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If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts
- paxys 6y agoAnd by extension all the services you sign in to using a (mandatory) sign in with Apple button.
- jvzr 6y agoThe presence of the button is mandatory, your use of it is not.
- Gys 6y agoLike Apple Card, like Facebook, like Google... ;-)
- kitsunesoba 6y agoIt’s not even mandatory unless the app offers other auth providers like Google and Facebook. If your app is based around old fashioned email and password sign-in you don’t need to include Sign In with Apple at all.
- meetups323 6y agoBut ugh please do. From the end user's perspective I 100% do not want to navigate your app's account creation process bouncing back and forth between my email client and your website and your app (if the redirect works, which it probably wont), and I 100% do not want to give your app my actual email address. Just implement apple's Auth flow. It's not that hard.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y agoYeah, refusing to implement sign-in with Apple is anti-user: as a user I want to use sign-in with Apple (and Apple Pay) everywhere I can, forcing me to use some other product for these functions is not good UX.
- kitsunesoba 6y agoAnd the reason the redirect is broken, more often than not, is because there's analytics sitting somewhere in the stack that's either not working properly because it's inherently brittle or because it's getting blocked by my adblocker. I understand the need for analytics in some situations but registration, signin, recovery, etc are critical paths and every layer of indirection is playing with fire.
- dcurtis 6y agoActually, Sign in with Apple is one of the only things that still works.
- Closi 6y agoWowza, that's a quick and efficient way to add another antitrust complaint to your list.
- choppaface 6y agoHow long until we can get Glass-Steagall for the bank of online identity?
- kweinber 6y agoLets get Glass-Steagall back for finance first. . .its affiliation clauses were totally defanged in 1999 (and likely the contributing cause for the crash of 2007-2008). After that let's work on identity.
- pgm8705 6y agoI'm guessing (and hoping) this is a bug and not intentional, but this is pretty scary. My digital personal life is almost all within Apple's ecosystem, including most of the smart devices in my house. Getting locked out for any amount of time would be super frustrating.
- fortran77 6y agoWhat makes you believe this is not intentional?
- ktta 6y agoMaybe because it's been quite a while since Apple Card was released and this is the first time we're hearing about it?
- FireBeyond 6y agoSo they haven't refined their processes since Launch Day?
- Bud 6y agoI've had Apple Card since day one. I'll tell you what makes me certain that this is not intentional and is in fact not even happening as the user is implying: -Apple and Goldman Sachs' service with Apple Card has been exemplary in every detail -Apple went out of its way throughout the early months of covid to let users skip payments for any reason. No extra interest charges -Apple Card doesn't even have any late fees, or annual fees, or fees of any kind. And the app for the card goes out of its way to keep you from paying any unnecessary interest charges -This sort of punitive action just does not jibe with the entire nature of the product or Apple's service in general
- FireBeyond 6y agoYour emphasis is wrong. This is more accurate: > I'll tell you what makes _me_ certain And you're now accusing someone of being dishonest due to lack of evidence based on your anecdotal experience, also absent evidence. > Apple and Goldman Sachs' service with Apple Card has been exemplary in every detail So that makes it "certainly" not possible that someone can have a sub-par customer sevice interaction? > Apple Card doesn't even have any late fees You're right. Good for them. They absolutely will charge you "additional interest" on top of your current APR for any late fees, however. That gets the same net effect, while providing a nice little soundbite.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoThis is one of the areas where consumers are losing their rights because of leverage by foundational companies. I think it should be illegal for a company to block your account on unrelated services. For example, Facebook should not be able to block your Occulus account, based on what happens on Facebook or WhatsApp. If the companies argue that these accounts are tied to closely together to be able to separate enforcement like that, the answer should be, "too bad, then you can't block at all, until you figure out how to separate the service blocks."
