And this kind of cherry-picked reply-replies is why I'm happy that some people hate HN. Let them find a different place to misunderstand comments and focus on something irrelevant :) Then the rest of us can assume the best of the people we discuss with.
I feel more and more than HN comments is not for every one and not for me. If you're not careful with your wording, you'll get flagged and your message will be dismissed and it seems futile to argue against it.
This creates an "elitist" atmosphere (totally subjective assertion) that I'm not comfortable with.
Yeah, I agree with you, I also sometimes feel that some comments get unfairly flagged and then trying to argue your opinion to be futile.
But I also think that not every place on the internet is for everyone. I for one feel that the Twitter atmosphere is not comfortable, but I can imagine how other people do think so. So I try to stay away from Twitter.
Not all places invite all groups of people on the planet. I like to discuss with different-minded people, people who think different from me, so I like to talk with people against sexualisation, against drugs, people who are generally more conservative than me, to understand their perspectives. But it's really hard to do that on Twitter, as those people don't feel comfortable there, and that's fine to me. I'll find them where they are comfortable, and then I either adjust myself to the community I'm joining, or I find a different place.
Different and divergent communities on the internet is a good thing, it gives us multiple different ideas at the same time.
Every social place has its own "traditions" if I dare use this term.
Twitter is not really a place for debate (more for rants IMHO), but HN is. And not every one wants to debate and that's cool.
What I enjoy the most on HN is the often insightful content (based on years of experience), but many threads bring "hype wars" or some kind of tech-related drama, what I remember the most is:
- C/C++ is evil, every one should do Rust
- Kubernetes is evil because it's complex
- Your business is failing if it's not generating 100k MRR
I do not even bother anymore to argue against that.
NB: I exaggerated intentionally to make my point, I know there is more nuanced opinions, and some real/justified concerns about those topics.
IMHO, While HN is a "social place" (there are people who can talk), this is not a "social network" (I will probably never remember your nickname even if we talk again together in another thread).
1. Did Apple talk to Dustin, or just to the media?
2. The 9to5Mac article says, "if the item is not received, Apple communicates with the customer over email and phone." Yet Dustin reported no phone call from Apple, and indeed Dustin's article says he was frustrated playing phone tag with multiple departments at Apple, each of whom were unable to help him resolve the issue.
3. Why did Apple Card deny the charge? My understanding is that it's not common practice in the credit card industry for cards to stop working after one late payment. It seems that the missed payment in this case would have only been $9.99 for Dustin's iCloud upgrade (which was successful charged and up to date on payments, Dustin said). There are late fees and so forth, but they don't usually just render the card unusable.
4. Why did this happen so fast, and why is Apple such a hardass with loyal Apple customers? A customer who in this case had purchased multiple MacBook Pros, as well as iCloud, I'm sure among other things.
5. What ever happened to the trade-in kit that Apple was supposed to send to Dustin? There's no indication that it ever arrived.
> The 9to5Mac article says, "if the item is not received, Apple communicates with the customer over email and phone." Yet Dustin reported no phone call from Apple,
It's possible Dustin had silence unknown callers turned on.
> My understanding is that it's not common practice in the credit card industry for cards to stop working after one late payment.
Missing a payment and a failed attempted payment are two separate things that result in different outcomes. Autopay failed which likely set off red flags.
> Why did this happen so fast
The locked Apple ID and iCloud shutdown only happened on the M1 MacBook he purchased. Which makes sense. If I were to abuse the instant credit system and sold the essentially-stolen M1 MacBook on Ebay, the buyer should be able to know quickly if there were any issues with the device so they can rectify appropriately.
> It's possible Dustin had silence unknown callers turned on.
"Calls from unknown numbers will be silenced, sent to voicemail, and displayed on the Recents list." So the calls don't just disappear forever, you still see them when you check your phone. You just don't hear a ring. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207099
> Missing a payment and a failed attempted payment are two separate things that result in different outcomes. Autopay failed which likely set off red flags.
Why would this set off red flags? A failed autopay actually seems a lot more innocent than flat out not trying to pay at all. Especially if the autopay had been working previously.
> the essentially-stolen M1 MacBook
This description is over the top. The only amount at issue is the trade-in credit.
> This description is over the top. The only amount at issue is the trade-in credit.
Presumably hundreds of dollars.
Well above what most companies would think of as theft.
Whichever way you look at it, they disabled the account because he hadn’t paid for his computer, which is not unreasonable in itself.
Whatever happened, Dustin must have known he hadn’t sent in the trade-in, but he didn’t mention that when he incorrectly stated that his account had been disabled because of non payment of just one Apple Card bill.
> Presumably hundreds of dollars. Well above what most companies would think of as theft.
This spin is so strange. Dustin is a longtime customer of Apple. Apple has a lot of information on him, and has done a lot of business with him. The idea that now he's suddenly going to become a criminal and steal money from a trade-in credit is absurd. Then what, high-tail it to Mexico and live a life of luxury with those hundreds of dollars?
> Whatever happened, Dustin must have known he hadn’t sent in the trade-in, but he didn’t mention that when
You mean in the tweet? Which has a limit of 280 characters? Because he did mention it in the article that he wrote after the tweet. It's silly to criticize a tweet for having incomplete information. Of course tweets have incomplete information, that's inevitable. Are you going to die on the hill of the tweet? The article expanded on the tweet.
zepto, I have to wonder what you think Dustin's goal is here? Do you think he's "out to get" Apple or something? Because buying Apple's latest MacBook Pro is a really strange way to bring down the company. Why are you so committed to tearing down one person who experienced a problem that nobody should experience? We're all interested in exactly how the problem occurred, but I don't know, I just find it so strange when people feel they need to be Apple's self-appointed unpaid internet defender. Apple, as one of the world's most powerful corporations, can speak for itself if it so chooses, as it just did today.
