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@parisba

Your best bet might be to get a major newspaper involved. Bad publicity can sometimes work wonders. You have the advantage of being involved in Apple development over a long period of time, so your story would have more impact than the average hapless victim. If I were a journalist interested in tech matters, it would snag my attention.

@parisba My wife and I each had an iPod. I liked using mine for travel on a plane for music and my noise-cancelling headphones. But they changed the music system and we lost access. I've never been able to reestablish access to it and thus the iPods became bricks.

Sorry for your massive loss. I cannot imagine. This was annoying enough to lose access to a few hundred dollars worth of tech, but your loss is massive.

@parisba This happened to me a few years ago. I posted about it here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220731072922/https://twitter.com/com/status/1466928315562958850

The combo that got it resolved, I think, was: 1) posting the shit out of it on social media (I had a large‑ish Twitter account at the time + Reddit + HN + Apple Discussion forum), followed by 2), emailing tcook@apple.com. I got a reply from his executive team a few days after emailing. Good luck!

@parisba did you really trust Apple so much? I mean, it is terrible, I cannot help in any way, I just feel your pain – and it shows that trusting BigTech companies is a big mistake 😕 fingers crossed… it is also terribly wrong that one cannot reach to human support who could actually help; everything is automated and AI-ed to the level when the support is literally nonexistent

@parisba

What this teaches me is never to accept an apple gift card. From anyone. Apple store or not. Friend or not.

Return it unused, for the full value, asap.

Edit: if they let you even do that. It is possible they are fully aware of the tampering problem (because they cheaped out) and will refuse any returns for this very reason. So the real safe way is to never buy any apple gift card, ever.

@parisba damn, this is one of my worst nightmares. Kind of a wake up call for me.
This is what happens when fraud analysts are replaced with GenAI

@parisba This is horrible. The blank lack of anything other than "system says no" is apalling. There should *always* be fallback human contact to address situations like this. Good luck 🤞✊

@parisba

What a nightmare!

@parisba Something very like this happened to my 9 year old son's Apple ID when I got him his first MacBook: I registered an Apple ID for him, added it to my Family Sharing and then tried to log into his new MacBook Air with it. The account was immediately hellbanned, less than an hour after being registered, with no way to reverse, reactivate, appeal, or even delete the account. He'd never even touched the account or the computer. Months of support calls later, resolution was: email Tim Cook.

@parisba You need this published, in real media outlets, not just shared on amateur media.

@heiseonline

@parisba
Why my last Apple product of any kind was a IIe.
Walled gardens and doggy entrapment tactics were early red flags.

@parisba Why I throw apple away? It is not mine and no matter how many times I pay for it, it never will be. I don't like giving my money to mega corporations that think they own ME.
I don't like hosting parasites.

@parisba They are protecting their business, not yours. Hope you can recover your data and break free from Apple.

Mildly related: https://www.techspot.com/news/95729-google-refuses-reinstate-account-man-after-flagged-medical.html

@parisba I would be getting my lawyer to write their lawyer a friendly note. If you haven't already, do attempt to stoke a media furore on Twitter. Nobody reads Mastodon, and nobody cares what happens here, which is what makes it pleasant, but not particularly useful for applying social pressure.

Good luck. Terrible situation. Keep us all posted.

@parisba That's why I'm looking for open source alternatives to corporate software (which, unfortunately, is often more convenient and better).

It is a mistake to depend on the ecosystem