Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I have no recourse. Can you help? Email paris AT paris.id.au (and read on for the details). ❤️
Here’s how Apple “Permanently” locked my Apple ID.
I am writing this as a desperate measure. After nearly 30 years as a loyal customer, authoring technical books on Apple’s own programming languages (Objective-C and Swift), and spending tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of dollars on devices, apps, conferences, and services, I have been locked out of my personal and professional digital life with no explanation and no recourse.
The Situation#
My Apple ID, which I have held for around 25 years (it was originally a username, before they had to be email addresses; it’s from the iTools era), has been permanently disabled. This isn’t just an email address; it is my core digital identity. It holds terabytes of family photos, my entire message history, and is the key to syncing my work across the ecosystem.
The Trigger: The only recent activity on my account was a recent attempt to redeem a $500 Apple Gift Card to pay for my 6TB iCloud+ storage plan. The code failed. The vendor suggested that the card number was likely compromised and agreed to reissue it. Shortly after, my account was locked. An Apple Support representative suggested that this was the cause of the issue: indicating that something was likely untoward about this card. The card was purchased from a major brick-and-mortar retailer (Australians, think Woolworths scale; Americans, think Walmart scale), so if I cannot rely on the provenance of that, and have no recourse, what am I meant to do? We have even sent the receipt, indicating the card’s serial number and purchase location to Apple.
The only recent activity on my account was a recent attempt to redeem a $500 Apple Gift Card to pay for my 6TB iCloud+ storage plan. The code failed. The vendor suggested that the card number was likely compromised and agreed to reissue it. Shortly after, my account was locked.
The Consequence: My account is flagged as “closed in accordance with the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions”.
My account is flagged as “closed in accordance with the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions”. The Damage: I effectively have over $30,000 worth of previously-active “bricked" hardware. My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly. I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media. Apple representatives claim that only the “Media and Services” side of my account is blocked, but now my devices have signed me out of iMessage (and I can’t sign back in), and I can’t even sign out of the blocked iCloud account because… it’s barred from the sign-out API, as far as I can tell. I can’t even login to the “Secure File Transfer” system Apple uses to exchange information, because it relies on an Apple ID. Most of the ways Apple has suggested seeking help from them involve signing in to an Apple service to upload something, or communicate with them. This doesn’t work as the account is locked.
I effectively have over $30,000 worth of previously-active “bricked" hardware. My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly. I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media.
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