Megan M.
Consumer Protection Rights FRAUDSTERS
I purchased over $1,200 in in-app purchases in a very short period of time and the developers wouldn’t help or refund anyone when we didn’t receive the items we purchased. I have several GBs of screen recordings and screenshots of all of this proving the items not given to me and proof that the developers had MAJOR coding bug issues causing issues with in-app purchase usage! I tried to fix the issue with the developer directly for a month. Myself, everyone else on my team, as well as many people that posted iTunes reviews at the same time as me would get the same response from the developer, “thank you for your understanding. Enjoy the game!” NO, not acceptable when you and many others are spending thousands of dollars!!! I know coding and when you spend a lot of money on a game having faith that Apple will make the approved developers provide the services and in app purchases that you purchase, just to have Apple say “we don’t care” is a slap in the face! Even more so when Apple Care Public Relations team takes your claim from your assigned advisor and doesn’t respond to any messages or time responding complaints filed for 7 weeks!!!!! When I called to file for a refund, the first advisor didn’t even select the correct reason or describe the reason accurately, and that’s after over an hour explaining it. Then the second senior advisor did the same! After over 2 hours explaining it to her. I asked this advisor what my steps were if apple declined this refund, she specifically said to me that if I was to dispute the charge through my credit card that my Apple ID would be disabled and all information tied to my Apple ID would be lost if they can’t enable my id. 10+ years of data tied to my Apple ID being held hostage! She said to me, and I quote, “Well I guess you will have to determine how much the last 10+ years of data tied to your Apple ID is worth to you.” This threatening verbiage is illegal in soooo many forms!!!! She also said that Apple doesn’t have to follow Consumer Protection Laws! So where you are protected by your credit card company from developers taking your money and not giving you what you purchased or false advertising their game, Apple doesn’t protect you! They force this on you by only allowing you to get apps from iTunes and not providing a purchase option to pay the developer companies directly but requiring that you make all purchases through Apple! You have no option but to unknowingly sign away your Consumer Protection Rights! With a company like Apple, they had a duty to do due diligence of the accuracy of the developers that they approve to have applications for sale on their iTunes platform! They have the extra due diligence to do this and protect consumers when they take away our Consumer Protection Rights! They abuse their authority and position with your data being tied to your Apple ID! Both the previous senior advisors told me that I couldn’t send them screen shots and screen recordings to provide proof - this turned out to be wrong. On my third discussion with an Apple senior advisor, he filed a new complaint and sent me a link to send attachments. My attachments were more than what the link allowed so I had to select what I could. I was on the phone with him for over 4 hours!!! He told me he had this case and he owned it. He said he would call me in 48 hours with an update. He called me as he said he would but he couldn’t give me an update because the Apple Care Partner Relations department took my case and blocked him out. He told me to email the system case number email to get a message to whoever took my case. I did many times with no response. I called in several times and had an advisor submit a complaint for a timely response to me, still nothing after 7 weeks of this!!!!! Apple now has a credit card. They have financial products. These actions go against all the following OCC Regulatory UDAAP regulations: 1. UNFAIR - Product or service terms or conditions that prevent a customer from using a product or service. Processes that make it difficult for customers to cancel a product or service or get a refund!!!!! 2. DECEPTIVE - Practices that do not properly explain applicable financial customer obligations. 3. ABUSIVE - Failing to make good-faith efforts to resolve known issues. 4. PROCESSES - Timely, appropriate and procedures for employee decisions making and discretion. Resolving customer complaints in a timely manner. They didn’t meet any of those OCC regulation requirements! I also question whether the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct has been violated by this developer that Apple is protecting. I will be turning this into the Attorney General, the Better Business Bureau, FDIC and the Federal Trade Commission. I will be filing every complaint with every government agency possible. (I ran out of space to list all complaints.)