Apple Card disabled my iCloud, App Store, and Apple ID accounts

Dustin Curtis:

About ten days ago, when I went to update a few apps in the App Store on my Mac, I was met with a curious error.

The post shows an “Account Disabled” alert.

The internet is filled with stories from people whose Google accounts were locked for unexplained reasons, causing them to lose all of their data, including years of email, so I was somewhat concerned. But I’d never heard of similar cases involving Apple’s services, and I wouldn’t expect such behavior from a customer-focused company like Apple, so I figured it was a glitch and made a mental note to try again later.

The next day, Music.app stopped working.

This is definitely alarming. At the very least, it demonstrates how much we’ve grown to depend on the cloud and on those monthly fees we spend to rent storage.

Read the post. In a nutshell, this was about changing bank info and Apple Card no longer having a valid billing mechanism. Is this Apple policy? Or was this a one-off falling through the cracks kind of mistake, one we won’t see again?

No matter, this should be a wake-up call. Do you have a backup plan if your Apple ID suddenly stopped doing its cloud thing?

And to be clear, I think I am less concerned that Apple disabled Dustin’s account as I am that it took so long to address the issue. If the call to Apple customer support had made the issue clear immediately, a couple of clicks would have resolved this. As is, and if true, looks like the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing.