68 ms·

Apple broke up with me

• oneng 5y ago
  This equivalent story occured with me and my Google account, where all manner of external support proved pointless. I eventually had to have a friend at Google contact the Gmail team to get my account lockout sorted out.
  • wbsun 5y ago
    > I eventually had to have a friend at Google contact the Gmail team to get my account lockout sorted out. Reading this thread on HN, I started to panic thinking about what would happen if I lost my Gmail account, and then I saw this comment! What a reason to be a loyal googler until the end of the world!
  • cube00 5y ago
    It makes you wonder if the story of the Google employee who couldn't unlock their own account is actually true or they was just stonewalling to get rid of the customer. https://au.pcmag.com/old-hosted-email-providers/87012/not-even-google-employees-can-unlock-their-own-personal-gmail-accounts https://au.pcmag.com/old-hosted-email-providers/87012/not-ev...
• savant_penguin 5y ago
  Maybe he would have gotten a better customer service through the legal system
• FpUser 5y ago
  >"The only option is to create a new account and move on" The only option is to talk to a lawyer and try to file criminal charge against their interference with enjoinment of the things you paid for.
• cronix 5y ago
  This reads like a classic abusive relationship.
• ricardobayes 5y ago
  The fact Apple, Facebook, Google, Steam, etc. does not have a proper customer support is appaling. All they can do is parrot back canned responses, without the ability to actually do anything. This will have to change.
• black_13 5y ago
  A company that depends on slave labor and avoids paying taxes how could it act unfairly?
• fantasticcammel 5y ago
  Be sure to make a CCPA/GDPR request to delete all your data, including your account. You get nothing from them, they get nothing from you.
• rivo 5y ago
  These stories always bring back that anxiety I got as a teenager when I read Kafka's "The Trial". You're guilty and being punished but we won't tell you why, what you did, and there's no way to appeal. Back then, I found comfort in the thought that this kind of thing wouldn't happen in the modern Western world. Boy was I wrong.
• intrasight 5y ago
  It does strike me as a problem that can be solved at scale with just the correct automation rules. Hopefully they take the opportunity to do so.
  • recursive 5y ago
    Why didn't they think of just using the correct rules? It's all so obvious now. Full Self Driving strikes me as a problem that can be solved with the correct automation rules. Hopefully Tesla takes this opportunity to do so.
    • quiffledwerg 5y ago
      So true. All software should be written without mistakes. Strange no one takes this obvious approach.
    • rowanG077 5y ago
      Man this is so meme worthy. Curing cancer strikes me as a problem that can be solved with the correct automation rules. Hopefully doctors take this opportunity to do so.
      • Jensson 5y ago
        Just make some medicine that only destroys the correct cells, easy peasy!
  • rswail 5y ago
    It strikes me as a problem that can be solved at scale by scaling up their support staff and not automating blanket bans without human intervention and an appeal process. If they ban a bot, the bot will be unable to proceed through a manual/human appeal process. Not everything can be automated and arguments that scale make it impossible implies that the organization has become "too big to fail" and should be reduced in size by regulation/law.
• ungamedplayer 5y ago
  Good to see that Stockholm syndrome is alive and well.
  • netfl0 5y ago
    I also found this story quite unsettling. Glad I’m not alone.
  • BoorishBears 5y ago
    Wait til you find out about what other systems you rely on have imperfect fraud detection. There isn't a platform any large number of people use that is exempt from this.
    • AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      > There isn't a platform any large number of people use that is exempt from this. I can think of a few. TCP/IP, email, BitTorrent, TLS, RSS. Millions of people use Linux. A single digit percentage of people, but millions of people. Not even counting the majority of servers on the internet. And the way Linux does it proves that you can do it that way. The largest platforms just don't.
      • BoorishBears 5y ago
        This is abusing semantics to the point you just make yourself look unknowledgeable. And honestly I feel like you know better... TCP/IP? Protocol. Email? You mean SMTP the protocol, or email platforms like GMail that people get locked out of all the time, or you mean a tiny platform with a fraction of the users? BitTorrent... the protocol. TLS... the protocol. Are you joking callling this a platform? RSS... same. Linux the OS? Because Linux sure doesn't have a centralized platform built into it last I checked. When you forget your Linux password where's the reset link? - Like to be clear, my statement is tautological. For any useful definition of "platform with large number of users" you need to have fraud protection. It's not really an ideological thing, anyone who's run any platform of a meaningful size knows you get attackers, and attackers scale. So you need to defend against attacks, and legitimate users can accidentally trigger any form of attack detection, human or otherwise.
• Swizec 5y ago
  Sounds like a fraud detection system got triggered. Stonewalling the fraudster is usually the safest course of action so that’s what companies do. Unfortunately those systems aren’t perfect … My girlfriend once had to replace all of her bank accounts because of something like this. Did a thing while traveling abroad, looked like credit card theft, everything got shut down. oops
  • breckenedge 5y ago
    How many bank accounts does your girlfriend have?
    • dghlsakjg 5y ago
      Most people have at least 2 or 3 with any bank they work with (checking, savings, credit) If my bank left me high and dry in a foreign country I would absolutely cut ties. I've done enough international travel that I maintain redundant checking accounts for just such a situation, but there are plenty of people out there that keep all of their accounts in a single place...
  • spaetzleesser 5y ago
    I am OK if such a thing happens but they really need to provide an appeals process and explain what triggered the fraud detection.
  • Jensson 5y ago
    If that is what happened then why would they delete the account rather than just block it for a short time?
  • johnd0e 5y ago
    >Unfortunately those systems aren’t perfect … Automated systems will never be perfect but there are companies that have policies that are far more respectful of their customers than others. If you get detected for fraud or did a chargeback on steam, you will be issued a trade ban and a ban on buying games and activating game codes, but valve does NOT take away your ability to download and play the games you already own and legitimately bought in the past. Heck, in the case of chargebacks they can be quite lenient : it can be a temporary restriction on buying that is lifted after a few months (but with a permanent ban on the specific visa card). If you do something wrong with the community features, your account will become a restricted account and you will not be able to use them anymore, but you will still be able to play your games too. They also have an actually active online customer support service that help you regain control of your account if there was a fault on their part or something else, like someone hacking your account, and it doesn't require an obscure method like mailing some gabenewell@valve.something to get things done. What Apple and Google does with their account system should be illegal. It's asinine that society would accept that one could lose thousands of $ of software and media bought because for reason X or Y they banned your account. Valve can do very granular account restrictions, there's no reason why the wealthiest companies in the world can't. And this is why I have a humongous library of games on steam and will never spend a single $ on Google Play or the App Store. Concentrating all sorts of digital purchases onto a single point of failure in the hands of companies that treat you like garbage? I think not.
• hallway_monitor 5y ago
  The story drives home how dangerous it is putting your trust, maybe your business and maybe your life in the hands of these mega corporations. I've tried to distance myself from Google somewhat but Gmail is still my main email account. I don't want to know how many accounts I may be locked out of if I ever lose access to it.
  • fsflover 5y ago
    It took me a couple years to transfer all important online accounts to a new email, one by one. I feel free now.
  • todd3834 5y ago
    If you really are concerned then you might want to consider migrating away now while you still have access for those situations.
    • lostcolony 5y ago
      At least getting a new email address, pointing it to Gmail, and working to migrate
      • randallsquared 5y ago
        GMail has the same problem, of course. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
        • pronlover723 5y ago
          I think the suggestion was to get your own domain. You can use gmail as a service and if they kick you off you still own your domain and your email address. If you're smart you might backup the email. That's fairly easy to do.
          • throwawayboise 5y ago
            And if your domain registrar decides to ban you for whatever reason?
• fivelessminutes 5y ago
  I was waiting for the realization that he couldn't go on shoving money at these guys, and needed to increase his self-sufficiency by selfhosting to keep his data out of their or anybody else's walled garden. But he did not seem to draw any lesson from it.
  • tw600040 5y ago
    That is not at all the answer to this. Tech people need to respect their craft a little bit more. If some hospitals screw over a patient no doctor would say people need to learn surgery and self operate on themselves. Self hosting is not something a normal person can just learn overnight and manage.
