Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I have no recourse. Can you help? Email paris AT paris.id.au (and read on for the details). ❤️

Update 14 December 2025: Someone from Executive Relations at Apple says they’re looking into it. I hope this is true. They say they’ll call me back tomorrow, on 15 December 2025. In the mean time, it’s been covered by Daring Fireball, Apple Insider, Michael Tsai, and others, thanks folks! I’ve received 100s of emails of support, and will reply to you all in time, thank you. Finger’s crossed Apple calls back.

Second Update 14 December 2025: No luck so far, and not looking good. Anyone got a good lawyer to send them a letter and/or help me sue them? paris AT paris.id.au

Update 16 December 2025: The Register covered it. No luck yet.

Update 18 December 2025: 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. 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. Obviously it’s unacceptable that this can happen, and I’m still trying to get more information out of him, but at least things are now mostly working. Strangely, he did tell me to only ever buy gift cards from Apple themselves; I asked if that means Apple’s supply chain of Blackhawk Network, InComm, and other gift card vendors is insecure, and he was unwilling to comment. I’ll post a more substantive update soon!

FAQ

The original post continues below, but to answer some questions:

  • Yes, I have the receipt for the card, including the activation receipt.
  • Yes, the card was legitimately purchased, it’s not from eBay.
  • Yes, I have contacted the retailer.
  • Yes, I do have backups. That isn’t the point; the hardware is somewhat (MacBook Pro, iPhone) to completely (iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple TV, HomePod) useless.
  • No, I don’t know why parts of the account still kinda work, and parts don’t.
  • No, I didn’t write this article with AI, I just tried to make it clear what was going on with headings, and I’ve been writing for a LONG time.
  • Yes, Apple really did use emojis in their Live Chat.
  • Yes, I am in contact with Australian Government regulators and ombudsmen, but that process takes months to allocate cases.
  • Yes, I’ll write to my local Federal Member, Andrew Wilkie. He’s helped me with many things before, but Apple is still Apple.
  • Yes, I have had problems with Wise and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in the past. No, I’m not a glutton for punishment. I don’t know what’s going on.
  • Yes, my business recovered their money from Wise, but the AFCA complaint is ongoing (as I said, the process is slow).
  • No, WWDR, and friends in SWE/SRE at Apple haven’t been able to help beyond trying to escalate.

Here’s how Apple “Permanently” locked my Apple ID.

I am writing this as a desperate measure. 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.

The Situation

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.

  • The Trigger: The only recent activity on my account was a recent attempt to redeem a $500 Apple Gift Card to pay for my 6TB iCloud+ storage plan. The code failed. The vendor suggested that the card number was likely compromised and agreed to reissue it. Shortly after, my account was locked.
    • An Apple Support representative suggested that this was the cause of the issue: indicating that something was likely untoward about this card.
    • The card was purchased from a major brick-and-mortar retailer (Australians, think Woolworths scale; Americans, think Walmart scale), so if I cannot rely on the provenance of that, and have no recourse, what am I meant to do? We have even sent the receipt, indicating the card’s serial number and purchase location to Apple.

  • The Consequence: My account is flagged as “closed in accordance with the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions”.
  • The Damage: I effectively have over $30,000 worth of previously-active “bricked" hardware. My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly. I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media.
    • Apple representatives claim that only the “Media and Services” side of my account is blocked, but now my devices have signed me out of iMessage (and I can’t sign back in), and I can’t even sign out of the blocked iCloud account because… it’s barred from the sign-out API, as far as I can tell.
    • I can’t even login to the “Secure File Transfer” system Apple uses to exchange information, because it relies on an Apple ID. Most of the ways Apple has suggested seeking help from them involve signing in to an Apple service to upload something, or communicate with them. This doesn’t work as the account is locked.

  • I can’t even download my iCloud Photos, as:
    1. There are repeated auth-errors on my account, so I can’t make Photos work;
    2. I don’t have a 6TB device to sync them to, even if I could.

A Support Nightmare

I contacted Apple Support immediately (Case ID: 102774292094). The experience was terrifyingly dismissive:

  1. No Information: Support staff refused to tell me why the account was banned or provide specific details on the decision.
  2. No Escalation: When I begged for an escalation to Executive Customer Relations (ECR), noting that I would lose the ability to do my job and that my devices were useless, I was told that “an additional escalation won’t lead to a different outcome”.
    • Many of the reps I’ve spoken to have suggested strange things, one of the strangest was telling me that I could physically go to Apple’s Australian HQ at Level 3, 20 Martin Place, Sydney, and plead my case. They even put me on hold for 5 minutes while they looked up the address.

“New Account” Trap

Most insultingly, the official advice from the Senior Advisor was to “create a new Apple account… and update the payment information”.

This advice is technically and legally disastrous, IMO:

  • Legally: Apple’s Terms and Conditions rely on “Termination of Access.” By closing my account, they have revoked my license to use their services.
  • Technically: If I follow their advice and create a new account on my current devices (which are likely hardware-flagged due to the gift card error), the new account will likely be linked to the banned one and disabled for circumventing security measures.
  • Developer Program: As a professional Apple Developer, attempting to “dodge” a ban by creating a new ID could lead to my Developer Program membership being permanently blacklisted, amongst other things.

Who I Am?

I am not a casual user. I have literally written the book on Apple development (taking over the Learning Cocoa with Objective-C series, which Apple themselves used to write, for O’Reilly Media, and then 20+ books following that). I help run the longest-running Apple developer event not run by Apple themselves, /dev/world. I have effectively been an evangelist for this company’s technology for my entire professional life. We had an app on the App Store on Day 1 in every sense of the world.

My Plea

I am asking for a human at Apple to review this case. I suspect an automated fraud flag regarding the bad gift card triggered a nuclear response that frontline support cannot override. I have escalated this through my many friends in WWDR and SRE at Apple, with no success.

I am desperate to resolve this and restore my digital life. If you can help, please email paris AT paris.id.au