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Apple Charges Customer 122 Times for Lion

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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John Christman purchased OS X Lion on July 23, and paid $31.79 after sales tax. Then, his PayPal account was charged $31.79 an additional 121 times, for a total of $3,878.40.

Clearly Mr. Christman didn't need 122 copies of Lion, and something has gone awry. John got in touch with both PayPal and Apple support, but said both sides pointed fingers at each other. "Apple Blames PayPal, PayPal blames Apple. They both are claiming to investigate, but I am stuck broke for three days now."

Christman thinks it is related to the new iCloud feature that allows iTunes to automatically download previous purchases:
I fresh installed Lion, because the upgrade caused a lot of problems. My system needed as fresh start anyway.

I logged into our developer account and got the latest iTunes Beta, and installed it. iTunes has a cool new feature to download all your purchased apps for you.
I clicked download all.

As each download started it charged me $31.79. Some apps came fast, some took longer, but the timing was directly related to when a new app started to download.
Click to expand...
He downloaded 116 apps total, but noted that several apps failed to download and needed to be restarted. 116 apps downloaded and 121 extra charges seems too close to be mere coincidence.

Christman isn't the only person to face these issues surrounding Lion and PayPal. There is a lengthy discussion on Apple's support website about the issue, and other bloggers have run into similar problems.

Even though the purchases above say "refunded", Christman says he hasn't seen a dime. "Apple claims there was only one transaction. When I told PayPal to dispute them, they closed the cases and marked the items as refunded on the 23rd. Bear in mind all this money was taken and never returned yet."

"My mortgage is due in 2 days, and thanks to them, I don't have the money."

MacRumors reached out to Apple for comment, who said they would work with John directly to try to get his issues resolved.

Article Link: Apple Charges Customer 122 Times for Lion
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/27/apple-charges-customer-122-times-for-lion/
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Ouch! I had a similar issue on a smaller scale (was charged £400 more than I should have been on my iMac) but Apple death with it nicely :)
 
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I guess he should've linked his itunes account to a credit card. That way he could still pay his mortgage.
 
Ouch. One charge for me! I doubt Apple would refuse to refund this though... Few people would buy Lion over a hundred times intentionally. :p
 
Hhahaha

I'll bet it's paypal. About a month ago, I sent someone a $10 refund for a $40 purchase. ...well, it sent them $10 seventeen times. Paypal blamed my bank! ...but then sorted it out to be their own fault later. (how would it have been my bank!?)

Having used ebay & paypal since day 1, is it me or have both gone steadily downhill?
 
If he had followed my motto, he would have been fine.

"Paypal. Just say no."

I don't think there is a more ethically challenged company of similar size than Paypal. Just need to google a little bit to hear all the horror stories.
 
David305 said:
"My mortgage is due in 2 days, and thanks to them, I don't have the money."
No moron, you clicked on a purchase 122 times and now you don't have the money. Take responsibility for your stupidity.
Click to expand...

Did you even read the story? He didnt click anything 122 times, he clicked "download all" and for every app download it also somehow charged him for a copy of Lion.
 
While amusing, I'm slightly disappointed that this is front-page news.

EDIT: I should clarify my reasoning, since some people seem to misunderstand. This is a freak event (or a few, apparently) related only to PayPal, and it seems more worthy of the former Page 2.
 
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This happened to me once using iTunes. I was charged 5 times for buying a CD. After 3 months Apple refunded me my money. I didn't like the album that much.

On another note my mobileme was cancelled 8 weeks ago and I still haven't received my refund.
 
Wow, that's gotta suck. I only got charged once (thankfully) but it didn't use my remaining iTunes balance and charged the full amount to my card. Now my remaining balance isn't even showing up either.
 
You should all get a small credit card with a limit of $500 no overdraft on it that you use online. That way if an accident happens it only effect a small credit card and not your bank account.

iTunes accounts are being hacked too and charges like this are occurring. I know two people so far in the last month who have been hacked and had their accounts charged up.

Same issue form Apple, dragging feet and pointing fingers. Apple needs better customer service for their digital stores. They only have email support right now, but they really need is a dedicated 800 number and folks on the other end who can fix transition issues immediately.
 
David305 said:
"My mortgage is due in 2 days, and thanks to them, I don't have the money."
No moron, you clicked on a purchase 122 times and now you don't have the money. Take responsibility for your stupidity.
Click to expand...

Are you psychic? Did you watch him click purchase 122 times? This isn't the only report of this happening.
 
I'm sure it'll get straightened out (it took Paypal a few days to actually refund my money the last time I bought something from Buy.com on eBay and they didn't send me anything, even after Buy.com "refunded" my money). But just to get this straight:

Beta development software + financial accounts essential to your livelihood = bad idea.

Check.
 
As someone who deals with credit card processing, and has seen this many times before, I can safely assume that neither Apple or Paypal are at fault, but the credit card processor that handled the transaction probably was.

I have seen this happen more than once, where there is a funky character--usually a bar (|)--used on the name/address and causes this to happen. Guess who entered that character? Very likely to be the customer. However, it doesn't excuse the credit card processor for not handling that character properly.

Edit;

Taking a look at the picture in the post, it appears that this wasn't used with the Paypal debit card, but just a direct paypal transaction. But it could be a similar cause.
 
didnt even know u could pay with paypal LOL guess i'll stick to giftcards
 
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This is the exact reason why I only use gift cards and never provide my information to them.
 
LOL! Sorry but 122 times is beyond ridiculous, I mean even 5 is ridiculous, let alone being charged twice.
 
If you're a mere $3K away from being broke and not being able to eat, pay your mortgage, etc., then an upgrade to Lion ought to be considered a luxury item, no?
 
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