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Man sues Apple for terminating Apple ID with $24K worth of content

XWAUForceflow
3 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

I think they're trying to get rid of the arbitrary "We can delete your account at any time with no reasoning" and then not giving reasons to bans when there's a paid service involved.

Ah.  So by “making it more normal” you mean getting rid of potentially predatory language that has largely disappeared from or was never even part of most business contracts because no one would sign them, but TOS agreements are for most people actually impossible to even read.  I watched a video on the MacDonald’s ice cream problem which according to the creator is happening because an ice cream machine manufacturer is apparently leveraging such a clause in the MacDonald’s franchise contract which effectively gives this company a monopoly on  macDonald’s soft serve ice cream. 

Edited by Bombastinator

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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Just now, Bombastinator said:

Ah.  So by “making it more normal” you mean getting rid of potentially predatory language that has largely disappeared from or was never even part of most business contracts because no one would sign them, but TOS agreements are for most people actually impossible to even read.

Correct. I typically don't use Apple(actually haven't owned anything Apple since the iPhone 4), but it seems to me that their TOS are a lot more strict and arbitrary. I'll use Google as an example here. They have many services, similar to Apple. However, if you get banned on one, you won't always get banned on them all. Seems to me like while you need a Google account to use Gmail, Youtube, Cloud services etc, getting your account banned in YT won't disable your use on the rest of the ecosystem unless you do something especially bad.

Spoiler

Youtube

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Google will also allow you to use parts of their ecosystem without an account, and will let you appeal and give you the reasons for the ban. (I'm assuming. I haven't been banned by them).

 

Here's Apple's take on it, and what I think is getting argued in court.

Spoiler

image.png.da4907f132d2be57535e1ee51dbd35ff.png

 

I'm not actually trying to be as grumpy as it seems.

I will find your mentions of Ikea or Gnome and I will /s post. 

Project Hot Box

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Why is the 5800x so hot?

 

 

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1 hour ago, IkeaGnome said:

It's a class action lawsuit.

https://www.scribd.com/document/503818550/Price-v-Apple#from_embed

It also looks like it's not necessarily about HOW or WHY he got banned, just that people can arbitrarily get banned(Apple isn't the only company that does this). 

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It looks like another catch point for the case is that the plaintiff had $7 and change in unspent funds that he can't get back.

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It looks to me like they are trying to actually get TOS treated like a normal contract. 

Well, if he just got banned without even violating TOS, then he didn't violate anything at all. Which means this whole case begins to reek. Why would billion company like Apple put their entire reputation and their TOS at stake for banning someone from their service for no reason what so ever? Not to mention if he spent 24k, why would you block such customer FOR NO REASON ?! I mean, do I really have to point it out that something stinks about this?

 

I very much am interested in seeing what was the reason. Coz for me it makes a damn difference if Apple had a glitch and it terminated him by mistake opposed to any kind of somewhat justifiable reason. Coz in that case his termination was justifiable and 7 bucks of remaining credit and 24k already spent become a separate thing from the original issue.

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4 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I mean, do I really have to point it out that something stinks about this?

I completely agree that it stinks. This still isn't the whole story and I know it for his specific case. I was talking more about the class action side and what it seems like they are trying to argue in court. 

4 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I very much am interested in seeing what was the reason. Coz for me it makes a damn difference if Apple had a glitch and it terminated him by mistake opposed to any kind of somewhat justifiable reason.

I'm interested too even as a non Apple person. I'm not "hold the pitchforks and burn HQ" anti Apple by any means, their products just haven't made sense for me personally. That's what got me to read the 41 page court document. I wanted to see if there was an answer to why he got removed from their service in the first place. 

In all honesty, even if he got banned for something he should have, it could set a good change for consumers in forth for TOS. We all know they are written the way they are so that people don't take the time to read them. Apple isn't by ANY means the only one to do this. Yes, Apple is a private company. They have every right to arbitrarily not allow use of their services anymore(AGAIN, not saying that's what happened until we know). 

It seems like "TOS are a contract that only benefit one party(the business) and are written in a way that normal people can't understand" is what is being argued here.

I'm not actually trying to be as grumpy as it seems.

I will find your mentions of Ikea or Gnome and I will /s post. 

Project Hot Box

CPU 13900k, Motherboard Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX, RAM CORSAIR Vengeance 4x16gb 5200 MHZ, GPU Zotac RTX 4090 Trinity OC, Case Fractal Pop Air XL, Storage Sabrent Rocket Q4 2tbCORSAIR Force Series MP510 1920GB NVMe, CORSAIR FORCE Series MP510 960GB NVMe, PSU CORSAIR HX1000i, Cooling Corsair XC8 CPU block, Bykski GPU block, 360mm and 280mm radiator, Displays Odyssey G9, LG 34UC98-W 34-Inch,Keyboard Mountain Everest Max, Mouse Mountain Makalu 67, Sound AT2035, Massdrop 6xx headphones, Go XLR 

Oppbevaring

CPU i9-9900k, Motherboard, ASUS Rog Maximus Code XI, RAM, 48GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB 3200 mhz (2x16)+(2x8) GPUs Asus ROG Strix 2070 8gb, PNY 1080, Nvidia 1080, Case Mining Frame, 2x Storage Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB, PSU Corsair RM1000x and RM850x, Cooling Asus Rog Ryuo 240 with Noctua NF-12 fans

 

Why is the 5800x so hot?