- zepto 6y ago> it should be illegal for a company to block your account on unrelated services According to the OP, they haven’t - Sign In with Apple still works.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sneak 6y agoAfter a decade deep into the Apple/iOS ecosystem, I now make a unique disposable Apple ID for each and every mobile device, and eschew all paid apps. I don't use iCloud at all. I don't use an Apple ID on desktops at all, save for one that has its own disposable one for certain essential apps that are not available elsewhere (Apple Configurator 2 is required to restore M1 macs). Making entirely unlinked/unique Apple IDs is expensive because each one requires a working phone number to create. This is really the only safe approach these days, given nonsense like this. Because iCloud Backup is non-e2e (like most of iCloud) and thus permits Apple (and the FBI by extension without a warrant) to read whatever they want out of your phone's contents, I have to do manual corded backups periodically because Apple doesn't have their cryptographic shit together. :/ I have one old wiped phone that is signed in to my ~decade-old Apple ID for managing my Apple Card, which cannot be moved between Apple IDs (just like your purchases). I'll probably cancel the card soon and delete that account. I've already replaced all of the movies I foolishly bought years ago on iTunes with torrented copies.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago> I don't use an Apple ID on desktops at all, save for one that has its own disposable one for certain essential apps that are not available elsewhere (Apple Configurator 2 is required to restore M1 macs). I don't get how this works. I feel like you need an Apple ID on a macbook to do the most basic of crap, and unfortunately, they make it SUPER hard to log out of one Apple ID and into another one on the same computer. You have to do it individually in 4-5 different places for it to actually work.
- caeril 6y ago> because each one requires a working phone number to create This isn't true. I have an email-only apple account that works fine. My lock screen constantly carries a "Verify your phone number" badge that's rather annoying, but otherwise everything functions.
- amelius 6y agoSo... it works until it doesn't? What if you are traveling and Apple decides they really need your phone number this time, and locks you out of your stuff?
- mrtksn 6y agoWow, I hope this is a bug or similar. Wouldn't the card be issued by a partner bank? How this is supposed to legally implicit the products you buy from a separate company? Could it be that when the the card fails, the services paid by that card also fail to receive the payment, thus they get locked until a payment is made? I remember stories about having an issue with an account on a Google property and losing all your access to all your Google accounts. It's a prime reason to buy services from different companies.
- kevindong 6y agoThis *FEELS* (not saying it is) like a false claim. Much like the much upvoted (and later debunked) HN post from a while back when a iOS developer claimed that Apple always keeps it 30% commission, even on a refunded purchase. I consider it worrying that a claim wholly lacking evidence is getting so much attention. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995750
- ziml77 6y agoI keep refreshing these comments and the twitter thread to see if any better info is provided. This is the kind of thing that could be a mistake on Apple's side, could be a lie from the user, or could be a misunderstanding of what actually happened.
- RandallBrown 6y agoI don't think the OP is lying. Their account was probably locked because they missed a payment. I do think this is a misunderstanding of what's happening. They're paying for iCloud with their Apple Card. If that payment fails, the account can be locked. So it's not "Missing a payment on the Apple Card locks your account" it might be "Missing an iCloud Payment locks your account." They also say the iCloud payment wasn't past due. I wouldn't be surprised if this was some weird edge case or bug that caused the account to be locked.
- yardie 6y agoThis doesn’t sound like how iCloud, Apple Card, and Apple ID work. I stopped paying for iCloud and it didn’t diable my Apple ID nor my Apple Card. Also you don’t have past due iCloud accounts. You stop paying iCloud services stop working for you. Sounds like something else is a going on here.
- dcurtis 6y agoI didn't expect that tweet to get so much attention; I'll write up some more details shortly.
- ksec 6y agoApple has done it before. So I am not surprised. John Gruber ( and only him ) [1] suggest Epic was making things up when Apple would terminate Sign in with Apple on EPIC's App. While I dont fully side with EPIC on their case against Apple, on this issue alone it was clear the fault was on Apple [2]. And imagine you are in a dispute with Apple on this matter for longer than 30days without resolution, the time your iCloud would keep your backup before it is completely wipe out due to Account termination. [1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/09/29/epic-games-unreliable-narrator https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/09/29/epic-games-unre... [2] https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1311794937797783553?s=20 https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/131179493779778355...