    • fivelessminutes 5y ago
      It need not mean your own cloud services, although I think the longterm trend is residential routers plus a USB stick will make this more possible. Eg, he doesn't have to make access to all his music so it is contingent on his one credential, which can be revoked at any time by Apple. He can keep local copies of what he has bought, despite the ecosystem tries to make that difficult. Apple Music will delete any local copies it manages when the credential is invalidated. https://www.guidingtech.com/what-happen-when-you-sign-out-apple-id-iphone/ https://www.guidingtech.com/what-happen-when-you-sign-out-ap...
      • cunthorpe 5y ago
        > residential routers plus a USB stick will make this more possible. This smells like "let them eat cake" except in the context of technology. Not everyone is able or even wants to mess with that stuff. There's a vast difference between "Yes, backup my stuff, Apple; Here's my card" and "I know what an IP is" At $12/year you literally cannot get anything like what Apple offers just in terms of backup — not the equipment, not the man hours required to maintain it. Even if I were able to set it all up, it would cost me a huge amount of money in lost revenue just to maintain it safely. It feels like "I could build dropbox in 5 minutes" never stopped.
• mirthflat83 5y ago
  At least they enabled his account again. Google doesn’t
  • IntelMiner 5y ago
    They often have under similar kinds of executive or insider duress
    • cube00 5y ago
      "Not Even Google Employees Can Unlock Their Own Personal Gmail Accounts" https://au.pcmag.com/old-hosted-email-providers/87012/not-even-google-employees-can-unlock-their-own-personal-gmail-accounts https://au.pcmag.com/old-hosted-email-providers/87012/not-ev...
• GiorgioG 5y ago
  Seems like a threat of a lawsuit would have been in order to force Apple to return all the money he's ever spend with Apple + interest.
  • kube-system 5y ago
    https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/us/terms.html https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/us/term... > YOU AGREE THAT YOU SHALL NOT SUE OR RECOVER ANY DAMAGES FROM APPLE, ITS DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AFFILIATES, AGENTS, CONTRACTORS, AND LICENSORS AS A RESULT OF ITS DECISION TO REMOVE OR REFUSE TO PROCESS ANY INFORMATION OR CONTENT, TO WARN YOU, TO SUSPEND OR TERMINATE YOUR ACCESS TO THE SERVICES, OR TO TAKE ANY OTHER ACTION DURING THE INVESTIGATION OF A SUSPECTED VIOLATION OR AS A RESULT OF APPLE'S CONCLUSION THAT A VIOLATION OF THIS AGREEMENT HAS OCCURRED.
    • Aeolun 5y ago
      It seems like that provision wouldn’t hold up in court (at least in a sane legal system, I guess that means it might hold up in the US), rendering it moot.
• Jensson 5y ago
  Apple media services terms includes things like: > You may not use the Services to: - post a dishonest, abusive, harmful, misleading, or bad-faith rating or review, or a rating or review that is irrelevant to the Content being reviewed To me it seems like those rules could ban you for just about any reason. I mean, what is even a "bad faith" review? Do you need to assume good faith on the company if you had a bad experience?
  • xmprt 5y ago
    Also, what is a harmful review? Pretty much any 1 star review is harmful however, in many cases, they are deserved. So if I get horrible service and leave a 1 star review, is that grounds for banning me?
    • Jensson 5y ago
      I wonder if Apple has a system where companies can report your reviews as harmful and if enough such reports comes in maybe Apple auto bans you?
  • kube-system 5y ago
    That clause is pretty specific. This is the clause by which they can ban you for any reason: > Apple further reserves the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the Services (or any part or Content thereof) at any time with or without notice to you, and Apple will not be liable to you or to any third party should it exercise such rights.
    • Aeolun 5y ago
      I’m inclined to believe a court would find otherwise, regardless of what it says in the TOS.
      • rswail 5y ago
        Particular courts in jurisdictions that actually have enforceable consumer protection law.
• CodeWriter23 5y ago
  It’s not his only option; email tim@apple.com the Executive Relations team fixes things like this. They even fixed something as pedestrian as the I bought a refurb Mac Mini online, found it had a broken DIMM slot and I took it to my local Apple Store and the manager refused to help me. They emailed me within hours and told me to please try again. I went back the following day, the store manager was visibly irked but did the swap. I told him before I left the store he was leaving me no other option but to email Executive Relations. He kinda chuckled at that.
  • spaetzleesser 5y ago
    I have had decent success sending letters to the CEO of companies and CC'ing the FTC and Better Business Bureau.
  • Flankk 5y ago
    Tim Apple is good about stuff like this. He helped me desolder the broken wristband on my iWatch.
  • randallsquared 5y ago
    Wasn't that the exact option that worked for him?
    • vl 5y ago
      If only people actually read the articles.
    • CodeWriter23 5y ago
      Perhaps. I typically stop reading these kinds of articles when the individual concedes defeat, which is what I did in this case.
      • 1123581321 5y ago
        Please don’t comment then. You could have at least searched the page for “Tim”.
• selfhifive 5y ago
  I thought it would end with linux on the MacBook Pro.
• perihelions 5y ago
  It should be unlawful, maybe criminal, to revoke access to digital goods a customer bought and paid for. How the heck have we normalized *theft* as standard business practice?
  • FrancoisBosun 5y ago
    For better or for worse, we have “agreed” to the teens and conditions …
    • novok 5y ago
      That doesn't matter when it's illegal. Statute overrides contract.
      • User23 5y ago
        In California at least it's actually tortious to offer certain illegal contracts of adhesion. That right is rarely exercised, but you do in fact have standing to sue simply because you were asked to sign a contract with clauses that oppose California public policy.
    • pronlover723 5y ago
      There are plenty of laws that override terms and conditions. A one example, on many countries landlords can not throw out tenants on a whim. Telephone companies can not cut off service on a whim. There are similar laws for utility companies and banks. Arguably it's about time for similar laws for Apple, Google, and Microsoft who potentially hold the keys to your entire life.
  • errcorrectcode 5y ago
    Gotcha capitalism and inverted totalitarianism. Submit to the interests of the plutocrats and go into debt buying today's fancy widgets, or be banished.
  • donmcronald 5y ago
    In my jurisdiction I swear you could sue them in small claims court. I think it’s pretty easy to do and lawyers aren’t allowed. You’d probably end up with someone from the nearest Apple store representing Apple and they’d have no answers. Even if you lose, there aren’t any downsides and Apple would have to send an employee to participate. I would absolutely do it if I ended up in the same position.
• burnte 5y ago
  I had this happen to a friend/client and did the same thing with the same result. This was 2 years ago, under similar circumstances. Just like Google's capricious AI-powered suspension-bot, Apple has one too that is just as hair trigger on weird inputs. The "no appeal" is downright creepy.
• justinzollars 5y ago
  I had a similar experience with eBay. In my case, they suspended my account for no reason and refused to delete my bank account information. They are literally holding my banking details against my will. I might actually call the police on them because its so shady - and we are in the same county.
  • schappim 5y ago
    If you're in the EU, you might be able to do something about this using GDPR.
    • justinzollars 5y ago
      I'm in the United States and this still feels illegal. My bank suggested calling the police.
  • hackerfactor1 5y ago
    I had a similar experience with PayPal. Fortunately, I had created a separate bank account specifically for use with PayPal. After they blocked my account (for the heinous crime of having the word "Hacker" in my company name: Hacker Factor), I went to the bank and closed that account. PayPal ended up keeping the remaining balance of something like $1.
    • justinzollars 5y ago
      In my case a guy won an auction, bid (but did not pay) 30% over buying it brand new, and all of his reviews said "don't ship to this guy, he's a scammer". So I refused to ship, and they closed my account for it.
• errcorrectcode 5y ago
  This is what inverted totalitarianism looks like when it crushes the innocent. Now imagine what it can do to activists and dissidents.
  • IntelMiner 5y ago
    Apple already exerted that control https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/10/15/apple-demands-telegram-to-remove-posts-related-to-belarus-protests-controversy-ensues https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/10/15/apple-demands-tel...
    • errcorrectcode 5y ago
      Add in a dose of Palantir used by corporate security organizations, and you have push-button operations that can direct global recrimination, up to and including, droning, in certain circumstances.
