[bastawhiz]

I'm not sure I believe they never replied. The author missed an email saying their payment wasn't accepted and that all of their services would be disabled, that's pretty serious. I'm supposed to believe Apple just lost the ticket?

I'm also not sure why the author didn't follow up: not following up has the direct consequence of being charged a substantial amount of money.

[notpushkin]

Yeah, I mean, I understand them being charged for the failed trade-in. Their credit card was charged, so Apple supposedly got the money (from Goldman Sachs). Why did they still block his account (owned by Apple) when he failed to pay his credit card bill (owed to Goldman Sachs)?

[bastawhiz]

He didn't pay for the device.

The linkage between the card and the account doesn't actually seem important here. They locked the account that the unpaid iPhone was set up with. Why would Apple continue to provide service to an account that was being used by a device that was effectively partially stolen from them?

[josephcsible]

If you buy a Corolla, pay it off, then a few years later buy a Camry too, and you default on its loan, should they be allowed to remotely disable both of your cars?

[bastawhiz]

They didn't disable his phone, they disabled the services that ran on their servers. Should you still get updates and navigation in both of your cars if you effectively steal the car? I can't think of a case where that would be reasonable.

Moreover, cars are much more easily repossessed than phones and laptops.

[josephcsible]

> They didn't disable his phone, they disabled the services that ran on their servers. Should you still get updates and navigation in both of your cars if you effectively steal the car? I can't think of a case where that would be reasonable.

Society has decided that defaulting on a car loan is not equivalent to stealing a car. This is why you can still go to jail for the latter even though debtor's prisons were abolished.

> Moreover, cars are much more easily repossessed than phones and laptops.

Sure, let's go that route instead. Should they be able to repossess your paid-off Corolla because you defaulted on payments for your Camry?

[bastawhiz]

[flagged]

[notpushkin]

This is all good, but you’re still ignoring the fact that they don’t owe Apple anything. The credit card is run by Goldman Sachs, not Apple.

[pqtyw]

Presumably same would apply to all other devices that user might have had? Disabling those seems quite unreasonable..

[bastawhiz]

They didn't disable the devices, they disabled the connected services.

[gopher_space]

The department that handles these problems is unreachable by phone instead of very interested in edge cases and false positives. That's an intentional choice.

[Spooky23]

The weakest link in Apple’s chain is the return and tradein fulfillment side. They use distinctive boxes for trades and the clown car of couriers — FedEx. Many of the couriers doing pickups at FedEx are private contractors or subcontractors, and their loss rates are high between pilferage and incompetence.

I’ve personally experienced two occasions where iPhones have been stolen in transit by FedEx personnel — one vanished and one, bound for an Apple repair facility in Pennsylvania, was delivered to a residential address a few miles from my city.

In neither case was Apple aware, which was surprising to me as they typically have their shit together. I only realized there was an issue on the one occasion where they were going to charge me for a replacement device, and checking the tracking indicated the phone was delivered to a stay at home mom. The whole process must be outsourced to a meh contractor, and insurance cleans up the mess.