[kevindong]

This *FEELS* (not saying it is) like a false claim. Much like the much upvoted (and later debunked) HN post from a while back when a iOS developer claimed that Apple always keeps it 30% commission, even on a refunded purchase.

I consider it worrying that a claim wholly lacking evidence is getting so much attention.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995750

[Spooky23]

It's just noise/bullshit on Twitter.

The Apple Card t&c are here: https://www.goldmansachs.com/terms-and-conditions/Apple-Card...

They prominently mention any reference to iCloud, etc as your "Apple ID" and "account" is used with respect to the financial account. On page 11, consequences of "Default" include suspension of your "account". You are required to use a "Required Device", and specifically an Apple ID in "good standing" with Apple and Apple two-factor auth.

My guess is that if anything happened to this guy, he did something to fubar his Apple ID, which then fubared his Apple Card.

[breck]

This is not a false claim. I didn't miss a payment, but complained about a $10 WaPost recurring charge via their chat support and they went ahead and locked my account (I think they were trying to be helpful but this fucked things up royally). This was many months ago. The support has been nice, but completely neutered. I have screenshots. I've spoken to 8 people and no one can figure it out. I can't log in, pay, or close the account. The only way I still know there is some account in the ether is I get notifications on my phone that I'm being charged interest and letters in the mail I'm being charged interest.

For the record, I always pay the balance in full and until this I loved the UI and the product. But boy what a fucked up support experience and they should probably end relationship with Goldman and just stick to apple pay. There are about 6 points of total failure in the support experience. I could only spend so many hours holding their fucking hands before I had to give up.

I emailed TCook about this on 11/10/2020.

I greatly regret signing up for Apple Card and please DON'T. It was the best card until it stopped working, then it's the worse card I've ever had. I stick to Apple Pay now with an amex.

I'd also recommend using PayPal for recurring charged. 1 click to see all recurring charges and 1 click to cancel. Apple needs this ASAP.

[URSpider94]

This has nothing to do with the Twitter complaint. Are you locked out of iCloud? If not, then it’s not the same at all.

[breck]

I had to change all my iCloud credentials. I couldn't believe there was any linkages between the 2 things. Seemed insane and dangerous to me. Luckily I was able to get back into my iCloud/Apple. I just assumed the Apple Card was like any credit card. But I learned the hard way that it is not, and it's dangerous to mess with.

[nemothekid]

Yes, I don't think Apple Card has anything to do with it - I think his iCloud subscription was past due and that was that disabled his account - and then he found himself in a Catch 22 where he couldn't update/pay his Apple Card because he was locked out of iCloud. I'd imagine the same would have happened if he let his Visa card lapse.

[dcurtis]

Nope -- iCloud was not past due. It is an Apple Card policy.

[jbtule]

Apples Customer agreement->

Definition ->

“Account” means the Apple Card consumer credit account opened for you under this Agreement

Default actions ->

WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF BEING IN DEFAULT If you are in default, we may take any of the following actions to the extent permitted under applicable law: • Continue to charge you interest as long as you have an outstanding Account balance; • Lower your credit limit; • Decline or otherwise limit your ability to make Transactions; • Report information about your Account to the credit reporting bureaus; • Begin collections activities; • Suspend or close your Account; • Require you to immediately pay all or any portion of your total outstanding balance (this action may also be taken upon death); • If we retain an attorney who is not our salaried employee to collect amounts you owe, we may require you to pay for the court costs and reasonable attorneys' fees that we actually incur; and/or • Take any other action permitted by law.

[dmix]

> Suspend or close your Account

I guess account is one whole system the way they built it so it includes his iCloud and whatnot.

This should be last resort solution for Apple. I’m thinking well past 3 months of notifications or something, maybe even a year, considering it goes beyond just the card itself.

Or just not have it affect other services at all.

[URSpider94]

It’s not, at all. I have an Apple Card. My Apple Card account is totally separate from my iCloud account.

[Terretta]

“Account” means the Apple Card consumer credit account opened for you under this Agreement.

Not same as Apple ID.

[subhro]

Can you point out any public documentation about this policy?

[Bud]

It's not an Apple Card policy. At all. And you didn't post any convincing evidence of that.

[URSpider94]

What is an Apple Card policy?

[ziml77]

I keep refreshing these comments and the twitter thread to see if any better info is provided. This is the kind of thing that could be a mistake on Apple's side, could be a lie from the user, or could be a misunderstanding of what actually happened.

[RandallBrown]

I don't think the OP is lying. Their account was probably locked because they missed a payment. I do think this is a misunderstanding of what's happening.

They're paying for iCloud with their Apple Card. If that payment fails, the account can be locked.

So it's not "Missing a payment on the Apple Card locks your account" it might be "Missing an iCloud Payment locks your account."

They also say the iCloud payment wasn't past due. I wouldn't be surprised if this was some weird edge case or bug that caused the account to be locked.

[yardie]

This doesn’t sound like how iCloud, Apple Card, and Apple ID work.

I stopped paying for iCloud and it didn’t diable my Apple ID nor my Apple Card.

Also you don’t have past due iCloud accounts. You stop paying iCloud services stop working for you.

Sounds like something else is a going on here.

[dcurtis]

I didn't expect that tweet to get so much attention; I'll write up some more details shortly.

[sksixk]

Seriously?

[totalZero]

Do you have any evidence aside from a feeling? Just curious.