You know, this never would have become a public issue if Dustin could have just spoken to someone on the phone at Apple and gotten his problem resolved right then over the phone. Shouldn't that be the bare minimum of customer service? Dustin certainly tried to do that. He only went public after multiple failures to resolve the problem first. Nothing you can say, and no mistakes that Dustin made, can change the fact that there was a massive failure of Apple customer service here.
You are continuing to speculate based on incomplete information.
You are painting a picture, but really that’s all it is until we have more answers.
You really don’t know what happened.
> this never would have become a public issue if Dustin could have just spoken to someone on the phone at Apple and gotten his problem resolved right then over the phone
Perhaps true. We don’t know for sure, but irrelevant to whether Dustin made bullshit statements. He could have made it public without that.
> Which has a limit of 280 characters?
What he wrote in those 280 characters turned to be total bullshit, completely unsubstantiated by anything He or Apple later said.
That has nothing to do with the character limit.
> I have to wonder what you think Dustin's goal is here? Do you think he's "out to get" Apple or something?
You can follow the link I posted elsewhere in reply to Dustin himself.
I don’t think it was his goal to harm Apple, however it is definitely some people’s goal, and by posting a false statement, he has created misinformation which such people readily exploit.
> there was a massive failure of Apple customer service here
No. This is just more speculation from you. As we have already established, you really don’t know what happened.
> Why are you so committed to tearing down one person who experienced a problem that nobody should experience?
Nobody is tearing anyone down. I’m just saying that we need to hear from him in order to understand what is happening. My response is to you drawing conclusions without waiting to hear from him.
He provided incomplete and incorrect information and that has led people to draw faulty conclusions. It would help if he cleared this up.
Even just saying “my bad, I was upset at having my account disabled and jumped to the wrong conclusion in my tweet” would help. Remember he doubled down later and made a second false claim about Apple’s policies.
Why are you defending this anyway? Just because Apple can make press releases, why would you encourage the spread of false information here in this forum?
The moderators do make effort to prevent that, but it takes a certain amount of community support too.
It’s pretty simple - you made a list of questions which I agreed was reasonable, but that the clarification is clearly for Dustin to give now. The rest of this discussion stems from you drawing conclusions without waiting for him to reply.
> we need to hear from him in order to understand what is happening
> the clarification is clearly for Dustin to give now
zepto on the other hand:
> What he wrote in those 280 characters turned to be total bullshit
> he has created misinformation
> He provided incomplete and incorrect information
> made a second false claim
> the spread of false information here
You're talking out of both sides of your mouth. Are you actually waiting for more information from Dustin, or have you already made up your mind and are only waiting for an apology?
> which such people readily exploit
This is again an over the top description. Apple is doing just fine, raking in the money at record rate. Exploit? Exploit how? Dustin hasn't released a 0day security vulnerability here. Relax, Apple is going to be fine, you don't have to run with your musket to the front line to defend the company from certain death. If one Twitter user could actually do so much damage to Apple, if it were that easy to significantly hurt the company, then Apple would be out of business by now.
Even back in the 90s when Apple was "beleaguered", it wasn't internet commenters like you who saved Apple. It was Apple's own change in technology, business strategy, and leadership that saved Apple. You really don't have to go online and "protect" Apple. They are going to be ok. IMO the army of online defenders actually do more harm than good to Apple, because they make it appear like a religious cult. Public criticism of powerful entities is necessary. Some criticism will be accurate, some inaccurate, but in any case it's healthy. The worst scenario would be if individuals are afraid of ever speaking out about Apple or other corporations, for fear of the online mob, and being branded as a criminal, as is being done to Dustin. So many "he basically stole a MacBook Pro" comments, I want to scream.
Personal insults are inappropriate in this forum. Please look at the HN guidelines.
I think you are trying to suggest that there is some contradiction between me saying that ‘we really don’t know what happened’, and also saying ‘the tweet was bullshit’.
Obviously there is no contradiction. We really don’t know what happened between Apple and Dustin because the two stories leave an incomplete picture. You wouldn’t still have ‘questions’ if this wasn’t true.
We really do know that the tweet (and the comments about Apple’s policy) are bullshit, because those have already been contradicted by both Apple and Dustin.
What we don’t have is Dustin’s explanation for how he came to post them.
If you look back through the comment thread, you’ll see that this conversation is a response to you denying that we needed to hear from Dustin.
Nothing more.
I haven’t made any positive comments about Apple here, or denied that there is a problem.
All I have done is point out that you are drawing conclusions that you cannot actually know to be true without more information, which Dustin can provide.
What is your aim in this thread?
> Exploit how?
By taking the falsehoods and magnifying them to create widespread false beliefs.
There are plenty of people with an ideological or personal axe to grind against Apple.
There are also competitors and investors who benefit from bad press about Apple.
Obvious stuff really.
> Are you actually waiting for more information from Dustin, or have you already made up your mind and are only waiting for an apology?
I haven’t made my mind up about anything, except that Dustin’s original tweet was bullshit, and that we don’t have enough information about his side of what happened.
> Public criticism of powerful entities is necessary.
