Online Apple Store and Apple Pay
Tony Crooks
Hi Smuggers,
Had an interesting experience buying a new iPhone the other day. I placed an order for a new phone, case, and AppleCare on a Friday for delivery the following day. I paid for all this using Apple Pay, the card linked to this being a credit card.
Late on Friday I got a notification that the payment hadn’t been authorised despite my card balance being a factor of several times the purchase price. The online suggestion was to use a different payment method but when I tried this the online banking payment verification process failed to run - a blank screen apart from a rotating arrow. After checking with the bank - no verification has been requested and they could not see why Apple Pay has declined to authorise payment.
Back to Apple. Had an entertaining if unhelpful exchange with an Apple Agent who suggested cancelling the order and resubmitting, but didn’t understand why there is no online means of doing so, and he appeared to be unable to do this himself. On Saturday have an exchange with a different Agent who eventually suggests that he put through payment manually. Without anything other than the credit card number and expiry date, payment accepted! Agent says delivery should be made on Monday. On Monday I see status as “Preparing to Ship”. Tuesday it remains the same. Wednesday I don’t have the time to chase this so on Thursday I speak to yet another Agent who suggests that it will ship on November 18, when it is now November 23. I ask if it will remain this way until November 18 2024, but no it will wait until there is a November 18 that is on a Saturday!
Agent speaks to their superior and am offered a delivery on Saturday November 25 2023. Yes please! What happens is it is arriving on Friday November 24 - according to DPD.
My conclusions to all this are that one should be cautious about using Apple Pay with the online Apple Store - manual payments do seem to work normally, the online Apple Store system may have problems with the UK payment verification process, getting an online order cancelled when using Apple Pay is problematic as there is no online cancellation option available, and getting a clear delivery date for items in stock requires speaking to Apple when problems arise.
Connected but quite logical, I received an email saying that Apple were unable to bill for the AppleCare I’d ordered and could I sort this out with the serial number of the phone I haven’t had delivered as yet!
And there was I thinking that buying via the online Apple Store would “Just work”!
For comparison, after ordering some things through the Argos online store, when I realised that the wrong delivery address was on the order confirmation (my fault), I had an exchange with their Agent and it was immediately suggested that they cancel the order so I can order afresh. This was because the order had already been forwarded to 3rd party warehouses and couldn’t update the delivery address. Cancellations and refund took place within minutes. Information is understanding?
Russell Brown
Manor Park Medical Centre (https://manorparksurgery.com/, Tel 01323484848)
GP Practice Training Solutions (https://www.gppracticetrainingsolutions.co.uk/)
For a full copy of our training brochure, please click on the link below:
https://www.flipsnack.com/FE9F99EEFB5/gp-practice-training-and-management-online-courses.html
Co-founder, Resilient GP (www.facebook.com/groups/ResilientGP/)Twitter: @drbrown1970
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to smug+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/smug/40CFB053-7D66-4C88-81A1-9E72DC318A80%40gmail.com.