reason.
> We’ve been unable to collect full payment for your new iPhone. As a result, we will block the device on the order from further access to the Apple iTunes and Mac App stores, and disable all accounts associated with the device purchased on the order.
Apple is retroactively making everything you've ever bought from them, even things you've fully paid for and owned outright, be the collateral for whatever payment you're currently behind on. If this weren't "do it on a computer", it would be obviously ridiculous. Imagine that you bought a new sink from Lowe's, defaulted on your Lowe's credit card, and so they came to rip the deck off of your house since you built it with lumber that you bought from them (and paid for) a few years ago.
There needs to be a better way to deal with trillion dollar companies that have the power to remove essential parts of your life based on bugs or incompetent processes.
Companies like Apple. Microsoft, Google, Meta, et al. have the money to spend on better customer support, but they don't because they have a monopoly. They know they can do whatever they want and there's nothing we can do. But even worse, they have absolute and total control and then hide behind their lack of customer support.
I think there should be a law that states that once you become large enough or important enough, you MUST reach a certain level of competent customer support or you will get fined the amount of money it will cost to pay for this competent customer support.
The reason why they get around bad customer support is because they are large enough so that they can bully billions of people by threatening to cut off access. Talk to Youtubers that get mysteriously cut off with no customer support to talk to.
This is all because of customer support. Smaller companies need to invest in customer support because of competition but not these larger companies because they don't have real competition, and something needs to change to force them to do it.
I can understand the problem from the viewpoint of the big companies. How do you provide personalized support to such a huge customer base? The solution of course is to charge for it! Say for instance, I got kicked of of "ogle", but its critical to all my billing etc because of email. Its free email, there are going to be cases when you get locked out (happened to me before with another email provider, THEY got hacked so locked ME out haha, only sentimental things were lost thankfully).
But what about a $100 recovery fee? Then the problem becomes "how do you prove its your account"? There's a wide variety of jurisdictions and id mechanisms, can "ogle" manage all that? I don't know, I'm not close to even talking about "faang" or whatever let alone work at one. So many transactions happen nowadays with these systems that are long strings of rube goldberg machines helped by "AI" that is actually not that intelligent. Is it financially possible to even run these megacorps without the ability to discard problem "customers"? Can you build customer support processes and staff at this sort of scale? Even setting up new billing for what was previously a free account seems sort of daunting.
I guess I'm saying that I'm not so sure that these megacorps "have the money to spend on better customer support," except in the apple case, their customer base is so "unfree" and high margin that I don't understand why they would have a problem, even if repairing an account required a fee for some sort of id verification which seems to be the crucial thing here. They are obviously well positioned with their per customer costs and apple id stuff.
On one hand, I want to reply "duh, you didn't pay your CC" but at the same time Apple is _horrible_ about messaging things like this.
I had some random Apple charge not go through (IIRC it was my monthly iPhone Citizen One bill that was paid on my Apple Card but the Apple Card rejected the payment???). And it fouled up things in odd ways that were not clear at all from any UI I could access.
In the end I had to keep clicking a "retry" payment in some obscure corner of Apple's account management with zero info on if it worked or not then wait a few days to see if I got another scary email from Apple. It ended up working out without my needing to call support so I don't know if they would have been helpful.
I will say, my experiences with Apple support have been largely positive to amazing. Their business support (ABM) is so good I felt like I was getting away with a massive heist getting the amount of help I got as a single-person LLC. Almost instant answer of the phone, clear audio, easy to understand support person, incredibly knowledgeable (used all the right industry terms), and gave me the info I needed to go smack AT&T (read more about here [0]). 10/10 experience.
Side moral there: if you have access to a functional regulatory system, don’t be afraid to ask it for help when a large company is messing with you. In general, such agencies love nothing more than to get to be the one to swat the corp on the nose with a rolled up federal register.
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....
Indeed, that and missing a pretty serious sounding email from Apple.
I 100% commiserate with the author and have missed important stuff before, but yeah, this article reminds me of the importance of making a habit to read the emails from my "important" accounts each morning. I setup some guardrails to help save myself from my own humanity, e.g. monthly "pay CC" calendar events.
Stories like this have been sufficient to convince me to stay far away from Apple Card or any other financial instrument directly entangled with the tools of my daily life.