• schappim 5y ago
  I just had the same issue with my Facebook ads account (which I haven't used in years). I couldn't event lodge an appeal because they don't let you do so unless you have 2 factor auth. I'm sorry, but I so don't trust Facebook/Meta with my phone number.
  • hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
    Register a Google Voice number. I have one specifically to give to all companies I don't want to give my actual phone number to.
    • notreallyserio 5y ago
      Facebook refuses Google Voice numbers, or at least did in my case.
• andreapmd 5y ago
  Something very similar happened to me with Amazon. I used a new debit card from an online bank to purchase an expensive item and deliver it to a foreign address (which is admittedly suspicious). The payment bounced, Amazon immediately locked my account and requested to see a card billing statement sent to my home address to reactivate it. Upon login I am presented with a stern request for documentation, a pdf upload field, a tweet-sized text field for comments, and all communication comes from a noreply@amazon.com address. All my kindle/audible/etc media immediately became inaccessible. I went through every possible channel to explain that the card does not send me a billing statement and I cannot possibly produce one, requesting to be called or at least emailed by a human, to no avail. After spending tens of thousands of dollars on Amazon over the course of fifteen years I couldn't even get a personal call from the case manager, and all my purchased media is gone. To this day I have found no resolution, and the only next step is to contact them through a lawyer.
  • rodneyg_ 5y ago
    Wow. This reminds me of my experience with Coinbase. I find it interesting that they don't see how troublesome all this is. There's a human on the other end of the technology, and shutting them out without a solid reason, or the ability to reasonable appeal is crazy.
    • jsemrau 5y ago
      When our bank replacements are run like tech companies everybody loses. I suffered through similar with Binance.
      • adrr 5y ago
        Traditional banks will cut you off as well. Move lots of money through your account, bounce it between a few accounts and back into your account. They'll cut you off.
        • jsemrau 5y ago
          That is correct. Yet it doesn't make it good. Customer focused communication even though some indicator tell you to terminate the account should avoid a "The process" situation. This is 2021, we have many amazing communication tools available.
• ivank 5y ago
  A similar case was posted yesterday, though it involved adding gift cards: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29437627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29437627
• spaetzleesser 5y ago
  This sounds like The Trial by Franz Kafka. You get thrown into a bureaucratic machine and you have no idea why. And no way to appeal. These account suspensions scream for regulation that forces a company to explain the suspension and offer some kind of appeal process. Otherwise I see a very dark future where super large companies kill people's livelihoods and nothing can be done. It's striking how the guy goes out of his way to not be angry at Apple. Very interesting psychology. Stockholm syndrome or just begging the king for forgiveness?
  • russelldjimmy 5y ago
    Is it not possible that the person did not take it personally? What is getting angry, if not taking things personally?
  • yosito 5y ago
    Perhaps he doesn't want to lose whatever good favor he has at Apple or risk his account beind disabled again in retaliation. The alternatives to Apple aren't exactly equivalent or easy switches to make.
  • hoppla 5y ago
    “I do not know what I did wrong officer, but I promise to never do it again” - Peppa Pig’s dad
    • jimnotgym 5y ago
      Now that is a comment that really captures the important thinkers of our times. He is even influencing the UK prime minister. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4AzGie3JcI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4AzGie3JcI
  • garmaine 5y ago
    > It's striking how the guy goes out of his way to not be angry at Apple. Very interesting psychology. Stockholm syndrome or just begging the king for forgiveness? What would getting angry accomplish?
• FpUser 5y ago
  >"all my purchased media is gone" I feel sorry but personally I would never "buy" something of that nature that I can not truly own/control. All my media is in format every player would understand and backed up in couple of places.
  • sneak 5y ago
    Piracy remains a way better option than anything else. I'd rather give my money to put.io than the iTunes Store.
    • FpUser 5y ago
      Who is talking piracy? All the media I have was purchased.
      • midasuni 5y ago
        You likely broke some form of law (depending on the media and your jurisdiction) in the process. While laws like the DMCA exist I don’t see the point in buying a film and ripping it, as I’m breaking the law just as much as not buying it and downloading it.
        • FpUser 5y ago
          You likely have no clue. I suggest you do some reading in regards to backing up media in Canada (this is where I live). Hint: it is legal
          • midasuni 5y ago
            Your inability to read shows you up “depending on the media and your jurisdiction”
        • FpUser 5y ago
          Since I can't answer your last one directly: >"Your inability to read shows you up" I did read it. "Likely broke ... law" and "depending on jurisdiction" assumes / hints to that I am in the jurisdiction and this is totally baseless. I think my answer is proper but whatever.
• protomyth 5y ago
  I'm not one to call for new laws, but it seems the TOS and EULAs are way too powerful and obtuse. I would like the provider to be required to specify in detail what the consumer did and how those actions violated the TOS. No blaming an algorithm or being vague. A specific action and what was wrong with that action. The BS about needing secrecy for security are just attempts not to get sued. An internet user bill or rights might not be out of line given the power disparity. At least some lawmaker's staff going through the major TOSes and writing a law to ban some of the egregious clauses.
• noisy_boy 5y ago
  Imagine one not-so-fine day, your partner of 10 years sends a message "You messed up - we are over". You cannot contact them and their best friend only says "you should have not broken the trust - thats all I can say". Your partner has keys to some of your valuables and you are very worried. As a last ditch effort, you contact their parent and after three days, they are back with a smile as if nothing happened. Then you continue happily and put in even more of your time/money/whatever in this lovely setup.
  • cortesoft 5y ago
    I don’t see how this is comparable… I don’t think anyone was under the illusion that Apple actually cares for them, it is just a business relationship. I don’t have the same expectations I do with a significant other.
    • aiisjustanif 5y ago
      Idk, I have relatives that do trust companies and believe they would never take away access to their calendar, email, phone, notes, contacts, etc. the paid for. Which is worth a hell of a lot to them.
    • encryptluks2 5y ago
      Yet most people usually have and share more private information with their devices than their significant others.
    • ipaddr 5y ago
      Many have an emotional relationship with Apple. Love or hate them they have created some kind of emotional response in you.
      • dotancohen 5y ago
        Their most well-known device responds to your touch, and anticipates your needs. I've had relationships with humans less intimate than that.
    • 5y ago
• silisili 5y ago
  These tech companies are ridiculous to the point that some law should be written to curb their attitudes. These are the richest companies in our country, and print money hand over fist. That they sell online life services like photo, storage, music, etc should require them to provide actual, human support. I find it really sad they even have to be forced into it. How much could it possibly cost to hire a few hundred 'filterers' that triage out the tech support, and a smaller team of people who look into real issues? Amazon and Walmart do it, and still both make tons of money. So what's the downside here?
  • ovao 5y ago
    While I don’t disagree in particular that Apple should offer support for account recovery, and that a resolution shouldn’t require knowing the CEO’s email address and crossed fingers, I don’t necessarily follow the logic that ‘they store my photos’ necessarily means ‘they should be governmentally coerced into having dedicated support staff’. It’d follow logically that if your photos (or whatever) are valuable to you, you wouldn’t punt sole responsibility of their perpetual storage to third parties. Understand instead that the storage services they offer are voluntary, conditional and subject to loss due to error, negligence or even maliciousness (the latter of which rarely serves business interests). Apple should obviously do better here — assuming this story is indeed accurate - but introducing legislation here seems like a leap.
    • silisili 5y ago
      > I don’t necessarily follow the logic that ‘they store my photos’ necessarily means ‘they should be governmentally coerced into having dedicated support staff’. Understandable. But I'm of the opinion that companies like Google and Apple more or less offer these services and advertise them as one stop shops for you, forever. And in many cases, mine included, I pay for it. That I make an offcolor comment on Youtube or get a chargeback against the Google store shouldn't lead to a complete blackout to said photos, in my opinion.
      • ovao 5y ago
        Agreed on that point. When too many services fall under a single umbrella of “[Company Name] Account”, the loss of access to the account as a whole because of some kind of transgression on one sliver of [Company Name]’s services is just a fundamentally bad approach.
• mlindner 5y ago
  This seems like an easy shut and close small claims lawsuit as apple stole purchases from him.