 

 

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40 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

I completely agree that it stinks. This still isn't the whole story and I know it for his specific case. I was talking more about the class action side and what it seems like they are trying to argue in court. 

I'm interested too even as a non Apple person. I'm not "hold the pitchforks and burn HQ" anti Apple by any means, their products just haven't made sense for me personally. That's what got me to read the 41 page court document. I wanted to see if there was an answer to why he got removed from their service in the first place. 

In all honesty, even if he got banned for something he should have, it could set a good change for consumers in forth for TOS. We all know they are written the way they are so that people don't take the time to read them. Apple isn't by ANY means the only one to do this. Yes, Apple is a private company. They have every right to arbitrarily not allow use of their services anymore(AGAIN, not saying that's what happened until we know). 

It seems like "TOS are a contract that only benefit one party(the business) and are written in a way that normal people can't understand" is what is being argued here.

I'm using several Apple products, but that's not the reason I'm defending them. I didn't get anything for free from them so I see no reason to defend them. Hell, I'm not even defending them, I'm just saying "There's not enough info" to be mad about it. But I also don't see any reason to be pissy about Apple just because entire dumb world is because it's cool to spit on Apple. That's just retarded behavior. However, as an Apple user I do want to know WHY and HOW this person got terminated. Because I am using their services and I'd very much like to know why and how it happened. Because if it was just randomly, I'd be worried. If guy was doing something weird, then I'm not gonna worry about anything.

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1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

I'm using several Apple products, but that's not the reason I'm defending them. I didn't get anything for free from them so I see no reason to defend them. Hell, I'm not even defending them, I'm just saying "There's not enough info" to be mad about it. But I also don't see any reason to be pissy about Apple just because entire dumb world is because it's cool to spit on Apple.

To be fair, I'd be spitting on anyone here that did this. This is the first time I've really popped my head into "anti Apple" threads. I'm not any more anti Apple than I am Google. It was just that Google was the first example I pulled up for a more "user friendly" TOS. 

 

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I do want to know WHY and HOW this person got terminated.

Even without using their services, that's what brought me here and took me to the court filing. I was just posting my opinion on what I saw there. 

That being said, it would be nice if something happened here that has to do with how TOS are worded. Hell, go read the TOS for this site. It's much less legaleese and more normal person talk. I understand that there has to be some "law says this", but not everything has to be worded to where you need a law degree to decipher it. Even if Apple is in the right here there's a chance for this to start being the push to make that change.

I'm not actually trying to be as grumpy as it seems.

I will find your mentions of Ikea or Gnome and I will /s post. 

Project Hot Box

CPU 13900k, Motherboard Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX, RAM CORSAIR Vengeance 4x16gb 5200 MHZ, GPU Zotac RTX 4090 Trinity OC, Case Fractal Pop Air XL, Storage Sabrent Rocket Q4 2tbCORSAIR Force Series MP510 1920GB NVMe, CORSAIR FORCE Series MP510 960GB NVMe, PSU CORSAIR HX1000i, Cooling Corsair XC8 CPU block, Bykski GPU block, 360mm and 280mm radiator, Displays Odyssey G9, LG 34UC98-W 34-Inch,Keyboard Mountain Everest Max, Mouse Mountain Makalu 67, Sound AT2035, Massdrop 6xx headphones, Go XLR 

Oppbevaring

CPU i9-9900k, Motherboard, ASUS Rog Maximus Code XI, RAM, 48GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB 3200 mhz (2x16)+(2x8) GPUs Asus ROG Strix 2070 8gb, PNY 1080, Nvidia 1080, Case Mining Frame, 2x Storage Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB, PSU Corsair RM1000x and RM850x, Cooling Asus Rog Ryuo 240 with Noctua NF-12 fans

 

Why is the 5800x so hot?

 

 

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I want to know what he did so I don't accidentally do the same thing.

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On 4/26/2021 at 7:53 PM, RejZoR said:

Coz in that case his termination was justifiable and 7 bucks of remaining credit and 24k already spent become a separate thing from the original issue.

Actually it is not a separate issue. If the violation of the ToS has nothing to do with payment for and the content itself, you should either get restricted access to the content or a refund. But Apple is probably unwilling or even unable to allow restricted access to something like iTunes and that is likely the problem here.

