Family Sharing and Subscriptions

I thought I would share this with you because I have recently been caught out. For those people that regularly read my articles on scams and things to be aware of, this one is particularly embarrassing. I have been trying to figure out how it happened. 

I am fairly meticulous with anything to do with credit cards, banks and subscriptions. Like many of you I have an iTunes account and have purchased music, video and apps in the past. In my case I have one account which is shared with the family. That means we can share most things, even across platforms onto Macs as well as Apple mobile devices. 

I have never had any cause for complaint with Apple. Their service has always been exceptional compared to many other service providers until the following happened. 

Set up notifications

When I set up my Apple ID associated with iTunes, I used to get email messages if anyone downloaded anything. That worked brilliantly, I always knew what was going on. The problem here though is for some reason, which I have still not fathomed out yet, they stopped. 

So point one is make sure any purchase, even if it is £0, you get an email, so you know it has happened. 

The Perfect Storm

I cannot remember why I checked, but I looked at a credit card statement to see two monthly payments coming from Apple which were for subscriptions. I knew I had only one subscription with Apple, and that was an annual one. So I started digging.  One was for Amazon Music, the other was for Dropbox. These are both Apps on an iPhone. 

I already pay Amazon for an Amazon Music Family Account. I pay that directly. I already pay DropBox for a DropBox Professional Account. When I downloaded these apps, that was how I used them, so I did not anticipate any additional charges. 

I went to Amazon and asked why am I paying twice for this? They did not know why, they could not find another account, only the one I had. Then told me that they don’t have any visibility of what Apple does as Amazon Music is provided via iTunes. I would need to contact Apple. 

I got the same story from Dropbox. Whatever the mechanism is, it is controlled by Apple. Dropbox has no visibility of what Apple provides to clients. Contact Apple.  I don’t believe either of these, but you can only complain so far. So I contacted Apple. 

Apple started out as their usual polite selves. I guess it is fair to say that I was less polite, having found out that £21 per month had been going to iTunes for probably 2 years. The interesting thing was I was immediately refunded 2 months worth of subscriptions with little debate. However Apple could not go any further back than that. I escalated it and got the same response from the supervisor, who said it could not be taken up any higher. But I should contact Dropbox and Amazon Music. 

And there I was left spinning. Amazon Music points to Apple, Dropbox points to Apple, Apple points back at Amazon Music and Dropbox. As for the guy in the middle, nobody can help you other than directing you to someone else that cannot help you. 

So what happened?

The missing connection, which I am still to resolve, is the messages about purchases stopped coming through. I never changed anything, but when I realised it, I had not seen anything about purchases or subscriptions for some time. Years in fact. When you make a purchase a confirmation email is sent out to the account holder even if you are using Family Sharing. 

Check your subscriptions

I am guessing that this is unique to me, I have not seen lots of other people complaining. However I recommend that you check on your smart phone and your iTunes account to make sure that a) there are no subscriptions you do not know about, and b) you have a recognised email address where purchases are being forwarded. 

Further checks show that my son had used Dropbox and Amazon Music accounts, and this is the point where these charges started to occur. The safety net of sending an email to me to advise of the charge was no longer in place, so I was oblivious to it.  Ho Hum!

And then there was this…….

While on the credit card trail, my wife commented on a different card and asked why it was so high. I had no idea so took a look. Guess what?  Over 14 days £401 worth of debits by Apple. In one day £250. So on the phone to Apple again!

This turns out to be totally unrelated. Looking back at various transactions, it looks like someone somewhere had intercepted my card details from another transaction. 

To cut this story short, someone had my credit card details, took out an iTunes account and an Apple ID and started spending. Checks were made by Apple to verify that the payments were not made against any of the Apple IDs used by the family. They were not. Apple could see they were fraudulent actions and said they would recommend a refund and it would be sent for review over 48hrs and to check back later. 

48hrs passes ……..

Yes we have reviewed these payments on your credit card and will refund you £4.97. The rest of the payments were made against consumables apparently. Here Apple becomes extremely unhelpful. I point out that there must be another ID associated with my credit card, who is it?  “Can’t tell you that”. “Can you tell me what the transactions were for at £48.99 each?”  “nope, can’t tell you that”. “But you can see that they are fraudulent?”  We went around and around on this one, they could not tell me anything else due to privacy issues. Apparently you have to keep fraudulent activities secret. 

I eventually went back to my credit card provider who has refunded the balance. However some learning points here too.

Always use a credit card, if I had used a debit card with Apple, I would have not been able to recover anything. Secondly, periodically check your accounts for unauthorised activity. 

I was left somewhat dismayed with Apple in this second unrelated case, as it was clear they had all of the clues as to how it was done, and who was behind it. They were not very helpful either when I asked for the reason why only £4.97 would be refunded against a total debit of £401. While the claim had gone to some group sitting in an ivory tower somewhere, and they determined they were not responsible; it would have been useful to see exactly what they determined and why.