• neom 5y ago
  I sent tim cook an email November 13th about my airpod max repair experience (long story short, 2 pairs of head phones died, one of them came back connected to someone else's icloud account) - by the 1st someone from the apple exec team emailed me and let me know he was reviewing my case and that he would resolve the issue for me (apple only has referb airpod max right now for repair return and I didn't want another refurbished pair). We'll see what happens, but the guy was nice.
• pdpi 5y ago
  This sort of thing is becoming a serious consumer protection nightmare. Just about every online service out there will disable your account without appeal or justification, while completely stonewalling you if you try to address the issue. For many of these services you can lose access to hundreds or thousands of pounds in purchases. This is one of those situations where the power imbalance is so extreme that some sort of regulation is probably appropriate, but heavens knows I have no idea what it looks like.
• wyldfire 5y ago
  > In most cases, we are trying to do the right thing. Allow the customers to appeal and put their case forward I have a teeny shred of sympathy for Apple here, actually. Creating new identities is trivial (Sybil) and so adversaries would write malware and their accounts get deleted. The more info that apple gives each of the adversaries' deleted accounts, the easier it is for them to probe the logic used to catch them.
  • kittywav 5y ago
    Note that no one is complaining about them locking-out "new identities" (which could be easy to create), but about them locking-out "old identities that have paid thousands of dollars to them" (which are not as easy to create), without any reasonable recourse option. I'm sure your shred of sympathy would quickly disappear if this ever happened to you, but... as the saying goes... "pepper in someone else's eyes is a refreshment to me".
• sneak 5y ago
  Don't use an Apple ID for anything. Don't install App Store apps on the mac. Don't use iCloud at all. Use a per-device throwaway Apple ID to install free apps only on iOS devices. Don't buy apps or IAPs. Disable iMessage and FaceTime. Use a third party password manager. This is really the only safe way.
• harha 5y ago
  With vendor lock-in being so tight in many cases, how is this not regulated to allow recourse to decisions either an idiot or an idiotic algorithm makes? Alternatively make sure services do one thing and one thing only so it doesn't break other things, like purchases or access to data.
• bb88 5y ago
  It seems like Amazon, Google, FB, and Apple are working to eliminate humans from customer service. Can we get FAANG to respect their customers again?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• anoncow 5y ago
  FB blocked my business account and blacklisted my domains.
• vinay_ys 5y ago
  I would bet it is some ML model to detect fraud. This model will never be perfect – it will have false positives. My guess is – while picking the precision/recall thresholds for blocking users, someone higher up would have argued it is okay to cause some false positives to prevent a lot of harm. And they would have justified to themselves saying there's always recourse through customer support. But customer support tools to investigate and un-ban users would be slow and painful and lacks capabilities needed to check if the complaining user even passes the basic smell tests for a fraudster. And nobody can really explain why the model blocked the user in the first place. There's no well-lit path from CS to engineering on a case-by-case basis. Escalation would happen in bulk/batches – when lots of seemingly 'innocent' users complain to CS, CS may escalate to engineering. Btw, the alternative of having to pick really conservative thresholds (with near-zero false-positives) causes more harm – harm that's more visible. The slippery slope is this – over time the definition of 'trust and safety' would have been expanded to include interests of more and more stakeholders (including company's own business interests) – it is very easy to lose sight of serving the user (who may not be the paying customer).
  • cube00 5y ago
    > it is very easy to lose sight of serving the user Every public corporation only serves its shareholders. If they annoy enough of the users and the shareholders take notice when it hits the bottom line maybe then something will be done.
    • dymk 5y ago
      Boring take that shows up in every HN thread. I worked for years in Risk/Fraud and what you're saying is just not true. There are always tradeoffs to be made, we will always mistakes (hopefully rarely), and 99% of the time the people behind the curtain are trying very hard to reduce harm for the good actors.
      • bbarn 5y ago
        I think most actors are genuinely acting in good faith. The problem comes when the machine gets so big that people don't understand that their good faith actions lead to overall bad outcomes. It's not so much evil corps as I think it sometimes is clueless corps.
• makecheck 5y ago
  Laws should force an extreme balance in regards to company-customer relationships. Right now companies get most of the benefits: they can sign up new accounts and charge money very, very easily, by the millions, and yet if anything goes wrong they can basically ignore you or make things very, very, very difficult. That’s just insane. “Balance” basically means that if you’re going to set up a business that can “easily” take money from millions of people or “easily” create millions of accounts, then you must ensure those people can “easily” reach you, “easily” inquire about status, “easily” cancel things, etc. What we have now is just absurd.
  • 1_player 5y ago
    Yes. It should be illegal to lock someone out of their account with no explanation nor recourse. A company is free to lock you out, but you should have a right, even legal, to ask them to have a human review the case and explain in text why and what happened. We have become so helpless that AI/ML takes decisions for us. We have put those AI in place, yet we behave as it they have taken over the world and once they have deemed you in the wrong, there's nothing you can do. Why are we tech people not protesting over this? Everybody is quick to take Apple's side in this thread, or Amazon or Google in others. I don't get it.
    • LexGray 5y ago
      I believe reason many in tech don’t protest is they are well aware just how easily companies can be brought down by abusive users having seen many of their own favorites die over the years from being forgiving or being too open about their ban mechanisms. Governments fail at being flexible. What they have in Australia for instance allows consumers to abuse the hell out of business driving up costs for legitimate customers. It needs something more like a Better Business Bureau who can examine both sides, but without a way to accurately verify a consumer is trustworthy it gets shady. Few people want to be tied to a realID so we are stuck with this mess.
      • 1_player 5y ago
        I don't buy it. Apple, Amazon, Google have virtually infinite money and there's a whole spectrum between "malicious actors can abuse the system" and "the decision is final, there is no recourse." Yet people keep parroting the "malicious users are the problem" party line. Please tell me, which tech companies were brought down because of customer service abuse? Here's what's going on. Having real humans not even making decisions, but reviewing false positives costs money, and the company justifies it by saying it's to prevent abuse from malicious actors. But it is simply a cost saving decision. So, again, I ask why are we quick to defend the company when they could afford to do better by us. Is the entire tech community suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?
• cube00 5y ago
  When Google does this everyone gives them a free pass because "it's a free service, you can't expect actual human support". What's Apple's excuse?
• ldehaan 5y ago
  My apple ID is applesucks@my.tld and I never give them my card info, never have. I've only been given apple shit, I haxor it and load all the apps I want. I could download any movie or song I want but I don't because I pay a streaming service and wouldn't buy a digital item unless I can download it. I have been in tech a long long time and this was always the way. Somehow people got snowed into thinking they own something on someone else servers ahem serverless which is absolutely not the case. Have you heard possession is 9/10ths of the law and they own your contract, and according to their thousands of lawyers it's Real and ultimately people with guns agree. It's an absolutely retarded position we've put ourselves in, I will enjoy the day apple is forgotten, like Compaq or DEC.
• pengwing 5y ago
  If this individual was based in the EU, Art. 22 GDPR would protect him against this practice. Basically making a fully-automated high-impact decision is not legal. This applies regardless of the company's location.
• DeathArrow 5y ago
  Unless Apple refunds his purchases and money in the Apple account, they are committing a theft.
  • midasuni 5y ago
    Not nowadays. Nowadays theft is doing something like copying a file, or using a vpn to watch YouTube. Permanently depriving someone of something they paid for isn’t theft.
• franzwong 5y ago
  If those paid apps, music, movie are my private properties, can they stop me access to them? (It is not a rhetorical question)
  • entire-name 5y ago
    That's the thing, the paid apps, music, movies, etc. are actually just licenses. And, although I didn't read the contract myself, I'm pretty sure the Terms and Services all users agreed to during the purchase of said license (or even just during account sign-up) stipulates that the company reserves the right to revoke any license purchased for any reason, etc. Though I do like your way of thinking. Potentially, if there really is a violation (which there was not in this case, but just an example), then, in theory, the company can implement a system that allows users to still access the content, but remove interactions (e.g. in the case of fraud, remove the ability to transact, etc.). Of course, this requires resources to implement and maintain, so it's unlikely to happen.