Agreed. Bear in mind that Dustin is a public entity too. He is a prominent tech blogger, founder, and investor.
Obviously he’s not comparable to the worlds largest corporation in terms of power, but he has had respect in this forum and has influence in his communities.
His original bullshit tweet for example, was echoed to his approx 50,000 followers.
How many of those people also read the blog post, and how many are now aware of the uncertainty?
We have a right to expect forthrightness from him as much as from Apple.
Regardless of present size and power, I think it’s reasonable to want to promote that.
Portraying him as purely a bumbling victim doesn’t do him justice.
Portraying him as ‘loyal’ to Apple is even weirder. Customer loyalty is a figure of speech used in marketing.
It just means someone is likely to buy again. Not that they see the company as a friend whose interests they want to protect.
> Some criticism will be accurate, some inaccurate, but in any case it's healthy.
Firstly, in context this reads as an an attempt to minimize responsibility for making false statements.
Secondly, if that is your view, then we definitely disagree.
I think that inaccurate statements are inevitable, but that doesn’t mean they are healthy.
I think it’s important for people to take responsibility when they make false statements, for whatever reason.
Propagating misinformation simply isn’t a good thing to do in this world. It pollutes the discourse and weakens the very critique that I think we do agree is important.
It’s disappointing that you don’t see this.
> and being branded as a criminal, as is being done to Dustin. So many "he basically stole a MacBook Pro"
Nobody is branding Dustin a criminal, nor is there anything for him to ‘fear’.
The comments about the stolen computer are people pointing out that this is the situation almost any business would be concerned about in the absence of a response from the customer.
It is perspective taking by people who are trying to understand both party’s points of view under the circumstances we know about.
> Personal insults are inappropriate in this forum.
It's not a personal insult. Talking out of both sides of your mouth means saying contradictory things, and I made lists of the contradictory things you said in one comment.
> I haven’t made any positive comments about Apple here
There are several HN usernames that I recognize on sight, because I've seen them repeatedly defending Apple in the comments of every HN story. zepto is one. coldtea is another, for example. Your reputation precedes you. ;-)
> I haven’t made my mind up about anything, except that Dustin’s original tweet was bullshit
I don't think "bullshit" is a helpful way framing it. It may be the case that Dustin misunderstood the full causal connections in this case. However, there were still some very strange occurrences:
1) If your autopay fails, Apple Card will disable your card immediately and prevent further transactions.
2) If there's a mixup in returning a trade-in, then Apple will quickly hold your accounts as hostage.
3) If either 1 or 2 happen, you can't call Apple on the phone and get it cleared up quickly.
As an Apple customer, I wouldn't expect any of those to happen. Especially since Apple supposedly controls this whole process and has its name on every part.
> How many of those people also read the blog post, and how many are now aware of the uncertainty?
9to5Mac has a wider readership than Dustin, and their story was also repeated by other tech media. So I'd say there was ample opportunity for Apple's response. Moreover, if people make up their mind forever based on one tweet and/or blog post, and never revisit the issue, the blame is on them, not on either Dustin or Apple.
> We have a right to expect forthrightness from him as much as from Apple.
I just found this comment from Dustin. "Shortly after publishing, I received a phone call from "Apple, Inc.". When I tried to answer, the call dropped. Then my Apple ID account was suddenly unlocked and I got an email from someone saying they are going to try to call again tomorrow." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26314385 So yes, hopefully we'll see a follow-up article with further details.
> It just means someone is likely to buy again. Not that they see the company as a friend whose interests they want to protect.
Agreed. My point in calling him a loyal customer is this if someone is likely to buy again, a company ought to treat them well and give them the benefit of the doubt rather than treating them like a criminal with immediate suspicion. Such treatment is very likely to decrease their odds of buying again. In other words, locking Dustin out of his accounts was bad business, regardless of what Dustin did.
> Nobody is branding Dustin a criminal
You apparently haven't read the various comments that I have.
> The comments about the stolen computer are people pointing out that this is the situation almost any business would be concerned about in the absence of a response from the customer.
In general, I'm very concerned about out of control "fraud detection algorithms", big tech companies locking people out of their accounts based on false positives, and the complete inability of users to contact those companies and get support and restore their accounts. This is where I'm coming from. It's becoming a very big problem, and I disagree strongly with the many people who have claimed that Dustin got what he "deserved". None of us deserve that, no matter what. We're at the mercy of these giant corporations, who appear to have no mercy.
Apple has created perverse incentives for people to go public with problems, because that actually gets results, unlike trying to contact Apple customer service privately. Look how fast Apple reacted after the article was published! If our only recourse is to "run to the press", that's what you can expect, and that's what we see.
> I made lists of the contradictory things you said in one comment.
An incorrect interpretation, but I accept that you thought that at the time.
>> I haven’t made any positive comments about Apple here
> There are several HN usernames that I recognize on sight, because I've seen them repeatedly defending Apple in the comments of every HN story. zepto is one. coldtea is another, for example. Your reputation precedes you. ;-)
I think you may be mistaken. I don’t generally make positive comments about Apple.
Clearly you aren’t referring to any such comment here, so this is a pure ad-hominem, and nothing to do with this conversation.
You seem to classify people as ‘Apple defenders’ or ‘cultists’ which doesn’t seem like an accurate way to make sense of what people are doing when you read their comments.
> > I haven’t made my mind up about anything, except that Dustin’s original tweet was bullshit
> I don't think "bullshit" is a helpful way framing it. It may be the case that Dustin misunderstood the full causal connections in this case.