- komocode 6y agoIf you read Tim's tweet, it says in the policy "Ability to ENABLE Apple services [like] Sign in with Apple". This makes sense as Epic no longer has the ability to enable SIWA on new apps. Says nothing about termination of SIWA on current apps as SIWA will continue to work on existing Apps. I think Tim wasn't being too honest here.
- mannerheim 6y agoWhat does the following mean? > Apple is entirely within its rights to terminate Epic Games, Inc.'s developer account and all related functionality, but Sign In with Apple will continue to function for Apple customers for the next two weeks.
- komocode 6y ago"Within rights to terminate [...] all related functionality" is completely different than "Apple HAS TERMINATED [...] all related functionality". Upon terminating "all related functionality", SIWA will still work for two weeks, but no where in the letter said they have "terminated all related functionality". Apple chose to keep it alive. Tim Sweeny took this and misled the public saying "oh yeah, Apple is terminating it for sure" which is not the case.
- smoldesu 6y agoWhy do we even let Apple do our banking in the first place? I can't really imagine a situation where I'd rather let Apple have all my banking data instead of some random bank. Centralizing your entire digital life like that is begging for identity theft, at least from where I'm standing.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoFundamentally, the issue is that a single company is allowed to operate a mobile OS, a web browser, an app market, a banking solution, physical hardware, retail stores, and various other verticals. Google has the exact same problems, for the exact same reasons. Ban vertical integration. The government needs to force divestiture of each product category into a separately run company.
- smoldesu 6y agoI very much agree. The security threat it poses is not limited to just Apple, and it ultimately leads to a less competitive industry overall.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoI remember a book from a number of years ago, called Jennifer Government: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Government https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Government which suggested companies ran the world, and were divided into two customer loyalty program-based alliances. Everyone essentially belonged to one camp or the other, and it's surrounding ecosystem. It's hard not to feel that as an example of today, where people live in either the Apple or Google ecosystems, and only use products or services that integrate with that ecosystem.
- echelon 6y agoI'd say this is horizontal integration, but they've built so much of a monolith and captured so much commerce, that it almost feels like a vertical stack.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
- DC1350 6y agoSorry if this is a dumb question but I don’t have an iOS device. Could you be prevented from using the phone or internet, getting an Uber, or accessing your banking info because of this? Is it possible for somebody to get stranded if they don’t have a vehicle or any other phone? This seems like all sorts of horrible things could happen if you were travelling when you got locked out.
- frizkie 6y agoThat would not be possible, no. You can use an iPhone and all of its phone-related features without an Apple account. You probably wouldn't be able to download new apps but it wouldn't retroactively prevent you from using any existing banking apps you might already have on your phone.
- DC1350 6y agoOk, thanks! I didn’t know you could use the device with a disabled account.
- smoldesu 6y agoIf the question is "could you", then the answer is yes. Apple has full control over those APIs on your device, and could choose to stop serving them with the press of a button. If the question is "will they" though, I doubt they'll go that far. Apple is super wary of tipping their hand when they're holding all of the cards, and an action like this would raise a lot of concern, even within the walled garden.
- vineyardmike 6y agoProbably not... unless you used sign-in with apple to sign in, and you only had apple pay (which you can't use anyways because you already got suspended on that account), and no other cards, and all sorts of other unlikely situations put together. But someone else reported that Sign-in still works post account disable
- monadic7 6y agoI'm really curious who thought it was a good idea to use this line of credit in the first place.
- kube-system 6y agoThe people who want to borrow thousands of dollars for free.
- monadic7 6y agoI don't think that's possible with any line of credit. Our entire society is built off of interest rates.
- kube-system 6y agoThere's plenty of zero-percent consumer credit lines. Interest rates are certainly not the only way to make money by lending money, particularly if you have something to sell. In this instance: https://www.apple.com/apple-card/monthly-installments/ https://www.apple.com/apple-card/monthly-installments/ Buying a Mac on credit is considerably cheaper than buying with cash. 12 months of the time-value of money + you get 3% cash back.
- danielhlockard 6y agoNo interest if you pay off the balance of the card every month. Tons of people do it.