• SoylentYellow 5y ago
  Every company (Apple, Google, Amazon, etc) is guilty of pulling this non-sense on customers. It is too easy for them to wipe out thousands of dollars of value with no meaningful explanation (read the Terms and Services and go away? seriously Apple?) and no accountability. IMO, states should enact laws where you can take the company to court in your local county and no contract can override that right. If the termination is found justified, the company must refund all account assets at fair market value and any remaining balance. If it was not justified, the company must reinstate the account, pay all court and legal fees, and a reasonable amount of mandatory punitive damages. Also, I don't get why Apple et al pull these stunts anyways. They already have a huge "regulate me" post it on their back.
  • chefandy 5y ago
    That's a tough policy to write fairly. Imagine Tom in Alaska buys a $10 downloadable pdf calendar off of designer David in Florida via Etsy. Tom claims the calendar somehow harmed him and sues David locally in Alaska, but is willing to settle remotely for $500. David knows it's bullshit and could beat it in a millisecond, but there's no way he could take time off to go to Alaska and avoiding a bench warrant is a pretty compelling reason to pay up the $500. That's not to say the current setup doesn't suck, but the solution isn't super cut-and-dried.
    • doctor_eval 5y ago
      But this is happening on accounts with long standing. The thing that gets me is that Apple knows I’ve spent $10,000s with them over many years. Even if I somehow fuck up and use a dodgy card, I’ve brought so much money into the business that they should at least assume good faith on my part. I understand cutting relatively new accounts off permanently for abuse but this no-recourse shit for long standing accounts is bullshit.
      • judge2020 5y ago
        I think they understand that, they’re just saying such a law either needs a regulating body doing the enforcement or needs to be worded very well to avoid frivolous cases.
• dschuetz 5y ago
  What happens to guys who get their accounts disabled for no reason and they don't know anyone from the executive floor? "Sucks to be them"?
• Lhiw 5y ago
  Still an apple user after that? You deserve each other.
• NullPrefix 5y ago
  >Back End Team had made the decision Of course. A different kind of company, one which prioritises function over form, would blame frontenders.
• yosito 5y ago
  This is not just a problem with Apple. It is a problem with many large scale platforms. It seems that often the problem is caused by automated systems that disable accounts that fall outside of normal parameters to prevent fraud. I've had it happen to me with Discord and Tinder. In the case of Tinder, I know it happened because I uploaded a picture holding a yellow pepper from my garden, it wasn't sexually suggestive at all, but I'm not surprised that an AI could categorize such a phallic yellow shape as a violation of the terms of service. I wasn't able to get Tinder to manually review or reactivate my account. In the case of Discord, I'm not sure what triggered the system, probably something with my VPN or other privacy measures that I take. I wasn't able to get a manual review or a reason from Discord. I tried to make a request for my data under EU and US laws (I'm a dual citizen), and Discord actually denied my data request a few times. Finally I filed a complaint with the relevant authorities in the US and Europe, and wrote a polite but firmly worded email to their legal team about their legal obligations. Under EU law at least, they are obligated to send you all of the data they have about you, including any data that led to an account being disabled, and it is a violation of the law to refuse a manual review of an account disabled by an automated system. I am not a lawyer, but I think the law stoped short of them being required to explicitly state the reason that the system disabled your account. Anyway, within a couple hours of my email, I got a password reset request, and magically, my account was re-enabled. I made another personal data request and got a packet of obscure, JSON files with invalid syntax, that I was able to fix up and examine. I still wasn't able to determine the exact cause of my account being disbled, but from everything I can see, it seems to have been an automated action related to me joining a new server. Anyway, there are already some laws about this kind of disabling accounts, but there needs to be a better solution for recourse for people who wrongly have their account disabled. Perhaps mandating manual reviews upon request that must state explicitly how the terms of service were violated would be a good step. And perhaps there is a market for lawyers or legal experts to persue and resolve these cases.
  • ricardobayes 5y ago
    Discord's join new server flow is super broken, not surprised it has these deep flaws. If it somehow forgets your credentials, it is very unintuitive to login again.
• Animats 5y ago
  This sort of thing is why I go to the trouble to have an Android phone without a Google account or any Google services. It takes about an hour to set up a new phone, though.
  • djrockstar1 5y ago
    I've considered a burner google account, not sure how feasible no google services is. Don't you have trouble finding apps/services? I could imagine finding replacements for meet/maps/photos/drive, but the play store on android feels a bit irreplaceable, I've tried F-Droid and the quality of apps is significantly worse.
• AceJohnny2 5y ago
  Is there legal recourse for a user who has invested a significant amount of their digital life with a service provider and who gets unilaterally cut off? What happens to any service that you'd have signed up with through "Sign in with Apple" ? We're still in the early days of such a digital-provider-dependent lifestyle, and it seems the legal system hasn't yet reacted yet. The closest equivalent is how US Phone companies do have a "duty to connect the call,", specifically in legal response to the unilateral power they (used to) have. Unfortunately, that's led to the current (US) problem with spam/scam calls & text, because though they have a duty to deliver, they don't have a duty to authenticate. The user seems to have run afoul of Apple's fraud detection systems, hence the "cold shoulder" response (you don't want to give fraudsters a clue on how to dodge the ban-hammer next time, and you don't want them to DoS your support lines). After all, we only have the user's (carefully constructed) story to go on. At the scale Apple/etc operate at, fraud is a huge, difficult problem. I expect the companies tune their processes in favor of the fraudsters, because bad press like OP's story probably does them way more damage than a few hundred/thousand fraudsters. No, I don't have a pithy solution for solving either problem, though I do expect legislation to eventually catch up to give legal recourse for users. I guess the cost of fielding such legal recourse will just be added to "the cost of doing business" by these companies, and that cost will somehow trickle down to users. At the very least expect much harder sign-up procedures once that legislation is enacted, and maybe more regular "are you a real user" annoying checks on the users.
• Causality1 5y ago
  Companies should be required to divulge the exact reasons for account termination as well as all internal communications related to that termination.
• kybernetyk 5y ago
  And that’s why you need to regularly backup your photos library. A few lost purchases is bad but losing all your photos is the worst case scenario.
• madsbuch 5y ago
  There is a clear malalignment of incentives when commercial entities both sell and provide property. These are clear cases for better algorithmic governance systems for managing the assets. Eg. Holding the asset on a distributed block chain / ipfs. In the meantime, commercial companies that provide subscriptions should be favored. Here the risk is contained.
• cupcake-unicorn 5y ago
  +1 for executive customer support care team. Some life hacks for this if the company makes it hard and Googling the company plus "executive customer support/consumer advocacy" doesn't find anything: Searched LinkedIn for employee emails for team members, guess the email format and email them. Email board members, CEOs. Just go straight to Executive customer service after your first failed try. I've had success with Amazon, Ebay, banks, my insurance company, and more using this method. A lot of people get stuck in the system by calling the normal customer service pipeline and can never solve the problem and don't know there's a back door do the executive customer support. Even I fall into that trap sometimes because I guess there's social pressure not to use it - the Amazon address is jeff@amazon so it's a bit nervewracking psychologically to use it, but in most cases the email accounts are just funneled.
• headmelted 5y ago
  A lot of people in this thread talking about losing their store credit and app/content purchases. I'd imagine the worst case scenario could be much worse. Apple runs fairly popular cloud storage services that are strongly encouraged to you for your photo storage and files. The photo storage especially has an option to automatically delete your local media because it's already backed up on Apple's servers. Will these all be locked out without warning or recourse for a miscellaneous card whoopsie? Even standard files on iCloud. Who knows how important the average users' cloud files are to them? (I don't use public cloud storage at all anymore because of this exact fear - what if some arbitrary billing/transaction error locks me out of everything without recourse?). To be fair I've no idea what the person in question got their account locked for and if there was any shadiness involved but I doubt they'd write about it publicly (or get access restored) if there were, which implies that at any time your account and your data can be taken away for something entirely mundane. It makes me really concerned in fact how Google would handle something similar to this - given that for Chromebook users everything (literally EVERYTHING you would normally do locally on a computer) is in/via your Google account.
  • franga2000 5y ago
    > It makes me really concerned in fact how Google would handle something similar Very poorly, it seems. There are a bunch of stories scattered around HN about Google not only irreversibly deleting personal accounts, but entire paid Google Apps for Business setups. A whole company gone because the admin uploaded one ripped movie to their personal Drive, for example. Many of these did get mostly resolved after someone carefully exploited the Kevin Bacon rule to get in contact with a Google employee, who then made some noise internally. But many couldn't be even with insider help, as some deletions are (were) apparently instant and irreversible.
