Hacker News Reader

Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

From the linked article [1]:

"...my bank account number changed in January, causing Apple Card autopay to fail. Then the Apple Store made a charge on the card. Less than fifteen days after that, my App Store, iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple ID accounts had all been disabled by Apple Card."

Wouldn't the same thing have happened if he didn't have an Apple Card, but instead had his credit card decline not only on their Apple subscriptions, but also the MacBook they traded in?

[1] https://dcurt.is/apple-card-can-disable-your-icloud-account

View on HN

He paid his iCloud with his Apple Card, but didn't pay the credit card bill properly, so they basically clawed back the purchase.

The analogy is that if I pay for Netflix with Amex and miss an Amex payment, they can't directly cancel Netflix. Eventually if I continute to not pay, they'll shut down the card and Netflix won't be able to charge and will then cancel themselves, but that's a much more flexible process.

It's always good to have a few "fire breaks" between your most important accounts (email, payments, domains, etc.).

Well, no, if the credit card charge is declined they don't offer the service.

They don't owe you anything if the charge fails. So no-one loses.

If they charge your bank account for a credit card bill that you owe, and it fails, they lose.

Not sure, but that’s a good point.

At what point is a situation so convoluted that it can be considered an edge case? Because this story seems like it would qualify! Not only did someone's bank account number change without intervention but it seems Apple also got something wrong about the purchase on two different occasions (saying OP bought an iphone, not a macbook and applying the trade-in to their card without confirmation)...I take your point. But, wow.

Im frankly surprised AC works this way, all of my interactions with AC support and Apple makesit seem like one wants nothing to do with the other.

> did someone's bank account number change without intervention

Their bank account number changed for reasons unrelated to Apple. That caused their Apple Card monthly payment to fail. Which caused their payments to Apple, for subscriptions and a trade-in, to fail. So Apple cancelled their subscriptions.

Agree the support communication on iPhone versus MacBook is imprecise. But nothing indicates Apple acted improperly or in a manner they wouldn't with anyone else failing to pay for their services.

> At what point is a situation so convoluted that it can be considered an edge case?

People have edge cases all the time! Failing gracefully in edge cases is a critical feature for anything that's so deeply wired into your life like a payment processor or a cloud account!

At Apple's scale, an edge case is a question of when (and how often) not if.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com