
Ask HN: Anyone from Apple here? It's impossible to enroll the dev program - aalex123
 I tried multiple times and it&#x27;s the same problem: &quot;we have been unable to obtain payment for your recent Apple Developer purchase.&quot;<p>I used the same card that I use to to buy apps from the app store - and I tried with other cards too but with no success.<p>And I&#x27;m not the only one... https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;forums&#x2F;thread&#x2F;126314?page=25<p>The bank says that they didn&#x27;t get any payment requests, so the problem seems to be at Apple.
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GordonS
A bit if a tangent, but a company I worked with recently had an issue
enrolling in the Enterprise dev program.

It's a large company with thousands of employees, so definitely enterprise
scale. They heard nothing for _months_ after applying, and weren't able to
find any way to chase the application. Eventually Apple got back to them to
say the company didn't meet the Enterprise program requirements. The company
asked which requirement they didn't meet, because it was plain that they _did_
in fact meet all the requirements - Apple wouldn't say! They said their
decision was final, and they wouldn't say _why_.

Absolutely crazy.

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londons_explore
That's when you register a new company to act as an in-between...

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GordonS
Having to register a new company to try to enroll seems a tad excessive, and
certainly shouldn't be necessary.

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dvfjsdhgfv
Registering a new company only for that purpose makes no sense, but using an
existing one could be useful, if you take into account a few issues (like the
name - but this is more significant with B2C, it won't matter much for the
Enterprise program.)

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osy
Yes!!! I thought I was going crazy. My registration got stuck at the payment
screen even though I can buy other content from iTunes. I’ve contacted Apple
support more than a dozen times in a span of two weeks. I was given
conflicting information by different representatives. For example one told me
to create a new Apple ID and register again. Then when that failed I was told
it was because I had two accounts that tried to register with the same
drivers’ license. At some point I think I triggered some anti-fraud mechanism
because I can’t even get past the license agreement screen anymore and they
told me basically that they’ll “review” the case and get back to me. Haven’t
heard back in 3 weeks since.

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joemclarke
You are not the only one, it tooks me weeks to get an account setup, I kept
getting the same error message as you even after trying multiple good credit
cards.

After contacting support several times, we were finally able to get me signed
up by enrolling via the iOS developer app.

It was a very painful, time wasting process!

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njsubedi
I'd be surprised if anyone from Apple would reply here. The problem seems to
be with the payment processing, so a quick call to their support would yield
faster resolution. Sometimes they have asked my card details over the phone to
renew my membership, so you could request a callback.

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heavymark
What did Apple say when you contacted them? The dev phone support with real
people has always been quite good for me, or the general Apple online support
system or their Twitter support system? As those methods would probably be the
most helpful since they would be able to see what’s going on with your
particular account.

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redsky17
This ended up happening to me recently (about a month ago), too. I ended up
having to enroll via the app on iOS versus through the website on desktop. I
was in contact w/ the support folks and they were fairly helpful. Could be
worth reaching out.

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lalo2302
Are you from Europe? Maybe they want to get away from Wirecard after their
meltdown [1] and their new provider is not that good.

Just speculating, not that I know anything.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/25/house-of-wirecard-
insolven...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/25/house-of-wirecard-insolvency/)

~~~
nottorp
Can't read the article, but if they recently switched payment processors for
Europe for the dev program maybe they switched to Digital River?

They're famous for having extremely paranoid anti fraud checks to the point
that I don't even attempt to pay for something through them any more. (e.g.:
the card that i use for the app store, amazon, steam etc wasn't good enough
for guild wars 2).

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hpen
Have you tried contacting Apple customer service?

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emerongi
In the linked thread multiple people have tried contacting customer support.
Apparently this is one of the responses:

> Hello __*,

> This is Paul from Apple Developer Program Support. It was nice to speak with
> you today. I have researched the issue for you.

> For one or more reasons, your enrollment in the Apple Developer Program
> could not be completed. We are unable to continue with your enrollment at
> this time.

> Best regards,

> Paul

> Apple Inc.

~~~
minxomat
That's so insanely devoid of any information it should be framed and exhibited
somewhere.

~~~
aasasd
Hm, juxtapose a bunch of such responses with something in the spirit of
Pollock's ‘burnt spaghetti’ but in cyberpunkish tones—and you could have a
pretty topical display for these days. If not very subtle.

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x13
Yep, it's a pain; took me weeks to jump through the hoops to enroll.

I really recommend calling them.

[https://developer.apple.com/contact/#!/topic/select](https://developer.apple.com/contact/#!/topic/select)

Membership and Account --> Program Purchase and Renewal

Choose the phone option.

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niqmk
Yes, I had similar experience. It's because apple system, the manager told me.
They suggested to transfer (wire) the money so they could do manually. I
refused, so it took me like 2-3 weeks to wait the system resolved.

After that, I applied again with other company, It's fast enough only took 3
days

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anthonybullard
I just dealt with a similar issue. It took about a week with multiple back and
forths, and then they just said "Try again, it should work". And it did. I bet
after WWDC they get a much larger volume of registrations that they really
inspect carefully.

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Rhobur
I've been there and here is what worked for me. I've created a new test
account on my machine using an alias for my gmail address. From that account
with that email alias I was able to register into the dev program.

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SwiftyBug
Back in my day all you had to do was to send Apple a fax. Good ol' days.

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rajacombinator
I had a recent similar problem. Multiple levels of support were clueless.
Ended up being due to an iCloud outage that resolved itself.

Horrific developer experience over there at Apple.

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shaabanban
I've been wondering about this! I tried multiple cards and even a privacy.com
card and they all appeared to go through but never charged my card.

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jamil7
I've seen the same issue in the last 2 weeks pop up multiple times in the iOS
dev slack channel and a few relevant subreddits.

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swiley
Why would you want to jailbreak? Asking apple for a dev account and side
loading every few days is so easy!

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vulcan01
You've got to use an Apple Card. Don't you understand?

</sarcasm>