  • verytrivial 5y ago
    For exactly this reason I never trust online photo storage for anything other that disaster recovery. Google Photos still, after nearly two decades, won't tell you if they're storing an original copy or compressed facsimile of your photos. And after having the Android App randomly and surreptitiously turn on compression for uploads, there is simply no trust left. So. SyncThing on my phone and laptop, and an a little herd of external drives. It makes me feel like a digital prepper or something. Sigh. Actually. I think I have just self identified as a digital prepper and I like it. Time to download my Google content.
• znpy 5y ago
  I'll never understand why people accept this religion-like relationship with Apple. If you think about it, it really looks like a religion from the outside: the author got some random problem (account lock) then prayed to the god (emailing tim cook) and then the miracle happens (the executive team unlocked the account). This is not a story of any sort if not an evangelization story about dealing with a fickle god. I don't think the author is going to be thinking "wow I really dodged a bullet here, better get off this ecosystem as fast as I can" but instead they're probably going to recall the story about that time when they emailed tim cook and the miracle happened. It makes no sense. ---- And people should also consider that with an account gone all the purchases are gone... Arbitrarily. Music is gone, software is gone, data is gone. Isn't this scary?
• collaborative 5y ago
  Ban marketing spending by any corporation above a certain size It will encourage competition and only those who actually please their customers will thrive
  • smt88 5y ago
    This is an interesting idea, but would flatly violate the First Amendment in the US.
    • collaborative 5y ago
      Then perhaps tax it to oblivion?
• eole666 5y ago
  > A few months ago, the balance on my Apple account was running low (less than $100) Why do you need that much money in your apple account ? Do you buy new apps everyday ?
• Accacin 5y ago
  Why would you in this instance ever use Apple again? I would have returned the MBP and once they'd recovered my account, asked them to delete it. Great that it was sorted for you, but there are dozens who aren't so lucky.
  • ssijak 5y ago
    Because there is no alternative. Google is much much worse. And not using Google or Apple ecosystems for at least phones and general media/photo backups limits your experience in day to day life sadly.
    • fsflover 5y ago
      There is an alternative: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5. It probably limits you in some ways, but the more people support it, the better it will become.
      • okamiueru 5y ago
        There are also pretty decent in-betweens based on AOSP like CalyxOS or /e/. I'm pretty happy with the transition to CalyxOS. Everything works as before, but I can now limit internet access to apps, and there is a much more consumer friendly view of permissions. Not tying the whole phone to system-level user with google services feels great. Specifics that need it still gets it, like YouTube.
• vvoaterr 5y ago
  Once I used a brand new credit card with a $1000 credit limit at a Walmart in the deep dark of a Sunday morning at 2a.m., to try to buy a PS4 game system and a copy of DEATH STRANDING. The card was declined. I contacted the bank via phone and they asked me to upload copies of my driver's license and/or passport. I never did. Oh well, so much for that credit card!
• actually_a_dog 5y ago
  BTW, if you want another example of an organization that imposes arbitrary consequences on users without telling them why, look no further than your URL bar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024255
• RBTTComunity 5y ago
  Shut up you little lesslinh
• netcan 5y ago
  I recently listened to the OG radio version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with some added commentary about the early 80s. Vogon bureaucracy jokes were of the time in England. Everyone had little adventures & run-ins with comically illogical public services. These days vogons are banks, SV giants, social media... The striking antipattern (to me) is where official channels are a brick wall. Everyone insists that no other channels exist. Meanwhile, if you ask friends or read blogs, all actual resolutions seems to come exclusively from inside contacts, personal favours, being famous or such. Paypal broke up with me circa 2010.
• x3ro 5y ago
  I was curious if the German Verbraucherzentrale (consumer center?) has info on this sort of thing. At least for the Amazon case, there is a template letter stating that Amazon isn’t legally allowed to deny you access to previously purchased goods. I know this topic has been discussed in other threads. I was just curious about the legal situation here, and apparently there is legal precedent from 2016. (link in german) https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/musterbriefe/digitale-welt/amazonkonto-gesperrt-57399 https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/musterbriefe/digitale-wel...
• kortilla 5y ago
  This is the reality of “the cloud”. We have given up so much computing freedom to them across so many aspects that it’s not even in the comments yet. The fact that Apple even has this one-sided power to completely end your media access, cloud backups, etc should be the horrifying part of this story. Instead people are trading similar anecdotes, offering ML apologetics, etc. It’s tragic to watch the personal empowerment of personal computing fade away into oblivion like this.
• bjornsing 5y ago
  I would seriously have considered taking them to court. In Sweden you can file a small claims case for $90 and the legal fees are capped at $125 if you lose. Well worth a shot.
• MilaM 5y ago
  I started to make provisions for this scenario years ago. Paid email from a small but reputable provider, never rely solely on cloud storage for private data, never "buy" media unless it comes without DRM. It's been a tedious process but I think I'm mostly there. Loosing my Apple account would still be a terrible blow. So many more or less essential services are app only these days. Financial services increasingly rely on phone Apps for authentication. Even some government services require a phone with NFC to use your digital id online. Many daily conveniences like cabs, car and bike rentals and the like are not usable without apps. I think it's time legislators thought about this problem more thoroughly. Just creating a new account is not an acceptable solution in my opinion.
• yason 5y ago
  With "free" services like Facebook and Twitter I can understand pulling the rug off from under the feet of some unlucky customer. It will generate bad PR, some social media outcry, but the losses still mostly remain in the intangible domain. But cases like this where the customer actually pays real money for and has accounted assets in Apple's system this is absolutely inexcusable. No face-to-face business could do this or they would be sued to extinction even in the lesser litigious countries.
  • twobitshifter 5y ago
    Eh, even Facebook is something where the value lost to users will be too great to just have ML model autoban people. They offer email and photo storage. Getting banned from gmail, which is also a free service would be terrible for many reasons.
  • dghughes 5y ago
    >and has accounted assets in Apple's system But really what do they have? They rented something and now they lost access. If they had physical media on CD, DVD, or even stored locally as a stand-alone file that would be different. Yes I'd be enraged but people have feared for years subscriptions and no physical media lead to this. Games and music have gone from disks, CDs, DVDs, to subscriptions. Today it's become so bad that even physical devices are now seen as owned by its manufacturer and you're not permitted to repair it or even open it to look, if you can mange to open your device.
• j_san 5y ago
  Exact same thing happend with Discord for me. Just that I had no way to get it unlocked. I don't trust that anyone actually looked into it.
• Nitramp 5y ago
  One might wonder: how is this legal? And I think the answer is simply it is not, at least not in Europe. I suspect the companies just do what they can get away with and what's cheapest to implement. When challenged in court they won't have much luck with this, but that puts the burden on the consumer. There was a recent court case in Germany about YouTube banning a video based on its terms of service, without explaining what exactly was violated. The court ruled YouTube would need to explain what exactly the user did wrong. And that was a case just about publishing a video for free, not blocking an account that's worth hundreds of euro.
  • neiman 5y ago
    It's probably not, but how many people are willing to go to court? Something similar happened to me in Germany in 2020. I consulted a lawyer and gave up. Going to court for someone with my personality is a very harmful process, and there is still no assurance I'd win.
    • Nitramp 5y ago
      Yes, that's the problem. I think there should be a law organizing how big companies need to deal with high value (to the user) customer accounts. Unilaterally taking away hundreds of euros, irreplacable memories, etc., then putting the burden on individual users to sue, seems very lopsided.
• noduerme 5y ago
  I've got an Apple App store account, a long-disused developer account, and an Apple.com store account. (These are three separate, unconnected accounts; I've been their customer since the 1990s). I'm anti-iOS and only use Android for mobile, but I've used Macs as my primary work machines for 30 years, so I never noticed until I just got my new M1 Max that Apple wants me to reconcile all these accounts somehow from old usernames to actual email addresses, but I can't, since the username for my dev account is the email address for my app store account, and so on. I tried for awhile to download something from the App store on Mac OS - and it was my first and last time. I basically just gave up after four tries to reset the account where it emailed the other account and invalidated the validation the code repeatedly before it could be inserted. So their attempted consolidation of user accounts is very wonky (as it would be if one cost $500/year and another was a consumer account, but they'd allowed both to share an email address for a decade or two). Not that I care. The first thing I do when I buy a new Mac is to remove everything related to iCloud and then block as many Apple IPs as I can while keeping the machine functioning.
