Apple auto-enrolled me in Music subscription; weird cust support convo ensues | Hacker News Reader

Apple auto-enrolled me in Music subscription; weird cust support convo ensues

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19 pointsbeweinreich17 comments

I made the mistake of triggering Siri in the car to play an album I owned…and it signed me up for a one week Apple Music trial subscription instead. The switch was seamless until I saw the accompanying email. And there was no confirmation via the interface (visual or verbal). I still have the listing in the Subscriptions area of iCloud after I made sure it was cancelled. It hasn’t happened again, which I suspect is because of the listing.

A possible cause is the Siri-enabled button on the remote that can trigger music requests.

I woke up to the strangest customer support conversation with Apple.

Around 8:15am, I checked my email and noticed I had been auto-subscribed to a free trial of Apple Music.

Weird. I'm a Spotify user, and wouldn't have started a trial. So, I asked my wife, and she said she hadn't done anything with Apple Music.

Hmm, maybe my account was hacked. That would be quite a predicament since I use 1password with crazy long passwords for all services. So, I contacted Apple Support over SMS to ask how and why the Apple Music subscription got initiated.

They told me that Apple auto-subscribed me because I was given a free month... and it was done at 5:14am (when everyone in my house was asleep).

The whole conversation felt like a phishing scam. Decided to move to phone support, and they are telling me my Apple TV in my living room subscribed me.

Is it possible for someone to remote into my Apple TV and auto-subscribe me? I wouldn't have guessed an Apple TV to be hackable.

Do you have a Apple Family subscription?

I do. And that’s what I thought at first. But they said the purchase came from the Apple TV.

I asked if there’s was a way the family account could’ve triggered it to look like it’s from the Apple TV but they said no. It was purchased on tv.

Not a small child pissing around with the TV before anyone else gets up? You got logs on that thing?

Yeah, now I’m suspecting something less malicious.

Speaking to support they don’t know what time zone the 514am timestamp is in. I think it’s likely to be UTC, which means it happened at 814am.

I have a two year old. I’m gonna chalk it up to him. If it was 814am it’s way more likely.

Still super weird cause the tv wasn’t on. But given the time of day, seems much more likely.

Depending on your model of TV and how it's connected, it's possible for the Apple TV to be on and responding to inputs even if the TV is off. If it was on, and a promotional popup came up offering the free trial, then depending on just what the flow is for those popups, it's possible that a small child just fiddling with the remote could accidentally have accepted it.

(I know that our TV is often off while our Apple TV is on; I have no knowledge of how those promotional popups work, as I haven't accepted one.)

UTC <> EST is a 5 hour difference, with UTC being ahead of EST, and 05:14 UTC would be 00:14 EST, so just after midnight.

08:14 EST would align with 05:14 PST though

OK as a follow up on the phone and they mentioned 5:14 AM timestamp.

I asked what time zone it was and they told me they didn’t know. It doesn’t show up for them.

I’m in New York. So I’m guessing it’s UTC and it was actually 814am not 514am.

Nice photos!

Did you buy something? Best buy always enrolls me into these free trial things, for example. Or maybe accidentally clicked an ad on an iPad, Apple TV, etc.?

Also, that support person was totally useless. I'd just close the chat and try to get someone else, or walk into a store.

I really thought that with Apple subscriptions you had to confirm it in some way.

Like using TouchID or FaceID.

I didn’t realize Apple could just be like “hey, here’s a free month of Apple Music … also we’re gonna charge you next month!”

Seems super scammy. Similar to the U2 debacle that happened years ago.

It's totally a dark pattern, but one that unfortunately way too many companies use.

The support conversation feels so off. What’s with the lack of professionalism & all the weird emojis? Gen-z these days…

Yeah. That’s why I felt like I was being phished. It would be hard to have that many misspellings with autocorrect on!

> with autocorrect on

Bold assumption given the state of autocorrect on Apple OSs.

Are they using ipads or iphones to do support chats? Really odd sounding as everyone is saying.

Maybe an ai that was trained to be a cherry gen z persona?

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