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
The moral of this story is that "vertical integration" doesn't always mean what it says on the tin."Carpe Diem" for shareholders can translate to "Caveat emptor" for consumers.
tldr : confused, the user decided to go read overlooked emails, and ...
> As it turns out, my bank account number changed in January, causing Apple Card autopay to fail. Then the Apple Store made a charge on the card. Less than fifteen days after that, my App Store, iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple ID accounts had all been disabled by Apple Card.
If you fail to pay a company for a new thing, their self-help recourse should be limited to taking back/disabling the new thing, not all of the old things that you've previously bought from them and paid for. If they want more than that, they should have to go through the courts like any other kind of debt collection would.
So, yeah, the linked article is half a decade old by now and would best be flagged as "HN is not Apple customer service", but there is something worth salvaging here.
Which is: sure, you're a tech company wanting to change the world. And, sure, this will ruffle some feathers and break a few eggs by design, but: the least you can do is stand up for your customers, right?
So: if your actual customers want to urgently talk to you about, ehm, things, how do you enable this? And, how do you communicate the outcomes to the wider world?
I’d have a phone number that customers can use to reach someone at my company who can help them, and put that phone number in places where customers can find it.
Which is what most companies actually do, including Apple. Uncontactable companies like Google aren’t the norm.
I understand and share the frustration that email and chat work poorly, but unfortunately that’s often how it is. If you need help, your best bet is usually to call. It doesn’t sound like this guy ever did that.
p0012042024uy|9 months ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26310817
DuckConference|9 months ago
Allegedly unrelated to the apple card, your appleid just gets locked if you don't fulfill a trade-in.
dang|9 months ago
Apple Card Disabled My iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID Accounts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26310817 - March 2021 (302 comments)
jms703|9 months ago
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 failed to respond. If you don’t return a trade-in and your card goes past due, it makes sense that Apple would revoke access to services tied to that purchase. Framing it as Apple “holding accounts hostage” feels misleading—it looks more like the natural result of missed obligations and poor follow-up.
thanatosmin|9 months ago
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.
notpushkin|9 months ago
And no, it doesn’t make sense for Apple to disable most of the services in case a credit card is past due for a few days.
II2II|9 months ago
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.
croes|9 months ago
hamburglar|9 months ago
xyst|9 months ago
Good job blaming the victim. Hail corporate, I guess
jillyboel3|9 months ago
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.
elzbardico|9 months ago
r0fl|9 months ago
microtonal|9 months ago
The only other large company that I have similar experiences with is our ISP (KPN in NL) who are also really easy to get hold off and very helpful (down to helping you hook up your own fiber equipment).
przemub|9 months ago
ipv6ipv4|9 months ago
unknown|9 months ago
[deleted]
notpushkin|9 months ago
Zak|9 months ago
I don't want to log in with my Google account, pay with Apple, get phone service from Paypal, or use my bank's app store. It's much less hassle to deal with a problem affecting only one of those than losing them all at once.
Gareth321|9 months ago
GuestFAUniverse|9 months ago
jsheard|9 months ago
numpad0|9 months ago
morning-coffee|9 months ago
josephcsible|9 months ago
> We’ve been unable to collect full payment for your new iPhone. As a result, we will block the device on the order from further access to the Apple iTunes and Mac App stores, and disable all accounts associated with the device purchased on the order.
Apple is retroactively making everything you've ever bought from them, even things you've fully paid for and owned outright, be the collateral for whatever payment you're currently behind on. If this weren't "do it on a computer", it would be obviously ridiculous. Imagine that you bought a new sink from Lowe's, defaulted on your Lowe's credit card, and so they came to rip the deck off of your house since you built it with lumber that you bought from them (and paid for) a few years ago.
blindriver|9 months ago
Companies like Apple. Microsoft, Google, Meta, et al. have the money to spend on better customer support, but they don't because they have a monopoly. They know they can do whatever they want and there's nothing we can do. But even worse, they have absolute and total control and then hide behind their lack of customer support.
I think there should be a law that states that once you become large enough or important enough, you MUST reach a certain level of competent customer support or you will get fined the amount of money it will cost to pay for this competent customer support.