As written, the tweet contained no truth whatsoever. It was bullshit.
>> However, there were still some very strange occurrences:
Perhaps, but that is in no way connected to the truth of the tweet.
> 1) If your autopay fails, Apple Card will disable your card immediately and prevent further transactions. 2) If there's a mixup in returning a trade-in, then Apple will quickly hold your accounts as hostage. 3) If either 1 or 2 happen, you can't call Apple on the phone and get it cleared up quickly.
Not complete bullshit, but also certainly not something we know to be true.
Here’s why:
1. We don’t know Dustin’s side of the full story, so these conclusions themselves are in doubt. We know he hasn’t told us everything yet.
2. Even if he bears them out, you are stating these as if they are generally true, rather than a rare occurrence. You simply don’t know that, and so are making a false generalization.
As pointed out in the prior thread, if this was happening as a matter of course, it would be unlikely that we were only just hearing about it now.
> As an Apple customer, I wouldn't expect any of those to happen. Especially since Apple supposedly controls this whole process and has its name on every part.
The only reason anyone would think that at this point is if they had read a false claim about it. If it turns out to be standard practice, we will certainly hear about it from more people who have experienced it.
However we still don’t even know if your interpretation is even valid in this one case, let alone in general.
> How many of those people also read the blog post, and how many are now aware of the uncertainty?
9to5Mac has a wider readership than Dustin, and their story was also repeated by other tech media. So I'd say there was ample opportunity for Apple's response. Moreover, if people make up their mind forever based on one tweet and/or blog post, and never revisit the issue, the blame is on them, not on either Dustin or Apple.
Clearly false. It’s well known that headlines influence people, and misinformation is often not checked. Yes, it would be better if people didn’t operate that way, but we know they do.
If you spread misinformation, you are responsible for it. It’s clearly false to say it’s on everyone else for not being sufficiently skeptical.
On this subject of skepticism, it seems like you are now agreeing that we should in fact be skeptical of Dustin, and want to see information corroborating his claim, otherwise it is on us for believing him.
Interesting change of position.
> We have a right to expect forthrightness from him as much as from Apple.
>>I just found this comment from Dustin. "Shortly after publishing, I received a phone call from "Apple, Inc.". When I tried to answer, the call dropped. Then my Apple ID account was suddenly unlocked and I got an email from someone saying they are going to try to call again tomorrow." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26314385 So yes, hopefully we'll see a follow-up article with further details.
As I said - it’s on him to respond next. He seems to agree. We’re only talking this because you denied that.
> It just means someone is likely to buy again. Not that they see the company as a friend whose interests they want to protect.
Agreed. My point in calling him a loyal customer is this if someone is likely to buy again, a company ought to treat them well and give them the benefit of the doubt rather than treating them like a criminal with immediate suspicion. Such treatment is very likely to decrease their odds of buying again. In other words, locking Dustin out of his accounts was bad business,
I assume you are speaking from ignorance here. My guess is that Apple has a lot more data on fraud prevention and customer retention at their scale then you do.
> regardless of what Dustin did.
Weird. Obviously not true. There are many things a customer can do that should cause a business to hold them in bad standing. Suspected theft would be one.
>> Nobody is branding Dustin a criminal
> You apparently haven't read the various comments that I have.
Or possibly I just haven’t read into the comments what you have.
>> The comments about the stolen computer are people pointing out that this is the situation almost any business would be concerned about in the absence of a response from the customer.
>> In general, I'm very concerned about out of control "fraud detection algorithms", big tech companies locking people out of their accounts based on false positives, and the complete inability of users to contact those companies and get support and restore their accounts.
A reasonable concern.
> This is where I'm coming from. It's becoming a very big problem, and I disagree strongly with the many people who have claimed that Dustin got what he "deserved".
Ok - but that has nothing to do with our conversation. You seem to be bringing baggage with you. If you want to debate people who think Dustin ‘deserved’ something, you should reply to them and not bring that to someone who isn’t saying that.
> None of us deserve that, no matter what. We're at the mercy of these giant corporations, who appear to have no mercy.
Also true of many corporations. Apple however has many avenues of customer service, and indeed if this was a regular occurrence, we’d know about it.
> Apple has created perverse incentives for people to go public with problems, because that actually gets results, unlike trying to contact Apple customer service privately.
This is clearly false. Apple has billions of customers, millions of Apple Card users, and only one person going to the press with this problem.
> Look how fast Apple reacted after the article was published! If our only recourse is to "run to the press", that's what you can expect, and that's what we see.
Apple seems to offer many more avenues for recourse than most other companies.
Dustin ‘running to the press’ was based on him somehow forgetting about the return and falsely attributing his account lockout to Apple Card.
If true this would have indeed been something to raise.
It’s possible that Dustin shares your concern, and that this caused him to falsely assume the worst and make the incorrect accusation that he did.
I’m just guessing of course, but I agree that these concerns exist. This is all the more reason not to rush to judgement.
It’s certainly possible, even likely that Dustin’s case was bad customer service. That’s bound to happen sometimes when you have a billion customers.
There is no evidence at all that Dustin was left with no other recourse than to make an incorrect tweet to correct that.
> As written, the tweet contained no truth whatsoever.
"I forgot to update my Apple Card autopay info" True. "Re-enabling them takes 3-5+ business days." True. It's also true that Apple was holding his accounts hostage, just perhaps for a different reason than he believed. A lot of people seem to be ok with Apple holding his accounts hostage for the trade-in, but I for one am not ok with that.