  • tekknik 5y ago
    Sounds like you should just switch to linux and save some money!
    • noduerme 5y ago
      If all I did was code, I'd switch... As the sibling poster suggested, I'm tied to the Adobe suite and C4D. And not about to run Windows. I do like Apple's hardware. It's a luxury brand but hey, it's my daily driver and it's a tax write-off.
    • vegetablepotpie 5y ago
      It could be like they use Mac specific apps, like FinalCut, or Logic…
• egorfine 5y ago
  Apple has banned my account twice or thrice in the last ~13 years. And then unbanned after a number of appeals and begging from my side. Thing is, I am indeed in kind of permanent violation of ToC due to my account being US and me being in Ukraine. No problems for the last half of the decade though.
• submeta 5y ago
  Apple support is not really helpful. They give you general advice, for the layman, and not really profound tips for how to resolve an issue. No matter if you have a payment issue or a technical issue. Just to give an example: I was using my iPad Pro as a second screen (primary screen is a 4k monitor) to see my terminal below the monitor. Apple calls this Sidekick. After an update of my iPad to iPadOS 15.x this technology does not work reliably. The iPad screen freezes and I need to stop sidekick and start it again. This works for a couple of minutes until iPad screen freezes again. So I called Apple support, waited half an hour to get someone who tries to help me. Finally they suggest I should go to an Apple store. No, I am not going to an Apple store to get a fix for a trivial problem. There are many users who have experienced this very problem and written about it, even on Apple support forums (which are the worst: written for idiots, no real help). All you get to hear is: Reset your device(s). Or: It must be a problem of third party software, etc. I used to use an app for this feature called Duet. Whenever I had a problem, I could reach out to the devs, they would give me very specific instructions for how to solve the problem. Now you could say Apple is too large to give this kind of help. But they have a large database of all incoming issues, so they know exactly that 20000 other users are complaining about this issue, and some egineer might have solved it, so why not give specific instructions on the forum, why these super vage tips that are of no help!? So prey to god you won‘t have real issues where you rely on Apple to solve it. Edit: Another example: I regularly have issues with iCloud sync. Sometimes I realize that it was stuck because I need to access a document on the go just to realize my Mac could not sync it to iCloud. iCloud-sync issues are so common you can find thousands of entries on the web about this, also on Apple support forums. But neither will you find helpful answers, or any instructions from Apple how to mitigate.
  • romanovcode 5y ago
    > Apple support is not really helpful. They are horrible. I once called them to ask if "iCare+ Theft Insurance" works if my iPhone get stolen abroad and they just straight said "We don't know."
• still_grokking 5y ago
  > Firstly, 99% of Apple’s customer base will never experience what I went through. > The very next day, all my Apple devices gave the following prompt when updating apps from the App Store: “Your Account Has Been Disabled in the App Store and iTunes.” > I called Apple Support and was advised that my account has been permanently disabled, and there is no recourse. > I then asked what does Apple recommend I do. Apple Support representative said: “Create a new account and start from fresh”. This means I have lost all my app and media purchases and the funds in my Apple account. > I tend NOT to blame Apple because why would they take such a drastic step. > I am a mere civilian where we are accustomed to accepting decisions put on us and adjusting accordingly. > So what do next? > The only option is to create a new account and move on. Start fresh with Apple. > Three days went by, and I took delivery of a brand new MacBook Pro that I preordered before Apple disabled my account. > After five years, I bought a Mac, but the sour taste of betrayal from Apple made it extremely difficult for me to get excited about my new workhorse… First question would be: Is this here actually Stockholm syndrome? But let's not get into this. More importantly: By now everybody should know that you don't "buy" things at those companies. You're not even renting them! They can at anytime, without reason, take away everything you "bought" there. Cause it's not your property. You don't own it. You own stuff only if you completely control the hardware and the data. That's what all those beardy open-source freaks are telling you since forever… Maybe it's time you consider they're right? Besides the point that most customers wouldn't find such kind words for the people they scammed them and wouldn't relativize what those scammers did ("99% won't experience that…", "I don't blame Apple…", *eye roll*) the exact same thing can happen with all the other companies who are doing the same. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc. There's no difference. They're all the same. They own "your" devices and "your" data. So they can take it from you. And most people won't be so lucky to "get things back" through divine intervention… So don't count on that.
• swiley 5y ago
  Hopefully more people notice these problems and stop using online services so much.
• stoicjumbotron 5y ago
  I don't know whether it was the topic, good writing, my low attention span or all three but this is the first article which I've read in its entirety in a while and has prompted me to check the author's other articles.
• account-5 5y ago
  This is the reason why you don't want to place all your eggs in one basket, or why you don't place them in one walled garden. They have all the power and can do what they want. Guilty until proven innocent doesn't come into this, you're guilty and you have no recourse. In my view this is a form of theft and should be treated as such. This is why the open decentralised web is important.
• rob_c 5y ago
  Please stop buying digital licences. Buy an activation code or use an OSS product. App stores are a like renting music, please don't complain when they turn you off...
• 2ion 5y ago
  Don't leave anything of significance walled in behind a Google, Apple, Amazon, or really any other account. Only physically accessible copies of your data belong to you. Everything I upload to "a" cloud, I immediately mirror to my backup rig. Do the same, don't trust.
• tehwebguy 5y ago
  When Google does this it is fully expected, IMO there is never an expectation of customer support with Google with any of their products. That is, they have no good reputation to keep or to lose when it comes to customer service (imagine calling Gmail or YouTube as this user did). If Apple goes down this path it will literally destroy the company, customer service is one of the most important competitive advantages they have. The executive team that answered this email should be focused primarily on ensuring it never happens again as we speak.
• AnonC 5y ago
  I read this with great frustration, and felt glad when I saw that the issue was resolved. I can only hope that whenever Tim Cook needs to transfer such emails to someone higher up, there’s also a strict mandate that the root cause be addressed and that the solution is not just a one off adjustment for the person facing the problem. As we keep discovering (this is the second one I’m reading about Apple just in the last few days), relying on any of these companies to not disable accounts and access to things that have been paid for is a dicey matter. Only when consumer regulations get a lot stronger, mere civilians may have a better chance.
• catlikesshrimp 5y ago
  Apple is a very large corporation The upside: Interoperability of the products, prestige, false sense of security The downside: Everything bad about a monopoly The solution: none. If we,people, were smart monopolies wouldn't happen in the first place. Maybe someday the government decides to split it or to suffocate it, or Apple becomes one with government and its practices become law. Meanwhile: I don't participate of the Apple ecosystem. I am hurting myself in the prestige field.
• wmij 5y ago
  This just recently happened to me with an old eBay account I've had 20+ years. After reading the story in the document above, you could easily search/replace Apple for eBay and it's identical to my story, aside from emailing the CEO. The reason given in the permanent suspension message to me was a vague reference to the TOC docs and links to support that all lead to dead ends. After, resigning myself to not caring further, because I use eBay these days rarely, the next day my account was just as suddenly and without reason reinstated, as if nothing ever happened. I'm left scratching my head as to what the reason(s) were for this to have happened and can only think of 3 possibilities. - An overzealous, newbie type operator that suspended me by mistake - Some kind of error in automated flagging and error in review - eBay's radical way of engaging with me to spur me to buy/sell again as the account's last activity was more than 1 year ago
  • rufusroflpunch 5y ago
    A couple of years ago, I signed up for an eBay account to buy one thing with Buy It Now. After buying it, my account was promptly suspended for no reason. I contacted support and they told me they don’t know why and wouldn’t reinstate it.
