I agree with you that Apple taking action on the account is not wholly unreasonable. What I found shocking was the inability to contact someone who could resolve the situation. I know this is a common issue with Google, but had expected Apple to be different.

But they did. The first person was unfamiliar with the issue, likely because the Apple Card program was relatively new at the time. They opened a case to escalate.

Apple’s phone support has been relatively good in my experience. I expect they’d have this situation more integrated into first-line support in 2025 than they did when the program was new.

Identity services from the large companies are very convenient, but the citizens of Google, or Apple, or Microsoft are largely faceless and rightless citizens of a corporation with no ability to contact anyone for anything.

The story and lesson is simple is to tie as little as possible to identity systems using a domain you don't own.

This isn't a statement of expecting perfection from any group, just the opposite, of knowing that things can happen unexpectedly, where is the middle ground in a relationship that impacts the user more than the company if the ID is lost.

And no, it doesn’t make sense for Apple to disable most of the services in case a credit card is past due for a few days.

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.

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?

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

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?

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.

The missed notification is something that we have to take the author's word for, but it could very well be true. Perhaps I'm more sympathetic because I ran into a similar situation recently. I called a company because I hadn't received a bill, was told that they recently sold off the relevant division, and that they sent me an email explaining how to switch my billing information over to the new owner. I don't recall receiving such an email. If it did hit my inbox, it was likely deleted. I would have regarded such an email as a phishing attempt without a second glance. The situation may have been different for the article's author, but they may have still had a legitimate reason for missing it.

Apple's response was also excessive. I would expect them to lose subscription services, but not access to their accounts. At in my experience, my Apple accounts remain active even though my last hardware purchase from them was well over a decade ago. (Clearly I am not receiving subscription services, but the accounts still exist and my purchases are still accessible.)

While Apple's response is nowhere near Google's (e. g. the customer was able to find out what the problem was and resolve it), it sounds like Apple overstepped bounds.

Good job blaming the victim. Hail corporate, I guess

block the device, sure. send collections after him for the unpaid amount, sure.

retaliating by blocking all his unrelated, paid for, accounts is yet another reason apple should be broken up. it also doesn't sound like they refunded him for the days of usage that were lost that surely still had to be paid for.