And it's basically "cost-effective management 101" to alienate and stall costumers. Most of them will just give up and won't escalate the case any further. The cheapest solution for any costumer related problem or refund is always to ignore them as long as possible.

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3 hours ago, willies leg said:

I want to know what he did so I don't accidentally do the same thing.

That's not how any ToS works.

 

At best, if it was terminated for something stupid and obvious (like charging back the credit card) then that's on the account holder for being stupid and committing fraud. If you pay with your card, and then reverse the charge, you commit fraud, and if you used someone elses card without permission and they reversed it, that's also fraud, so you would get the account closed for fraud. 

 

Which I want to point out, it's entirely possible to screw up and not pay the credit card as well (eg equal to bouncing a check), and have the card decide to refuse payments, which causes a catastrophic chain of "auto-payment" bounces. Which is why I don't permit anything to auto-debit from the bank account, and everything must debit from the credit card.

 

At worst, they ordered something physical (eg a laptop) and reversed the charge after they received it. In which case, that's fraud and theft.

 

Like with digital assets, the tangible value is ALWAYS $0. So closing an account with $24,000 of purchases, is still tangibly $0. From a legal perspective, so is your bank account.

 

So I do think some kind of customer protection regulation regarding intangible assets needs to be decided here. As I stated earlier in the thread, if a company shuts down an account, they should be required to transfer the purchased assets to something (eg a competitor, like with local number portability) or tangible (ed BD-ROM's, SD cards or physical copies of the films/tv/music on their retail discs, not simply slap it in a USB drive and ship it.) Otherwise they've effectively destroyed assets without giving the "owner" of the licences a way to continue to use it.

 

You know, unless the problem was the licenses themselves, let's say idiot RIAA/MPAA company transfers their assets from one company to another, and that company decides they want to squeeze Apple for more money and Apple just goes "no, bye", and delists everything. What does the person who bought a license to this music have? Apparently none unless you personally backed up your itunes library with it before it happens.

 

The other problem with intangible assets, as they're widely used for fraud. Feedback/review fraud on eBay and Amazon, and other ecommerce sites (eg steam, itunes, google play, etc) , so theoretically, it could have also been a feedback farmer, but there is no way to know this unless you're an investigator.

 

Ultimately, it's safer to assume the account owner is the idiot, not Apple. It's possible that Apple may have just had the user reported for some kind of fraud risk and they suspended or locked the account without notifying the user first to not tip off the fraudster.

 

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4 hours ago, Kisai said:

That's not how any ToS works.

 

At best, if it was terminated for something stupid and obvious (like charging back the credit card) then that's on the account holder for being stupid and committing fraud. If you pay with your card, and then reverse the charge, you commit fraud, and if you used someone elses card without permission and they reversed it, that's also fraud, so you would get the account closed for fraud. 

 

Which I want to point out, it's entirely possible to screw up and not pay the credit card as well (eg equal to bouncing a check), and have the card decide to refuse payments, which causes a catastrophic chain of "auto-payment" bounces. Which is why I don't permit anything to auto-debit from the bank account, and everything must debit from the credit card.

 

At worst, they ordered something physical (eg a laptop) and reversed the charge after they received it. In which case, that's fraud and theft.

 

Like with digital assets, the tangible value is ALWAYS $0. So closing an account with $24,000 of purchases, is still tangibly $0. From a legal perspective, so is your bank account.

 

So I do think some kind of customer protection regulation regarding intangible assets needs to be decided here. As I stated earlier in the thread, if a company shuts down an account, they should be required to transfer the purchased assets to something (eg a competitor, like with local number portability) or tangible (ed BD-ROM's, SD cards or physical copies of the films/tv/music on their retail discs, not simply slap it in a USB drive and ship it.) Otherwise they've effectively destroyed assets without giving the "owner" of the licences a way to continue to use it.

 

You know, unless the problem was the licenses themselves, let's say idiot RIAA/MPAA company transfers their assets from one company to another, and that company decides they want to squeeze Apple for more money and Apple just goes "no, bye", and delists everything. What does the person who bought a license to this music have? Apparently none unless you personally backed up your itunes library with it before it happens.

 

The other problem with intangible assets, as they're widely used for fraud. Feedback/review fraud on eBay and Amazon, and other ecommerce sites (eg steam, itunes, google play, etc) , so theoretically, it could have also been a feedback farmer, but there is no way to know this unless you're an investigator.

 

Ultimately, it's safer to assume the account owner is the idiot, not Apple. It's possible that Apple may have just had the user reported for some kind of fraud risk and they suspended or locked the account without notifying the user first to not tip off the fraudster.

 

There has been a conspicuous lack of information after the first announcement.  Unsurprising if something is going to court.  Such things move slowly.  What I find interesting is he didn’t ask for wrongful termination redress, he attempted to threaten Apple instead.  I suspect something will come out, but it’s not going to be soon. 

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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