> As pointed out in the prior thread, if this was happening as a matter of course, it would be unlikely that we were only just hearing about it now.
No, because first of all, it appears that Apple giving advance credit on trade-ins is a very new policy, and they previously waited until the trade-in was returned before giving the credit. Also, it seems there was a coincidence of several factors that don't often occur all together. 1) Failed autopay. 2) Failure to return trade-in. 3) Apple charges card for the trade-in value within just a few days after the failed autopay. 4) Charge is declined just a few days after failed autopay. The timing of all these were crucial, and would not all happen together commonly.
> If you spread misinformation, you are responsible for it. It’s clearly false to say it’s on everyone else for not being sufficiently skeptical.
I disagree with the term "misinformation" here. I'm still waiting to hear more details, but I certainly don't believe that Dustin intentionally said anything false. If something he said turns out to be false, then yes, he should correct it. However, my point is that nobody can force other people to listen to them a second time. You can correct yourself, but if people walk away after the initial story and never pay attention again, what can you do? "Never say anything false in the first place" would be a ridiculous suggestion, because nobody is omniscient, and the pressure to never say anything false just leads to censorship, which is highly undesirable.
> As I said - it’s on him to respond next. He seems to agree. We’re only talking this because you denied that.
No, I said that some of my questions were for Apple rather than Dustin, such as questions 3 and 4. Some questions he can answer, some questions he can't, as he doesn't know everything Apple does and never will.
> I assume you are speaking from ignorance here.
You said personal insults are inappropriate in this forum.
> My guess is that Apple has a lot more data on fraud prevention and customer retention at their scale then you do.
Heh. If Apple has data that they can treat customers like crap and still retain them, I certainly won't dispute that possibility. But a lot of people including myself would never want to do business with a company who thinks like that. I think it's shortsighted.
It does seem like "Tim Apple" operates more in accordance with this idea than "Steve Apple" did.
> Obviously not true. There are many things a customer can do that should cause a business to hold them in bad standing. Suspected theft would be one.
I wasn't talking about hypothetical customers, I was talking about Dustin. We know what he did, or didn't do: update the autopay information on the Apple Card, and send in the old MacBook Pro trade-in.
> There is no evidence at all that Dustin was left with no other recourse than to make an incorrect tweet to correct that.
I'm not even saying this is why Dustin tweeted. I can't read his mind. Maybe he was just pissed and venting, which is a very common thing on Twitter. After all, he was still locked out at the time of the tweet. I am saying that we see a lot of stories in the news media with people complaining about some action that Apple has taken, and the Apple defenders always come out of the woodwork to defend Apple and criticize the complainer as spreading "misinformation" about Apple, as though an individual suffering from Apple's inscrutable systems can be expected to be not only omniscient but also "sympathetic" to Apple. From my perspective, there can be no good justification whatsoever for Apple locking Dustin out, and thus the precise reason why it happened is no defense for it. We certainly want to know why it happened, but there's no excuse for the lockout IMO. So I'm not as bothered by the tweet as you seem to be.
> As written, the tweet contained no truth whatsoever.
"I forgot to update my Apple Card autopay info" True. "Re-enabling them takes 3-5+ business days." True. It's also true that Apple was holding his accounts hostage, just perhaps for a different reason than he believed.
Yes, and so his tweet was complete bullshit.
> A lot of people seem to be ok with Apple holding his accounts hostage
Nobody except you is talking about accounts being “held hostage”, so it’s just not true to say anyone is OK with that. You are misrepresenting people here.
> From my perspective, there can be no good justification whatsoever for Apple locking Dustin out, and thus the precise reason why it happened is no defense for it.
This is obviously an absurd position.
Refusing service after non-payment is completely normal business practice.
Of course there can be good reasons for it.
It is helpful to know that you going to condemn Apple’s actions regardless of the truth.
It would have been more honest for you to just say that before.
This makes perfect sense of why you weren’t interested in Dustin’s side of the story.
Generally I would not assume this of anyone because it’s uncharitable and one can be wrong even if someone comes off that way, so it’s refreshing to see you openly admit it.
How are 3, 4, and 5 questions for Dustin? Dustin is supposed to answer "why is Apple such a hardass with loyal Apple customers" for example?
> I’d like him to confirm that he didn’t receive any calls or emails about this.
He did receive emails, which he described in his article. He also described phone calls with Apple that happened after his accounts were disabled, but obviously there was nothing before that. "The first person I spoke to at Apple spent a while researching the issue and then told me there was nothing she could do but escalate the issue, and that I should expect a call “hopefully” within the next day. I asked what the problem might be, and she seemed as confused as I was." https://dcurt.is/apple-card-can-disable-your-icloud-account
> What makes you think it happened ‘fast’?
He purchased the new MacBook Pro in mid-January. Apple sent an "Action Required: Apple Card" email on February 15 regarding the trade-in. The account suspensions started around February 19, "About ten days ago" according to the March 1 article. That seems relatively quick to me. Apple certainly isn't hurting for cash, what's the rush?
> And that his original tweet that Apple disabled his account after just one missed payment, was complete bullshit.
He only missed one payment, and Apple disabled his accounts shortly thereafter. Nobody is disputing those facts. So what's complete bullshit?
> It’s like saying “have you stopped beating your wife yet?”
