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Ask HN: Is it not possible to enroll for Apple Developer anymore?

1 points by olalonde ↗ HN
I've been trying to enroll for Apple Developer for over a month and nothing works.

The Apple Developer app won't accept my Canadian passport for identity verification. The enrollment is for a Delaware LLC, so my Apple account region is set to US. I can't switch the account region to Canada either, because I haven't lived there in years and don't have a Canadian bank card.

If I enroll through the website, the enrollment gets approved, I accept the term and, when it's time to pay, all my cards get declined. I tried ~7 bank cards (debit, credit, personal, business), all with matching billing addresses. All US cards. All the banks tell me they didn't decline transactions from Apple. I tried no VPN, VPN and residential VPN. I tried from my MacBook, iPhone, Safari, Chrome, incognito, non-incognito.

Phone support is unavailable every time I check. I tried talking to regular Apple Store customer support but after repeating myself over 5 times with different agents, the last person I got transferred to told me they couldn't help with Developer stuff.

If I email Developer support, they reply ~5 days later with unhelpful canned responses like "have you tried Safari incognito?", "you should try the Developer app instead" or "make sure your billing address matches your bank information". I'm at support email #9 and enrollment attempt #3.

Has anyone had similar issues and been able to fix them?

21 comments

[ 20.8 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] thread
wizcaps
That part of their business, along with the News part, has been like this for years. It’s incredibly frustrating to real people like you and I when they don’t have the (enough) equivalents on the other side. I don’t know why they do it, but it has to be intentional.

Nothing helpful here, but I sympathise.

olalonde
Appreciate the sympathies, it sucks. I can only guess that I'm triggering some fraud detection system.
sjtgraham
[delayed]
kotaKat
Doesn't matter. The emails get picked up by an "Executive Customer Service" team out of Austin when you email them now, armed with the reality distortion controls to "manage distressed customers". (Aggravated bonus points; they will not engage with you by email at that point, they only work via calls. Even if you're deafmute. :) )
runjake
They always have been largely handled by the Executive team. Doesn't mean the CEO won't jump in on occasion, though. And I think, depending on the case, the Executive team has historically done an excellent job.

Can't speak to them for the past couple years, and things change, though.

CobaltFire
Dealt with them a couple of years ago (check my post history here for the story).

They solved my issue and I've had no issues since.

Having to have them step in burned several decades of trust. The account they had to save was from early in the OS X/iCloud days, when I had a G4.

sjtgraham
Not true. I've done this and the direct report actually responsible (another VP) was asked by the top-level VP to follow up. Very much depends on what the ask is. If it's along the lines of "my iPhone is broken" then yes, what you describe is most likely to happen.
browningstreet
You may hate this advice but it worked for me: have Gemini walk you through all the requirements for your given situation.

It took 6-8 weeks for all my stuff end to end, including whatever agreement I needed for European sales, but Gemini was very helpful and correct on all the stated steps and gotchas.

Yes, I’m American but I had a slightly convoluted situation with addresses and bank accounts, and going at the process blind would’ve been much less successful.

olalonde
The thing is I always pass the enrollment step, it's paying for the membership that blocks for some reason. I think it might be the Apple Store's fraud system that flags me for some reason, rather than an issue with Apple Developer itself. Regardless, thanks for the advice.
rerdavies
Maybe try enrolling on your phone instead of your desktop. I had a mighty battle with AppleTV recently trying to sign up for Apple TV (which I would guess uses the same payment system). I suspect the root issue for me was that my copy of Windows boots off a non-encrypted drive, and was being considered as a non-secure connection. (I'm dual-booting with an older version of Ubuntu).

Anyway. Paying on my phone worked the first time.

Melatonic
Create an Apple Pay account with your cards or maybe you can pay with PayPal?
olalonde
Both Apple Pay and PayPal are disabled with a message saying: "Items in your order are not eligible for this payment method. Please select another form of payment." :(
[dead] luyao_street
[flagged]
olalonde
Thanks for the detailed write up. I did get the email saying I my enrollment was accepted and I did accept the "Apple Developer Program License Agreement":

> Your enrollment request has been accepted. To complete your organization's enrollment in the Apple Developer Program, please sign in to your developer account to review and accept the Apple Developer Program License Agreement, and complete your membership purchase.

It's really only an issue when it's time to pay for the membership. I'm probably tripping some fraud detection system tied to Apple Store rather than Apple Developer. I'm traveling right now and don't have an iPhone with me but I'll try some of your suggestions once I get back after tomorrow.

[dead] Akseleu_omirbay
[flagged]
apothegm
It’s probably dead because it’s clearly the C&Ped result of feeding this question to an agent. If OP wanted an LLM’s answer, they’d probably have asked the agent themselves.
ayarmots
For an organization enrollment, the part that usually decides the outcome is the support case, and a callback request through developer.apple.com/contact (Membership and Account) tends to get further than the web form because the agent can see the enrollment record and the declined payment attempts on their side. Have the D-U-N-S number and the case ID from the first enrollment attempt ready when they call. Did the payment decline happen on the website flow only, or also when you tried to pay from the Developer app?