HN Explorer

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

143 points by zoomboy ↗ HN
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.

I don't want to leave that accusation in the air without following up on what happened.

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.

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.

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.

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!

31 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 92.0 ms ] thread
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..
gcheong
How much negative press did this receive? I only saw the HN post. Did it get techcrunched or something?
zoomboy
There was no press at all, for all I know.
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.
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.
dpcan
This doesn't sound like exceptional service given your past situation. It sounds like damage control.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
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.
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.
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 :)
cakesy
Yeah, I know. Why doesn't everybody run around and fix my fuckups quicker? I don't understand why they keep blaming me, when I do something wrong.
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.
osu
okay, it's clearly not about PR - you haven't mentioned the name yet. but i'm still very curious, and at this point i don't think it would distract from the intention of this post.
zoomboy
Actually, the real reason I don't want to tell the app is that it's linked to my name rather obviously, and I don't want people to know that I was that broke.
osu
ah, okay - that's fair enough. the real reason i'm curious is that i want to quit my job and publish my own software.

would you be comfortable telling us what category the app falls into, or giving a sense of what it does? can you say what kind of marketing went into attaining those sales?

zoomboy
I can tell you something - absolutely do not quit your job till you are making $3000 in sales. The Apple iTunes store is a very very fickle baby. It's like a wild horse that is always bucking and trying to throw you off, and to stay on you keep having to think faster and anticipate its moves.

No matter how great your idea is, the Apple store will be unforgiving as hell. There is a LOT to be learned, and while you are learning it, you will need to have a job, because something needs to pay for the mistakes.

cakesy
Wrong.

Do not quit your day job until you have BEEN PAID $3000 in the bank. Until you can go to the ATM and take out some of that $3000.

Have you not learned anything from this experience?

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.
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.
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.

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.

oomkiller
Good to know that behind the red tape, there is still human compassion and understanding at work!
slapshot
Thank you for posting good news! Too many sites post only the bad news and then hide the clarifications/corrections.