• m-p-3 5y ago
  With how pervasive and ubiquitous these big tech services are in our lives, and how purchases are toed to these accounts without any way to backup or export these purchases, I hope there will be a kind of law to eventually force transparency when a major change is done on an account, and to minimize the impact when an irreversible change is made, as well as having a clear and direct support line to at least settle the issue. For example, it's not right that you access to the entire Google account and the stored files and emails if you let's say spammed on YouTube and got your account suspended there. If you shared files illegally too many times on Google Drive, lock the storage in read-only and disable the ability to share (example). And
• mark_l_watson 5y ago
  Right, if you are unlucky bad things can happen with a single provider. I split my digital life and purchases between Amazon, Apple, and Google. Book purchases, occasional movie purchases, etc. I have moved on from having a massive personal library of physical books to mostly relying on digital media, eBooks and audio books. Splitting purchases between three vendors makes me feel a bit more secure. Probably most peoples’ most precious digital asset class is their personal photos and videos. I use a very simple setup: when I am at home on wifi, my phone updates all photos and videos to Apple, Google, and Microsoft OneDrive. If I am, for example, hiking and take a dozen pictures and/or videos, then before getting home to my wifi, I review and delete what I don’t want available during my lifetime. A secondary advantage is that all three companies run automated deep learning based systems that present my own media to me in interesting ways. For most of my digital life I care about and work for privacy, except for my photos and videos where I want maximum enjoyment for myself, family, and friends. I like to create photo albums and share links with specific people - so much better than posting on social media. EDIT: for book purchases, I also favor buying directly from publishers who provide ePub, Kindle, and PDF formats - all of which I save to all three cloud providers storage and for convenience import into one of Google’s, Apple’s, or, Amazon’s eBook readers.
• willmadden 5y ago
  Credit card? They are probably struggling with payment fraud. Has your credit card ever appeared on dark net “for sale” lists? That might do it.
• JohnFen 5y ago
  This sort of thing is why I don't purchase anything that I can't keep an offline copy of, and I avoid any ongoing account or service that I might actually come to rely on. I'm very resistant to putting my fate in the hands of others, and especially when those others are for-profit businesses (and especially especially when those businesses are in the tech industry).
• amelius 5y ago
  > Do not get too attached to your Apple account; it belongs to Apple, NOT YOU! I think consumers should demand that whatever products they buy, there should be absolutely no strings attached to it that lead back to the vendor, if the consumer chooses so. So if you buy an espresso machine, the "no strings attached" law should prevent the vendor from locking you into buying only their brand of coffee. Same with printers and ink. Same with computers and accounts. If instead you subscribe to a service, it should be properly advertised as such, and different rules should apply.
• Txoko 5y ago
  Several years ago, I had a problem dealing with Verizon at the store level and customer service so I contacted the office of their CEO and was able to get my problem resolved. His secretary sent me a new phone out of their office stock.
• SkipperCat 5y ago
  It would be nice if Congress would make laws that force large tech companies to offer arbitration when they disable an account that has more than a nominal amount of assets attached. I hate to advocate for more laws and regulations, but these companies have gotten too big to operate without oversight. Losing your ability to log into Netflix would be a bummer, but losing your ability to access your work files, medical records and everything else you need to live your life (eg: Google Drive, Apple iCloud) is just too big of an impact on a persons life to happen without transparency.
• vvoaterr 5y ago
  There's a special kind of grumpy old techno-luddite, and I am describing myself here, who says "Ha! You actually fell for all that e-book and digital downloads trickery, buying DIGITAL-ONLY products with no way to be sure that you really truly own them or have them? You TRUSTED THE CLOUD? Then you get what they deserve when they all disappear, I've been bracing for the day that happens ever since the whole thing started." and since 1998 have only bought actual tangible physical books with pages that turn, video games on physical disc, and movies only on VHS and DVD and BluRay. ((But yeah, I have a STEAM library. Nobody's perfect.))
• yalogin 5y ago
  Yeah this is annoying and frankly terrifying. These companies are too big and we have all been way too reliant on them for many many years now that losing the accounts will be very tough to recover from. Given how important these accounts are these companies should really staff up to have actual people respond to these kind of issues. Even though it’s algorithmically done and it’s just one account out of billions for them, it’s a huge thing for the impacted.
• sabujp 5y ago
  it's long past the time that we need a digital bill of rights for "services", content, etc. Esp content that we own like our own photos, docs, etc that are on the cloud. They may be able to take music, books, and games you purchased but not your own content.
  • l8nite 5y ago
    Even more nefarious - when I lost access to my account on Friday, I lost the ability to update apps that I have purchased. One app that I use frequently won’t load unless it is updated (it gives you a dialog that you can’t dismiss when you start it). So now I’ve lost access to another service and my data in that service by proxy. We absolutely need rights here, especially the right to a full and detailed proof of violation and access to human remediation and review.
• bigyellow 5y ago
  What's hilarious about this pathetic, whiny monologue is that the author most likely will continue using Apple products after all of this. Some people just never learn. Honestly, seeing people so dependent on an abusive for-profit corporation just so they don't have to be alone with their thoughts for 2 seconds makes me cringe and weep for future generations.
• l8nite 5y ago
  This just happened to me on Friday! I’ve been using the same Apple ID for a decade or more. I’ve purchased thousands of dollars worth of apps and content, and probably tens of thousands worth of Apple devices in the last twenty years. The initial chat support experience was the same as OP: (paraphrasing) “No, we can’t tell you what happened. No, you have no recourse.” Even when I asked to escalate to their management, I was told that they would have no additional tools to assist me. My initial shock and outrage was palpable. I managed to get in touch with a Senior Rep who is looking into my case and is scheduled to call me back on 12/9. My only theory for why my account was banned is that on 12/2 (the day before the ban) I made a purchase using a gift card on apple.com. The gift card was a promo from another device purchase I made on 11/26 (Black Friday). I had both devices shipped to my parent’s house (a different address from my billing address), and so maybe some fraud detection kicked in due to the purchases being so close together, using a gift card, and sent to some other address? I’ll update once the senior rep gets back in touch on Thursday, but in the meantime I’ve already started drafting my letter to Tim Cook.
  • vander_elst 5y ago
    I thought at first you were referring to September 12th and then February 12th, quite far apart those events XD
    • l8nite 5y ago
      Yea sorry, American here.
  • roguesherlock 5y ago
    Shit that makes me really worried. All my photos and lot of files are in iCloud.
  • e40 5y ago
    I have a $25 gift card from Apple, now I’m worried to use it.
  • l8nite 5y ago
    Updating to close my part of this saga: the senior support representative called me back exactly when she said she would and my account was magically fixed. She could not elaborate on what happened or how they fixed it. I’m happy to have had my problem resolved, but I’m more convinced than ever I need to have offline access to all my digital life’s contents going forward.
• tag2103 5y ago
  Why have folks in tech simply acquiesced to being abused by these monolithic companies? Sad how many people suffer from battered persons syndrome at the hands of these faceless organizations and just go back for more. The author makes so many cases for NOT ever using Apple again but- oh me oh my how happy he is he had his "email to Mr Tim Cook" and through their benevolence his account was restored. Keep rewarding bad behavior and you too will be the victim of it. And before "there aren't any other options" for goodness sake this is HN. Go build your own environment on private silicon and buy a different brand of thing.
• th3h4mm3r 5y ago
  And after that... You still buy Apple things? Rotfl!
• apple4ever 5y ago
  Really would love a law on this issue. "No company can disable a user account without explaining clearly what they did wrong and allowing them to appeal to an independent review group within the company" Its not right they can just disable something you paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for.
  • amelius 5y ago
    Hardware should just work without any strings that lead back to the vendor.
• drummer 5y ago
  Pathetic begging Apple to listen. Just stop using their crap man. Dont be a fucking fool.
• Cameri 5y ago
  Customers are misled by the common wording that is used in the current digital marketplaces. The wording needs to reflect the fact that we are just getting a revocable nontransferable license to a digital product or service, and that in no shape or form the customer owns such digital assets. Instead of "Buy" perhaps it should be "Purchase license" or "Acquire license". Instead of "Purchases", it should say "Licensed products/services".
• rswskg 5y ago
  leanpub ftw. Try take my pdfs out of my cold, dead hands!
• acje 5y ago
  Webscalers treat their customers like their servers; cattle, not pets.
• davidjytang 5y ago
  > It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. Also Caocao, “I would rather kill 1000 by mistake than let anyone slip through my fingers.”