Linus Tech Tips Discussion

 20 Years of Digital Life, $30,000 worth of hardware, gone thanks to Apple (and a bad gift card) Summary  After buying and using a bad 500$ gift card to pay for his iCloud+ storage, Paris Buttfield-Addison a long user of apple product (30 years!) and developer evangelist for Apple product had his account locked, resulting in most of his devices unusable, developer account and other services gone, cloud storage unavailable, etc. He has around 30k$ worth of Apple hardware, and his account ID date back from the itools era.   Quotes Quote 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) Quote A Support Nightmare [...]The experience was terrifyingly dismissive: No Information: Support staff refused to tell me why the account was banned or provide specific details on the decision. No Escalation: When I begged for an escalation to Executive Customer Relations (ECR), noting that I would lose the ability to do my job and that my devices were useless, I was told that “an additional escalation won’t lead to a different outcome” WIP (i've send it too soon )   My thoughts  Give a few sentences with your thoughts on the news. For example, this might be why you think the news is interesting, what you think the broader implications of this news are for the tech industry, or how you expect the story to develop in future.    Sources  Add links to the news sites that you used to write this post