- monadic7 6y agoSure, tons of people don't, too. That's why creditors exist. When you use a credit card you're funding the impoverishment of others. Granted, there's not much way to avoid that in american society.
- vineyardmike 6y agoThe apple card actually gives you 0% on apple products
- samatman 6y agoSo, little embarrassed to admit this, but: I plumb forgot to set up autopay on my Apple Card when I first got it. I set it up to pay a few subscriptions and promptly forgot about it. As a result, I carried a balance for I think three months without making payments, and only noticed when I hit my credit limit. This was an expensive mistake, and also dinged my credit score for about four months. Still kinda mad at myself about it. No, Apple did not disable my account.
- ssully 6y agoLiterally just talked to a friend a few days ago who did this same exact thing. He carried a balance for about 2 months and also did not have his account disabled.
- caymanjim 6y ago> So, little embarrassed to admit this, but: I plumb forgot to set up autopay on my Apple Card when I first got it. Why is that embarassing? Why on earth would you set up auto-pay? That's just asking for a headache if anything is every compromised, or if a vendor fraudulently or accidentally overcharges you. Reversing charges from your bank is a headache, and rogue charges can quickly cascade into a series of overdrafts, other failed payments, etc. Good luck getting reimbursed for all the charges if that happens, and hope it doesn't get you into a situation where you can't pay an important bill. It's madness to ever allow automatic financial transactions that aren't fixed, scheduled payments from trusted vendors.
- vecinu 6y agoSorry but how is this dangerous? You don't have your credit cards on autopay? I regularly verify what transactions show up across my cards and you have 30 days to dispute anything. 10+ years and I never had an issue.
- RandallBrown 6y agoI don't actually auto pay any of my credit cards. I keep my checking account balance intentionally low and often run into times where paying off my cards would overdraft me. I don't think it's all that crazy of a thing to do, I just don't do it.
- brundolf 6y agoImportant detail: > The only thing Apple Card was paying for was the 2TB iCloud upgrade — and when I try to change the payment method, it refuses and says “Your account has been disabled in the App Store and iTunes.” It's not hard to imagine a payment issue for iCloud causing iCloud to be locked or otherwise limited, and given that Apple's online services tend to be buggy and unreliable it's not a huge stretch to think this could have some unintended consequences for adjacent things like the App Store. As someone else in the thread pointed out, surely others have missed Apple Card payments at this point, and we would've already heard about this if it were consistent and/or by design. Of course even if it wasn't intentional, it's still another example of the single-point-of-failure problem we have when our entire lives depend on an account with a tech company that's way too big to care when users fall through the cracks.
- ksec 6y agoAre you suggesting it is a fraud detection? Which sounds like one if he was changing payment info. ( Like doing it with VPN )
- brundolf 6y agoI'm suggesting it was something like "Your payment for iCloud didn't go through, so we locked iCloud, and whoops our system is a mess so I guess you can't use the App Store or iTunes either, maybe, although it's possible you're just getting a boilerplate error that isn't actually telling you the truth". This would be consistent with my past experiences with Apple's online services, and it's the reason I don't plan to spend money on any of them or rely on them for anything important. They're a dumpster-fire; the exact opposite of Apple's hardware and (for the most part) their system software. Fraud detection is plausible too, though
- snemvalts 6y agoYou don't even need payment problems, someone can call into the support and have your account disabled. My mom's Apple account was disabled with the same message, thought it was billing related as well. It turned out that someone with a similar surname had called in and requested their account to be disabled, but the call had cut out. The support rep happily connected the two dots and disabled my mom's account.
- williesleg 6y agoThat's not a big deal. Bank of America will close your account based on your social media score.
- dec0dedab0de 6y agoThis sounds outrageous, do they really think this is worth the bad PR? Or the lost revenue from not letting people pay with another card while they work out the issue. There has to be more to this story, this can't be the first person to miss a payment.
- newbie578 6y agoTheir platform their choice, right? If you don't like it, don't use it.. /s if not obv
- IgorPartola 6y agoHow come I am seeing surprising behavior from various Apple products multiple times a week at this point? Is it a new thing or is it just that they are huge and everyone is paying attention to them?
