Bad Apple (Inc.)

On Sep 21, 2023, I ordered and got the new iPhone 15 Pro to replace my old iPhone X. Shortly after that, in maybe one or two days, my phone prompted me to re-enter my App Store Apple ID. Note that I use a different Apple ID for my iCloud and the App Store.

When I put in the password for my App Store Apple ID, it told me that my account was deactivated. That was strange, so I went thru the support process to get the account re-activated, perhaps me getting a new phone triggered some alert in some system. I had nothing else in my account, no chargebacks, no declined payments, I had also spent a lot of money on that account.

I called Apple support (Sep 24), they said they’d put in a request to get the account reactivated, and that I should get a response back in 24 hours. In 24 hours, on Sep 25, I got an email back that the account was reactivated.

I thought that was the end of it, however…

On Oct 7, the account was once again deactivated, I called Apple once on that day, they said the same thing and that I should get a notification in 24 hours. I got nothing, I called again on Oct 11, same response, but nothing in 24 hours.

That is quite strange, so on my third call on Oct 12, I asked for the higher support agent, and I reached someone. They said that they have put in another request, and scheduled a call-back the next day. The next day, she checked the request and informed me that Apple could not reactivate the account, and directed me to the iCloud Legal Agreement. That was quite unfortunate, it does not appear that the Apple phone support can do anything.

On Oct 27, I decided to call again, asked for a higher support agent, and explained the whole situation. They said that they will put in a request to the Engineering team, and that I should get a response back in a week or two. A few week has passed, yet no response in the email. I called again and was told that Apple can not re-activate the account.

This was quite sad, I have spent a considerable amount of money on app purchases. And they are all down the drain.

Even worse, I can no longer update any apps on the phone, since they were acquired with the old, deactivated Apple ID. I had to re-install both the iPhone and the iPad, wasting a lot of hours re-enrolling 2fa apps like Duo and Okta, re-generate biometric keys both in-app authentication and ssh. By now, Nov 6, I have finally rolled out the new ssh keys to all of my server infrastructure.

This whole ordeal has caused me a lot of lost time and money, and I was not even provided a reason as to why it happened.

In the future, I will probably phase out of the Apple Ecosystem, maybe finally getting a Thinkpad like the rest of the hardcore Linux users.

Update: Nov 27, 2023. Apple has responded to the BBB complaint and have reactivated the account.