Developer and author Paris Buttfield-Addison has shared the story of how he was “permanently” locked out of his Apple Account simply because he tried to redeem a genuine Apple gift card that was purchased a physical third-party retailer.
Buttfield-Addison is the well-known organizer of the /dev/world conference. In a recent entry on his blog, he gave a terrifying recount of what happened to him and his Apple ID (which he had held for 25 years) when he tried to redeem a gift card that had been purchased from a legitimate retailer.
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.
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.
In addition to being locked out of all of his photos, he was also locked out of accessing his entire message history and development-related files. To say the least, it’s quite the scary experience to find yourself locked out of your digital life!
Buttfield-Addison eventually discovered that when he attempted to redeem his recently acquired gift card, Apple noticed that while it had been purchased from an authorized third-party retailer, someone else had already circumvented the card’s security measures and had redeemed the card. His redemption attempt was then flagged as fraudulent, which automatically disabled his Apple ID. He was initially told that his Apple ID has been permanently disabled.
Buttfield-Addison immediately contacted Apple Support, who initially told him that nothing could be done about the issue, and why no, you cannot talk to my superiors! Luckily, since Buttfield-Addison is better known than your average Apple user, media caught wind of the issue and their attention to the matter resulted in the problem being escalated to Apple Executive Relations, where the issue was satisfactorily resolved.
We’re back! A lovely man from Singapore, working for Apple Executive Relations, who has been calling me every so often for a couple of days, has let me know it’s all fixed.
While it’s certainly good to know that Buttfield-Addison’s problems were finally fixed and he once again has access to his digital life, would the average Apple user have been able to get a similar problem brought to a happy resolution, or would we be SOL (Simply Out of Luck) and lose everything we had ever entrusted to Apple’s servers?
But, what about average Apple users like me and you? Would the story have had a happy ending for those of us with less leverage? Since there doesn’t appear to be an established process in place to resolve issues like this, are we simply screwed, destined to lose everything we have trusted to the Apple ecosystem?
To be clear, there is no way for the average user to escalate the issue and Apple has the final word in situations like this.
Buttfield-Addison’s story should act as a cautionary tale for those of us that buy or use Apple gift cards purchased from sources other than an Apple retail store, or via their online retail store website or app. It seems that there are always new article about how a gift card purchased at a local department store or grocery retailer being “previously used.” I would also avoid purchasing a gift card at a discount from sellers on eBay or Facebook Marketplace. No matter how big the discount.