- zepto 6y agoWeird, isn’t it. I mean Facebook is openly leading a push to discredit Apple. That doesn’t mean Facebook is somehow behind these posts, but their attempt could be working and causing people to report things more.
- IgorPartola 6y agoThese posts do have a very specific feel to them, in that it's about how a perfectly rational engineering decision leads to bad UX. Upgrades that lock down the system further are probably good for most people, but not for developers. Missed payment leads to account lockdown is how an engineer would think to set things up, but not someone who's advocating for the user's experience. All the stuff with their new chips. You could be right that this is someone sniping at their issues and maybe playing the market at the same time. Even if it is a larger evil competitor, these do seem like legitimate problems.
- zepto 6y ago> Even if it is a larger evil competitor, these do seem like legitimate problems. I’m asserting that they are likely to be legitimate. My suggestion is that the reason we are hearing about them so much at the moment could be Facebook’s influence in setting a tone which encourages people to write about problems we didn’t otherwise hear about. But yes - it absolutely could be a symptom of a breakdown in management somewhere in Apple leading to more customer unfriendly policy outcomes. It wouldn’t be the first time they have gone through such phases.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- BoberMod 6y agoCan user continue to use apple devices? MacBook, iPhone? Or are they also blocked?
- TrackerFF 6y agoCan't verify this myself, but if true - this seems like part of a growing problem with big-tech, that everything is connected to one account, and as far as risk goes - you (the consumer) are putting all your eggs in one basket. I understand WHY companies do this, with respect to spam accounts and what not, but the false positives for real human users can be devastating, when every service and product connected to your account gets blocked/bricked.
- Gibbon1 6y agoI remember some story about the Soviet Union. People whose records had been lost could end up completely shut out from the system. Can't get a job, housing, etc.
- gist 6y agoPosts like this often seem to be a waste of reading time. Even if the person is 'a somebody'[1] there is often no context to other details just outrage by the community believing it as truth in some way. And then the predictable outrage follows. One commenter 'this is why I will not sign up for Apple Card' other comments 'big corporations suck' and so on. And no I don't think it matters that Dustin has so many twitter followers in terms of believability. Test should be has enough info been presented to draw a conclusion even if the person was nobody or just had opened a twitter account? The discussion is often interesting and sure you might learn things. But still why not just make random things up and do it that way (I am joking).
- codecamper 6y agoYou would too if Mohammed bin Salman was your investor!
- codecamper 6y agoawww the apple fanbois don't like me
- dcurtis 6y agoI didn't expect that tweet to get so much attention. I plan to write more about what exactly happened when my accounts are re-activated. But to clear a couple of things up: 1. I've since learned that the reason this happened could be due to an unusual confluence of events including Apple Card, autopay, and the online Apple Store. 2. The disabling of iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts is actually an Apple Card policy for overdue accounts, and they have a team dedicated to handling these account de-activation issues. (I think this is absurd, which is why I am drawing attention to it.)
- komocode 6y ago> The disabling of iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts is actually an Apple Card policy for overdue accounts My understanding is that the Apple Card policy is referring to "account" as "Apple Card Account is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA", and not the iCloud account issued by Apple.
- wbronitsky 6y agoThis poster continues to fling accusations at Apple and has yet to provide any proof of any of these suppositions whatsoever. I’m not sure why the commenters are so eager to believe a comment from a random Twitter account posted to HN. Confirmation bias is strong, I guess. This is a heavy accusation and I think the burden is heavily on the accuser to provide clear evidence that lack of payment for anything somehow locks you out of your Apple account. These comments and posts also seem to be conflating different accounts, like Apple ID, iCloud, and the Apple Card Account. I’m in no way trying to defend Apple, this just seems like an incredibly user hostile policy, and also one that doesn’t exactly follow sound business logic. If this is true, can you point to this policy? Can you share the “unusual confluence of events”?
- Bud 6y agoDownvoting of this comment is ludicrous. This is a very serious accusation and it's irresponsible to fling around such charges without evidence. There's no way Apple is doing this.