No, it's not. I described the timeline. I described how Dustin is a loyal Apple customer. Disabling his accounts over a delayed trade-in seems unnecessary and overly harsh.
> We have heard Apple’s response. It’s now time for Dustin’s response.
This goes back to my question 1. I wonder whether Apple even spoke to Dustin, or if he found out the way the rest of us did, on 9to5Mac. If the latter, then you can't expect him to already have a response. Especially since everything he says will be closely scrutinized by everyone. After all, Apple's response didn't come until 2 days after the article. Which I'm not complaining about, but we need to give these things time and not demand immediate responses to our hot takes.
As I said - a conclusion. Your conclusion, based on incomplete facts.
Perhaps if Dustin answers you will turn out to be right, and then that will be a reasonable question.
> I wonder whether Apple even spoke to Dustin, or if he found out the way the rest of us did, on 9to5Mac. If the latter, then you can't expect him to already have a response.
Who expects him to already have a response? That’s an expectation that nobody is talking about except you.
But this is absolutely a question for him to answer.
GP here. When I read the post, there was an update after the sentence you pointed out saying “ Update: My accounts have been reactivated.” This update is still there for you to verify for yourself. Perhaps you read the post at the time it was shared and didn’t bother to re-check it after my comment. My comment above was based on reading the post completely.
> there was an update after the sentence you pointed out saying “ Update: My accounts have been reactivated.”
I wasn't aware of that, but are you aware that very little time has passed? The post was written based on the the incomplete information available to the author. Do you expect the author to have rewritten everything based on the accounts suddenly having been restored after the post was published? Most likely Apple itself scrambled to reactive the accounts quickly when they saw this going viral. Maybe the author will have a follow-up later.
I don’t want to drag this more, but it seems like you didn’t get my point at all. All I wanted was for the author to say what happened or at the very least add a sentence in that terse update that more details would follow. If a Twitter thread (which is where this originated) could be written up as a post, certainly one more sentence could be written up in the update (since the author did have time to add an update) so readers would know whether to check again or not for more details. It’s really not too much to ask.
> It seems like anyone who makes a trade-in purchase with Apple Store using a credit card that may not be a valid payment method could be at risk.
No, because the main issue isn't the disputed payment, the main issue is that Apple shut down his other Apple services because of non-payment. This presumably wouldn't happen if the charge was on a non-Apple card.
> the main issue is that Apple shut down his other Apple services because of non-payment. This presumably wouldn't happen if the charge was on a non-Apple card.
Not entirely true. If you owe money on the App Store because maybe your non-Apple card expired and you never updated it, Apple will shut down your account still.
> If you owe money on the App Store because maybe your non-Apple card expired and you never updated it, Apple will shut down your account still.
That's not what happened though. His credit card didn't expire. His credit card was the Apple Card.
With any other credit card, the merchant gets their money regardless of whether the card holder pays their credit card bill on time. You can buy a MacBook Pro with a Bank of America card, default on your credit card bill, and Apple still gets paid for the MacBook Pro. That's why the money is "credit". So defaulting on your Bank of America payments doesn't make your Apple ID shut down, there's no connection. If merchants didn't get their money from credit cards, then they would stop accepting credit cards. (Merchants are already pissed about the high fees charged by the cards.)
This situation with the Apple Card is weird because the merchant and the credit card company are more or less the same company. It turns out, this is very problematic.
> That's not what happened though. His credit card didn't expire
I didn't say that's what happened. I'm saying it's entirely possible Apple can shutdown your account for owing money even if you don't have an Apple Card.
I had an iTunes account back in 2012 linked to my Paypal. One time I accidentally unlinked my Paypal and Apple wouldn't let me access my iCloud email unless I typed my password. When I typed in my password, it would ask me to verify my CC/Paypal details. When I clicked cancel, the entire process would just happen again.
Apple can't shut down your account for owing money to Bank of America. Or for owing money to Goldman Sachs for a credit card not associated with Apple. In the case of Apple Card, who is the money owed to, Apple or Goldman Sachs? The latter is supposed to be the bank.
Today I can put an App Store charge on my Chase card and do a chargeback making up some stupid reason that I never got my app in which the chargeback would be successful. It's not entirely out of the question that Apple would lock my account until that charge is resolved.
Similarly, Dustin could have used a Chase card to buy the M1 Mac, supposedly "tradein" without sending the device back, Apple erroneously crediting that CC, and then Apple locking down the account until that's resolved.
Both situations result in owing Apple and both are totally plausible situations.
> Today I can put an App Store charge on my Chase card and do a chargeback making up some stupid reason that I never got my app in which the chargeback would be successful. It's not entirely out of the question that Apple would lock my account until that charge is resolved.
Yes, we're all aware of chargebacks, and nobody is disputing that you would owe Apple in that situation. Not sure how this really helps the argument.
The issue here is that the Apple Card seems to completely obliterate any separation between the merchant and the bank, which is obviously problematic. In fact there are 3 different things that you would expect to have some separation: the hardware (MacBook Pro), the services (iCloud), and the credit card. But now all 3 are the same, so buying the hardware with the credit card causes the service to be shut down.
Whereas if the hardware were Dell, the service was Google, and the credit card was Chase, then this problem wouldn't exist, and it would merely be an issue between Chase and the card holder, not affecting the Google services at all.
Chargeback is to establish that Apple can shutdown your services if Apple thinks you owe them money.