[rblatz]

This would be egregious behavior by Apple, and the Apple Card has been out long enough that there would be numerous reports of this that gained steam by now. It's also been out long enough and distributed to enough people that someone somewhere was likely to encounter two issues with Apple at about the same time. So it's much more likely that Apple doesn't just suspend all your accounts until you pay up.

[totalZero]

That's a very different argument from "this feels false," which is just some subjective bullshit. However, your argument is little better.

You're saying "it stands to reason that a widely used product would have already hit this corner case by now." The problem with your argument is that it's a tautology. If in fact the statement by dcurtis is the first efflorescence of the problem, your line of thinking would reject it anyway.

That's why it's useless to say "this feels wrong" or even "surely we would know by now." The guy who wrote the tweet has already said here in HN comments that he will substantiate what he wrote, so it seems unnecessary to dogpile the skepticism and "feelings" in the interim.

You don't have to accept a logical proposition in order to consider/entertain it.

[setr]

>The problem with your argument is that it's a tautology. If in fact the statement by dcurtis is the first efflorescence of the problem, your line of thinking would reject it anyway

No its not; it's defining a probability. This report is most likely false, because it would be unlikely for this to be the first instance of it. It's not defining a logical proposition -- that's just you extracting more gaurantees from the statement than what was actually specified. It's not if this then that, it's if probably this, then probably that.

And it's valid to state it "feels false", if only because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence -- the same way it's valid to not significantly consider the claim "I saw an alien" stated on its own. Yes, there is a possibility it's true, and yes, its not valid to declare it false only on the basis that aliens are involved, but it would be unreasonable to assume that possibility it is true is significant based on the claim alone.

It is perfectly valid to assume it's false, because the likelihood of the alternative is low. It is not valid to declare it false for the same reasoning; but no one in this chain did such a thing.

[totalZero]

You're conflating two different parent comments; I'll take them separately.

If you think something "feels false" but you have no evidence for it, that's not a particularly strong basis for reasoning.

>it's defining a probability.

This is not true. It's classifying the first instance as false.

[setr]

>If you think something "feels false" but you have no evidence for it, that's not a particularly strong basis for reasoning.

That's true, but an extraordinary claim without extraordinary evidence is also not a particularly strong basis for reasoning.

and from the original post...

>I consider it worrying that a claim wholly lacking evidence is getting so much attention.

That is, the conclusion reached by twitter is not well-reasoned, which gives kevindong the well-reasoned conclusion: it's probably false.

>It's classifying the first instance as false.

>This *FEELS* (not saying it is) like a false claim.

I'm not clear how you can read this as anything other than a probability. It says nothing about the premise, and it clearly specifies that the conclusion has not been [definitively] classified.

Otherwise, if that ain't the money-quote, I don't know what you're reading but it's not what I'm reading.

[zepto]

> If you think something "feels false" but you have no evidence for it, that's not a particularly strong basis for reasoning.

We can’t determine that.

Whether it is a strong basis for reasoning depends on the person’s priors, which may be very strong.

Until we ask them about their priors, we simply don’t know.

[zepto]

> If in fact the statement by dcurtis is the first efflorescence of the problem, your line of thinking would reject it anyway.

This is true, but we have to take it in context. How likely is it that this is the policy, and we’ve never heard about it before now?

The card has been our for a couple of years. Millions of people are using it. This implies 10s of millions of payments. At a conservative estimate this would mean there must have been thousands of missed payments, and therefore thousands of locked Apple accounts.

It therefore seems unlikely we wouldn’t have heard about it. I could of course be wrong as could the GP, because this is just a probability estimate. But that’s all the GP is saying.

[totalZero]

Thanks, and I agree with you. But policies can change, so it's a fair conversation to have if in fact the stated thing happened. People seem to think that "is there evidence for what you said" is some kind of abusive reply but that should be table stakes for most claims. The guy in the tweet already said he'd write something up, but the people who said he is probably stating falsehoods just came up with that based on a gut feeling.

Me personally, Apple repeatedly locked (not disabled) my account earlier this year when they weren't able to process a payment. PayPal had authorized but not charged an M1 laptop I had ordered with a non-English keyboard, and somehow the order hung. My bank and PayPal showed the authorization, but Apple showed it as "hold" due to unsuccessful payment. Customer service wasn't able to push the order through without taking credit card information directly, and I ended up canceling the order, which means I lose my place in the order queue.

Based on my recent experience, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple had some issues with payment processing. The reason that I care about this particular topic is that I'm considering doing the re-order of the M1 laptop with Apple Card financing. That's why chaff like "it feels false lol" is not useful information for me.

[zepto]

> But policies can change, so it's a fair conversation to have if in fact the stated thing happened.

Yes, but it’s a not a fair conversation to start by spreading a false statement.

If we’re just speculating about the policies, headlines like the one on this post are simply not true.

Right now, that may be exactly what has happened. We don’t know yet but we do know it’s not as simple as the tweet and headline claim.

[FireBeyond]

It's also possible that this is new behavior on Apple's part.

[kevindong]

The onus of providing proof is on the claimant. At the time of writing, there was none.

I agree with rblatz's response's reasoning.

[totalZero]

You're making a claim too, kevindong.

I'm just asking whether there's any meat to your claim.

I can tell from your response that there is not. For example, evidence would be "this happened to me and I didn't encounter the same consequences for my Apple account."

[zepto]

> "this happened to me and I didn't encounter the same consequences for my Apple account."

You can see other commenters on this thread saying exactly this.

E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26307849

[totalZero]

That comment is from a different user and was posted an hour after the one to which I replied.

[zepto]

> That comment is from a different user

What does that matter?