The reason why they get around bad customer support is because they are large enough so that they can bully billions of people by threatening to cut off access. Talk to Youtubers that get mysteriously cut off with no customer support to talk to.
This is all because of customer support. Smaller companies need to invest in customer support because of competition but not these larger companies because they don't have real competition, and something needs to change to force them to do it.
cowboylowrez|9 months ago
But what about a $100 recovery fee? Then the problem becomes "how do you prove its your account"? There's a wide variety of jurisdictions and id mechanisms, can "ogle" manage all that? I don't know, I'm not close to even talking about "faang" or whatever let alone work at one. So many transactions happen nowadays with these systems that are long strings of rube goldberg machines helped by "AI" that is actually not that intelligent. Is it financially possible to even run these megacorps without the ability to discard problem "customers"? Can you build customer support processes and staff at this sort of scale? Even setting up new billing for what was previously a free account seems sort of daunting.
I guess I'm saying that I'm not so sure that these megacorps "have the money to spend on better customer support," except in the apple case, their customer base is so "unfree" and high margin that I don't understand why they would have a problem, even if repairing an account required a fee for some sort of id verification which seems to be the crucial thing here. They are obviously well positioned with their per customer costs and apple id stuff.
joshstrange|9 months ago
I had some random Apple charge not go through (IIRC it was my monthly iPhone Citizen One bill that was paid on my Apple Card but the Apple Card rejected the payment???). And it fouled up things in odd ways that were not clear at all from any UI I could access.
In the end I had to keep clicking a "retry" payment in some obscure corner of Apple's account management with zero info on if it worked or not then wait a few days to see if I got another scary email from Apple. It ended up working out without my needing to call support so I don't know if they would have been helpful.
I will say, my experiences with Apple support have been largely positive to amazing. Their business support (ABM) is so good I felt like I was getting away with a massive heist getting the amount of help I got as a single-person LLC. Almost instant answer of the phone, clear audio, easy to understand support person, incredibly knowledgeable (used all the right industry terms), and gave me the info I needed to go smack AT&T (read more about here [0]). 10/10 experience.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39154315
unknown|9 months ago
[deleted]
kstrauser|9 months ago
edwinjm|9 months ago
runjake|9 months ago
I was able to talk to an Apple rep and get a kit sent out and get the credit re-added. This was in 2024.
Pretty easy.
Zak|9 months ago
I would not expect to get locked out of my cloud storage, app store, email, etc....
accrual|9 months ago
I 100% commiserate with the author and have missed important stuff before, but yeah, this article reminds me of the importance of making a habit to read the emails from my "important" accounts each morning. I setup some guardrails to help save myself from my own humanity, e.g. monthly "pay CC" calendar events.
amelius|9 months ago
We really need a concept like separation of powers inside companies too, otherwise we end up with corporate dictatorships.
kaonwarb|9 months ago
brundolf|9 months ago
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
xyst|9 months ago
Have moved or purchased alternates to digital assets. Nothing is held behind the Apple/Google/MS wall.
abc_lisper|9 months ago
unknown|9 months ago
[deleted]
rchaud|9 months ago
jjtheblunt|9 months ago
> As it turns out, my bank account number changed in January, causing Apple Card autopay to fail. Then the Apple Store made a charge on the card. Less than fifteen days after that, my App Store, iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple ID accounts had all been disabled by Apple Card.
homefree|9 months ago
There are few bills you can just ignore without consequence.
josephcsible|9 months ago
kstrauser|9 months ago
unknown|9 months ago
[deleted]
Bud|9 months ago
[deleted]
unknown|9 months ago
[deleted]
ZeroConcerns|9 months ago
Which is: sure, you're a tech company wanting to change the world. And, sure, this will ruffle some feathers and break a few eggs by design, but: the least you can do is stand up for your customers, right?
So: if your actual customers want to urgently talk to you about, ehm, things, how do you enable this? And, how do you communicate the outcomes to the wider world?
Bad examples abound. But how would you do better?
wat10000|9 months ago
Which is what most companies actually do, including Apple. Uncontactable companies like Google aren’t the norm.
I understand and share the frustration that email and chat work poorly, but unfortunately that’s often how it is. If you need help, your best bet is usually to call. It doesn’t sound like this guy ever did that.