Dustin was erroneously credited for something from Apple, and now Apple shutdown his account because they want the money back. This would have happened if it was a Chase card which would prove this statement wrong (which is my whole point):
" the main issue is that Apple shut down his other Apple services because of non-payment. This presumably wouldn't happen if the charge was on a non-Apple card."
I think you missed the point where Dustin mentioned this:
"Very soon after, it seems that Apple simply added the amount of the credit I received when I purchased the M1 MacBook Pro to my Apple Card balance."
Timeline is as follows: Dustin bought the MacBook in mid January, he mentioned he never received a trade in kit after 2 weeks, then received a reminder in mid-February to send the item in, and "soon after" received credit on his Apple Card. This tells me Apple refunded a portion of the M1 purchase to the credit card erroneously. This can happen with any credit card, not just Apple Card.
As I've already established, if Apple thinks you owe them any amount of cash, they'll lock your account. In this case, Apple thinks Dustin owes them money because Apple accidentally refunded a portion of the M1 purchase.
What happened is that when Apple did not receive the trade-in, they added a charge to the card for the amount of the credit.
Anyway, the important point you're missing is that if Apple was dealing with a Chase card, Apple would not be out any money, because Chase pays Apple for any charges to the card. You're conceiving of a scenario where Apple doesn't get all of its money, and that's simply not the case with a third-party credit card.
Now if Apple and Goldman Sachs operated in the same manner, then Apple would also get all of the money it was owed, from Goldman Sachs, and then it would be up to Goldman Sachs to get payment from Dustin, which is no concern of Apple's. But apparently Apple and Goldman Sachs have a different kind of relationship with the Apple Card.
It appears that Apple is using its iCloud leverage to force the card holder to pay Goldman Sachs. Apple would have no such leverage to force the card holder to pay Chase, nor would Apple have any desire to use such leverage for Chase, because Apple is not "in bed", so to speak, with Chase.
> That's not exactly what happened. "they give you a credit at purchase time"
That would still be a refund on the Apple Card. "amount of the credit [...] to my Apple Card balance." means Apple refunded a portion of the balance.
> Anyway, the important point you're missing is that if Apple was dealing with a Chase card, Apple would not be out any money
They sure would if they accidentally credited your Chase card. Apple's site says
"Once we receive it, we’ll inspect it and verify its condition. If everything checks out, we’ll credit your original purchase method and send you any remaining balance on an Apple Gift Card by Email."
If they erroneously "credit your original purchase method", they would, in fact, be out of money. Dustin was erroneously credited. I don't see how it would be any different, other than it seems Dustin got his credit instantly, if his tweets were accurate.
If they instantly credited me and I sent them a lump of coal in the trade in, they would be, in effect, out of money, regardless if it was an Apple Card or a Chase card.
"No matter what payment method was used, the ability to transact on the associated Apple ID was disabled because Apple could not collect funds. This is entirely unrelated to Apple Card."
After looking into it more, I see that the instant credit system is the culprit.
1. Apple instantly gave Dustin the credit (because he opted into paying monthly). From Apple's site: "If you pay monthly: We’ll apply the value as an instant credit to lower your monthly payments."
2. Apple failed to send the box
3. Apple tried to get its credit back by charging the value to the Apple Card
4. Dustin didn't update the bank info, so Apple couldn't get its money back as the card denied the charge.
5. Apple's fraud alarm went off.
Apple gives you instant trade in credit if you pay monthly. While that's unique to the Apple Card here in USA, other countries that don't have Apple Card offer financing too. It's not out of the question that instant trade in credit is offered to countries that don't have Apple Card but also offer financing on Macbooks too.
Everyone is at fault it seems (more on Apple than Dustin). Dustin failed to update the bank info, Apple failed to send the box, and Apple failed to communicate properly.
I did the same with the Apple Watch. I bought my last Apple Watch using monthly payments, so I got instant trade in credits. I was sent a trade in box, but my cousin wanted to buy the Watch off of me so I never sent in the trade in. Apple simply charged the trade in credit on my card after not receiving the trade in.
> if Apple was dealing with a Chase card, Apple would not be out any money, because Chase pays Apple for any charges to the card
Unsubstantiated statements like this suggest you do not understand how card authorization and liability work for merchants, and it doesn’t seem like you’re interested in finding out.
Neither is relevant. The account was shut down because it owed Apple Retail money and they weren’t able to collect on its payment method on file, regardless of what that payment method was.
No. An auth can fail for regular cards as well, especially in a case like this when the auth was placed almost two months before the attempted charges. Most auth holds are only valid for a week or so.
In your BofA card, the credit card could decline the charge if it put the holder over their credit limit. For all we know, that might be why the Apple Card charge was declined.
> This is a weird case, because it was a retroactive charge not explicitly authorized by the card holder. That kind of thing rarely happens
And that is a feature of the trade-in buy flow and not how the purchaser chose to pay. Which is my point exactly which you have been trying to dispute.
> The whole thing was explained in the article, we know exactly what happened.
No we don’t. The article simply says their balance was not being paid. It’s possible that the trade in charge put them over their credit limit and that’s why it was declined. They never confirm otherwise.
> The article simply says their balance was not being paid. It’s possible that the trade in charge put them over their credit limit and that’s why it was declined. They never confirm otherwise.
It's all spelled out very clearly: "As it turns out, my bank account number changed in January, causing Apple Card autopay to fail. Then the Apple Store made a charge on the card."
His Apple Card was paid from his bank account. His bank account changed. He failed to update the bank info. Simple as that, no mystery whatsoever.
