

Tell HN: Apple paid my iPhone money, with exceptional service - zoomboy

Perhaps you remember my post here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=906168 about Apple not paying out for my iPhone apps and my state of brokeness.<p>I don't want to leave that accusation in the air without following up on what happened.<p>A couple of days later, the lady I was speaking to at Apple told me she would take care of the situation. She sent me daily updates on the status of the money, got in communication with all the different sections at the Apple corp and resolved the issue.<p>Apple actually reprogrammed iTunesConnect to fix my issue (if you upgraded from personal account to business account in the past, you may have noticed the new "Vendor Selection" option). The guy who seemed in charge of this was sending me updates on a saturday as well as a sunday, so it seemed he was at the office at the weekend doing this.<p>So, I'd like to say that indeed, a lot of it was my fault, and Apple really came through in the end, and the level of personal service was truely extra-ordinary.<p>Thanks Apple! I'm happy to be selling apps on your store! And thanks HN for discussing the issue so I could see it a bit clearer!
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charlesmarshall
Glad to hear a positive story about Apples app store for a change .. I'm still
a bit cynical; they only got their act together after a bunch of negative
press about the issue..

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mechanical_fish
_they only got their act together after a bunch of negative press about the
issue._

It's pretty difficult to clear up a problem like this before it gets negative
press. [1]

The speed of negative press just gets faster and faster. It's massively
parallel. File a trouble ticket with Apple or anybody else, then Tweet your
problem, and the Tweet may be retweeted by 100,000 people before the engineer
in charge of reading the ticket even _wakes up_.

And, if you read the original complaint, this was a problem involving
_mistaken identity_ in the context of _international banking_. Not the sort of
thing you can necessarily clear up overnight, even if you're completely
focused on it.

\---

[1] Especially if HN is your definition of "press".

~~~
charlesmarshall
I had thought it had been picked up in other places, but fair enough if it
wasn't (see op reply below). Like i said I'm just being cynical...

I know that it was about international banking as i read the the story when it
posted; but how many of those take 3 months to sort out? None that i know of.

It always sounded to me like apple were trying fob the op off as long as they
could till they fixed their code ... again, im a cynical bugger, but i'm glad
they got it sorted for the op.

~~~
zoomboy
Actually, I also had the feeling that they were fixing something internally
and that's why faxes would get "missing" and week long no replies. Whatever it
is - it seems to be fixed now.

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phatboyslim
Thank you for following up. I often feel people, news outlets, etc. often
don't provide any follow-up to a complaint or poor service with a given
company. I certainly don't drink the kool-aid of big business, but I still
feel they aren't as evil as some people make them out to be.

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jxcole
I know that it would be easy to label this with the following:

"Apple is only doing this because of the bad press and they are still bad guys
just trying to mop up the bad PR."

But let's not jump to conclusions. After all, they could be altruistically
fixing stuff like this right and left. They could be fixing stuff where there
was no negative press. And we would never know because we need the negative
press to find out in the first place.

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dpcan
This doesn't sound like exceptional service given your past situation. It
sounds like damage control.

~~~
jamiequint
That would make sense if they actually seemed to care about that in any other
situation, but there are many more publicized mishaps that have not been
corrected at all. I'm thinking the OP just managed to get lucky here.

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anApple
So it took 3 months to fix that flaw which nearly put you into lifelong debt.

You should be angry as hell and not thanking them.

~~~
zoomboy
It's easy to be forgiving when you have $15.000 in the bank :)

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oomkiller
Good to know that behind the red tape, there is still human compassion and
understanding at work!

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sammcd
Any tips for people in your situation? Is there a magical department at apple
that will fix these type of issues? If so how do you get in touch with them
without getting press?

I'm not in a similar situation, I just feel like this information would be
very helpful to a lot of people.

~~~
zoomboy
Well, there are two things you can do to be the inside on Apple:

1\. Get the number of a reviewer. If you have been publishing apps for a while
they will call you and give you their number

2\. Get the number and email address of one of the higher ups in
iTunesConnect. I have one of those, but I obviously am not going to give it
out, I think he would probably not be happy to get everyone bypass the staff
filter :)

Most important tip is this:

Apple have many different sections for many different tasks. Email the
relevant people directly! If you have a banking issue, email banking. If it is
iTunesConnect, email them, if it is developer acccount related, mail the
developer relations.

~~~
dbul
Man, I'm going through the routine right now. I wanted to become an iTunes
affiliate for an iPhone app I'm about to submit. Apple a) does not clearly
state what iPhone developers need to do since affiliates are typically
websites b) sends you a generic rejection email and forces you to wait two
weeks to reapply while you are scratching your head _guessing_ what they want.
So I've been calling linkshare, who are very helpful and clearly want to make
money. Yet I send blind emails to apple crossing my fingers for a response.

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antonovka
To those apologists who said Apple couldn't fix this issue rapidly if they
were sufficiently motivated by negative press or otherwise -- you were wrong.

It took many months, but something finally motived Apple to move.

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slapshot
Thank you for posting good news! Too many sites post only the bad news and
then hide the clarifications/corrections.

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ujjwalg
You mention that "you can upgrade from personal account to business accoun",
how can someone do that?

~~~
zoomboy
It's in the FAQ somewhere. It's a standard practise I believe. You just need
to email someone and they convert it, assuming you have the papers.

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osu
can you tell us the name of your app? it doesn't seem to be referenced here or
in the original post.

~~~
zoomboy
Not relevant. I'm not doing this for PR.

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aaronz3
This seems strange. I understand not volunteering the info, but if someone
asks I don't see a problem with letting them know. You may not be asking for
PR but you can always use it.

~~~
zoomboy
See below.