- deleted 6y ago
- spiritplumber 6y agoI don't have a US credit score because I never had a credit card in my life and always bought everything with money I knew I had (including my little home). That never fails to completely throw financial institutions for a loop; they can't conceptualize it. Ironically it means that if I was to apply for a credit card it would be very difficult to get it.
- amwelles 6y agoDepends on the card you apply for. I didn’t have a credit score until my mid 20s because I avoided them like the plague and bought only with money I had. Now I still do the latter, but I get rewards for using a credit card for purchases. My very first credit card had a very small limit ($250-500, I think), and I only used it for groceries. Not to say everybody needs a credit card/score, but they do have advantages if you’re responsible with them. :)
- lotsofpulp 6y ago>That never fails to completely throw financial institutions for a loop; they can't conceptualize it. They can conceptualize it. No one has come up with an automated way to adequately predict someone's ability to repay a loan other than the current credit reporting system that greatly factors in one's history of repaying previous loans. If you have a better idea, it's probably worth a lot of money. >Ironically it means that if I was to apply for a credit card it would be very difficult to get it. It wouldn't be very difficult to get. You would just have to submit proof of your assets and possibly history of expenses.
- spiritplumber 6y agoThat's the thing though: someone who has bought their car and their home in cash isn't a high-risk borrower, rather, he or she is someone who is able to save in order to do that, so he or she should be considered a low-risk borrower. That's simple logic, really.
- selfhoster11 6y agoIn other countries at least, there are score-builder credit cards that come with relatively high interest (and presumably capped credit limits) to allow high-risk borrowers such as yourself to build up their credit history. Once you use one of these for a while and pay it off every month, you would start building up a credit history/credit score that would allow you access to better lending deals.
- thedogeye 6y agoThe modern version of debtors prison. Everything old is new again.
- dmix 6y agoThis sounds like Chinas social credit score but on a lower threshold.
- hahahahe 6y agoWouldn’t use this product considering that it’s Goldman Sachs backend. What a horrible company and a damn shame Apple partnered with them.
- Bud 6y agoThis tweet and claim don't really pass the laugh test, given that Apple has gone out of its way to help Apple Card holders who needed to skip payments for months in a row during covid. There's simply no way that Apple is doing this; there is another explanation for this single user having this experience and I'm sure that will come out. This isn't found anywhere in Apple's terms of service. I'll give 10-1 odds on a $100 bet that this isn't happening. Any takers?
- Axien 6y agoYears ago I had "Fraud" detected on my Apple ID. Because of this, Apple locked my account and disabled all of my paid applications. I'm a pilot and this included an iPad program called ForeFlight which was critical for flying. I had to wipe my iPad, create a new Apple ID, and pay the $300 subscription for another copy of ForeFlight. About a week later my ID was reactivated with no explanation. I'm assuming someone hacked into my Apple ID, but not sure. I was never told.
- TheRealDunkirk 6y agoAll this speculation about whether or not it's true, or what might or might have happened. If only there was some format one could use on the internet that was useful for discussing something in longer-than-240-character statements. If only. I canceled Twitter so that I wouldn't have to see these tempests in teacups. Once you do this, your eyes open to just how much of our news cycle is being carried by Twitter, and how much it bleeds over into everything else now. Half the "front page" of Imgur is Twitter hot takes now, so I don't go there any more either. Half of serious news articles seem to either be ABOUT a Tweet, or carry at least one Twitter quote to further its narrative. I think this encroachment should alarm everyone. #SocialMediaIsDestroyingSociety
- ubermonkey 6y agoI doubt very much the face-value interpretation here is accurate, but it's also a good reminder about the eggs vs. baskets rule. I use a lot of Apple products and services, but if Apple did this to me it would be at worst an inconvenience. Nothing existential requires my Apple account. They don't, for example, handle my email; I prefer Dropbox to iCloud; etc. It's not just an Apple thing. Google chicanery could hit someone much harder, given how many more folks depend on Google for email. It's a great time to review your own services and products, and figure out if you have any "portfolio killer" dependencies.
- barnaclejive 6y agoSTOP. Think. So many people running wild based on one twitter post.