Locked Out of the Garden: A Hidden Risk in Apple Gift Cards
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Prominent developer and author Paris Buttfield-Addison found himself completely locked out of his Apple Account earlier this month after attempting to redeem a $500 Apple gift card purchased from a mainstream brick-and-mortar retailer. The story is a concerning reminder as to why you may want to avoid buying Apple gift cards anywhere other than directly from the Cupertino company itself.
Buttfield-Addison, the organizer of the /dev/world conference, shared his terrifying and frustrating experience on his blog, describing what happened to him and his Apple Account when he attempted to redeem a gift card purchased from a legitimate retail source.
After nearly 30 years as a loyal customer, authoring technical books on Apple’s own programming languages (Objective-C and Swift), and spending tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of dollars on devices, apps, conferences, and services, I have been locked out of my personal and professional digital life with no explanation and no recourse.
My Apple ID, which I have held for around 25 years (it was originally a username, before they had to be email addresses; it’s from the iTools era), has been permanently disabled. This isn’t just an email address; it is my core digital identity. It holds terabytes of family photos, my entire message history, and is the key to syncing my work across the ecosystem.
Paris Buttfield-Addison
As you can imagine, being faced with losing what amounted to his digital life, while also being locked out of his development-related files, was a scary experience.
The lockout appears to be the result of a sophisticated scam in which Buttfield-Addison was an innocent secondary victim. While the gift card was purchased from a legitimate third-party retailer, a bad actor had already intercepted and redeemed the gift card code. When Buttfield-Addison attempted to redeem the card, the attempt was flagged as a fraudulent transaction — which may have been partly due to its high $500 value — causing his Apple ID to be disabled. Permanently disabled.
It looks like the gift card I tried to redeem, which did not work for me, and did not credit my account, was already redeemed in some way (sounds like classic gift card tampering), and my account was caught by that.
When Buttfield-Addison contacted Apple Support, he was initially told that nothing could be done and escalation of the issue to a superior was not an available option. Fortunately for Buttfield-Addison, he is not your average Apple user, and media attention to the matter resulted in the problem being escalated to Apple Executive Relations, and the issue has since been resolved.
We’re back! A lovely man from Singapore, working for Apple Executive Relations, who has been calling me every so often for a couple of days, has let me know it’s all fixed.
The experience wasn’t without a few bumps along the way; even Apple’s “top-tier support SWAT team” took four days to get to the bottom of this, during which Buttfield-Addison continued to live in an uncertain digital limbo. All was ultimately restored, but it’s hard to rule out the role of the involvement of high-profile tech news outlets like Daring Fireball, AppleInsider, Michael Tsai, and The Register as having some bearing on this.
Beware of Retail Stores Bearing Gift Cards
So, where does that leave average Apple users like you and me? Would the story have had a happy ending for those of us with less leverage? Since there doesn’t appear to be an established process in place to resolve issues like this, are we simply screwed? Left without recourse and destined to lose everything we’ve trusted to the Apple ecosystem?
To be clear, there is no official way for the average user to escalate this issue. Apple holds all the cards when it comes to situations like this. What they say goes. You can try sending an email directly to Tim Cook, which is where Apple Executive Relations comes in. Some emails do get their attention, but it’s still a black box with no guarantees you’ll hear anything back.
This story should act as a warning for those of us that buy or use Apple gift cards not purchased directly from Apple — either in its retail stores or its online store. Users should think twice before buying a gift card at a brick-and-mortar retailer like department or grocery stores. The “lovely man from Singapore” that Buttfield-Addison spoke with from Apple’s Executive Relations team also recommended that gift cards should only be purchased directly from Apple, but he also declined to comment when asked if Apple’s supply chain of gift card vendors is insecure.
Nevertheless, it should particularly cause pause when considering buying a gift card at a discount from sources like eBay or Facebook Marketplace. After all, if a gift card from a well-known retailer can be tainted, what hope is there for ones coming from secondary markets.
The most dangerous part is that this saga shows Apple’s absolutely zero tolerance policy for potential fraud, willing to lock out even a well-established and loyal customer who has spent substantial amounts of money with the company over a quarter of a century. While the large amount was likely a factor in the fraud detection algorithms, it raises the stakes on both sides. The idea that a single $500 transaction — legitimately purchased — could trigger a “digital death sentence” with seemingly no recourse is a sobering thought for any power user.