If my auto pay information changed for my Apple Card today and became invalid, I would still be able to charge my card a year from today because I have no outstanding balance to pay. Failure to have valid auto pay is necessary but not sufficient.
In addition, you still seem to overlook the fact that every other credit card on the market can also fail to post a transaction even if it authorizes, given sufficient time between the two events.
> you still seem to overlook the fact that every other credit card on the market can also fail to post a transaction even if it authorizes, given sufficient time between the two events.
I don't even know what you're talking about. The transaction was posted. And then the transaction was billed to the card holder. The credit card bill didn't get paid, because the autopay had the wrong bank info. And that's when all the problems occurred. Again, this was all spelled out in the article.
There was no authorization failure. This was a simple case of a missed credit card payment.
The post simply does not have enough information to distinguish between:
Apple Retail in mid-February decided to authorize a charge for the difference and reached out to me when the charge did not post.
and
Apple Retail decided to force me to resolve my credit card balance because I was revolving.
In both cases, Dustin would see a transaction appear on his card transaction history before the merchant learns that the payment won’t post. In your terminology, pending and posted transactions can both be “billed” but they are very different for the merchant in terms of liability.
Furthermore, credit cards aren’t an unregulated Wild West. A minimum payment must be delinquent for 90 days before banks can start moving towards collections. Goldman Sachs is not cavalier enough to risk having the state of New York investigating their bank over a very creative definition of what isn’t collections. In addition, Apple Card offered extremely generous payment terms during the pandemic - there is no reason to believe they’d start aggressively collecting now.
In addition, if the email from Apple was about collections on a credit card, it is required to have a host of disclosures before the contents which are not present in the complete excerpt posted on the blog. Even more evidence that this action had nothing to do with the credit card balance.
Finally, a poster reported the same experience with a PayPal payment method gone bad.
There is no reason to believe this issue stemmed from Apple strong-arming people into paying off their Apple Card revolving credit balance.
If I made a trade in purchase on January 1st with my Chase card, closed the card account on January 15th, failed to send in my trade in, and then did not act on any threatening emails from Apple thereafter, how do I not end up in exactly this situation?
In this same thread people are reporting a similar experience when their PayPal account was unlinked. Even more evidence that Apple Card is primarily incidental.
In addition, the reason in the article is a speculation qualified with “it appears.”
> It was handled by an outside company and they screwed up like 4 times.
This is an interesting observation. So there may have been at least 3 companies involved in this situation: Apple, Goldman Sachs, and the company that handles trade-ins for Apple.
Each company has own bureaucracy, and if you combine those 3 bureaucracies together, you get a tangled mess that's impossible to untie.
Apple was supposed to send him a trade-in kit for the old MacBook Pro. Apple failed to do so. Then Apple added an unexpected charge to the card for the amount of the trade-in credit.
Q10. Do you think income differences between the rich and the poor in the U.S. today are a very serious problem, somewhat serious problem, not too serious problem, or not a problem at all?
Very serious problem 43%
Somewhat serious problem 28%
Not too serious problem 13%
Not a problem at all 15%
Q11. Do you think income differences between the rich and the middle class in the U.S. today are a very serious problem, somewhat serious problem, not too serious problem, or not a problem at all?
Very serious problem 35%
Somewhat serious problem 29%
Not too serious problem 17%
Not a problem at all 17%
The headline is pretty much the exact opposite of what the survey says, which is that the majority feel these are serious problems.
I do think the study authors deserve some blame here. Inexplicably, they chose to frame the results in this way: "fewer than half of adults across all income categories say they think income differences between the rich and the poor or between the rich and the middle-class are very serious problems in the U.S. today." The focus exclusively on "very serious problem" ignores their own categories, which also include "somewhat serious problem". When only 15% believe it's not a problem at all, why would you focus just on one narrowly worded category? Fully 85% percent admit it's a problem. That's a far cry from "don't care".
I also don't get the obsession with income, it's wealth that matters. People might simply say think massive income inequality isn't a problem because instead they think massive wealth inequality is the real problem.
Typically the problem is called "income equality". If it used "wealth inequality", it may confuse some. There's often a tradeoff between accuracy and brevity and/or clarity when writing surveys.
Whether a majority agree it’s a serious problem depends on whether you think “somewhat serious” is “serious” or not. If I answer there are “somewhat serious” problems, you can’t just round that up to “serious” because that word is present.
If the categories were “serious, moderate, mild, and not a problem”, which I’d argue are semantically equivalent to the survey categories, then it’s clearly an error for the headline to be written as “majority agree income inequality is a serious problem.”
> If the categories were “serious, moderate, mild, and not a problem”, which I’d argue are semantically equivalent to the survey categories
I don't think changing the wording would help. The basic problem is that these terms are all vague. What we really need is a comparison and/or ranking with other problems.
Clearly, though, under any definition, "don't care" is flat out wrong.
In effect, a sales tax "discourages labor" in the same way: if you have to charge customers more for your products because of sales tax, that discourage sales, and thus you have less revenue available to pay workers. The effect is the same. You can't eliminate income taxes and then magically have the same amount of capital available to pay wages, that's not how it works.
If the government has to raise $N total in taxes, that amount of money is coming out no matter what. It has to come out somewhere. The real question is distribution, and that's when you have to look at fairness of taxation and ability to pay. You can't just say income taxes discourage labor and ignore the question of where you're getting the taxes instead, and how the alternative taxation method affects labor.
