Comment by breck
5 years ago
To be honest I don't remember signing up for the account. The fact that Apple Pay was used makes me think somehow I did it on my phone by accident. I do read the WaPo on occasion, so that sounds like the most likely scenario. And they are full of dark patterns, which I guess Apple at least tacitly supports.
But PayPal's had that see and control your subscriptions ability for many years and it's embarrassing for Apple to not have that at this point. And then to nuke the account creds was crazy. And then the fact that I was literally texting with the agent on the phone # that they were trying to text to verify the account, and I was getting nothing, was crazy. And the fact that they couldn't override. And then the fact that while waiting for a verification code that never arrived, they booted me from support. And then the fact that the next agent had zero context, crazy. And then on and on. And then that's before all the phone calls! It's sort of like I think they are trolling me.
> But PayPal's had that see and control your subscriptions ability for many years and it's embarrassing for Apple to not have that at this point
They do. Any subscriptions that Apple bills for are all visible in a single list. But Apple Pay or Apple's Credit Card is not PayPal. They're not compariable products.
The "problem" here is that these are just charges to your credit card. Paypal is not a credit card (well, ignoring their credit products, but I presume that's not what you're talking about), its not a like-for-like comparison.
I don't think it's commonplace for a bank to show a list of subscriptions for a credit card - that's not how banking infrastructure works (I don't think) for credit card transations. By bank does have a feature where it guesses recurring payments to help me plan, but it's not an actual subscription in the way that Direct Debits, or App Store, or Paypal subscriptions are.
How would Apple pull subscriptions off? Centrally manageable subscriptions are a part of the PayPal product API, not of general finance. How is your credit card supposed to understand if a recurring payment is due to a subscription or a regular habit?
There's precedent for banks doing this, so it's certainly possible.
For example, Australian banks are required to provide a list of recurring payments for the last 13 months upon request [1]. The rationale is to make it easier to switch banks, forcing banks to be more competitive.
[1] https://bankingcode.org.au/resources/2019-banking-code-of-pr...
How would Apple pull that off? Centrally manageable subscriptions are a part of the PayPal product API, not of general finance. How is your credit card supposed to understand if a recurring payment is due to a subscription or a regular habit?
It’s not the support agent’s fault - it’s the system. Nice to see you realized that in the thread.
I often too harsh on support agents. I love the Amazon way where you can always just email jeff at amazon if you have a serious problem, and it gets routed appropriately. That gives me peace of mind and probably makes me treat any entry level support agent at Amazon better.
I speak bluntly but quickly reverse course when someone steps up and does the right thing.