Don’t take it for granted that this ban won’t happen to you in the future, though. Bad production runs can happen. There was one year my husband got three horrifically bad iPads in a row. The displays were awful. He finally kept the last one even though it was not satisfactory and decided instead to just bear with it until time to upgrade. He knew very well bans could happen and didn’t want to run into one.
I went through this with the iPhone 12’s. I liked my 12 Pro Max but it had a bad display (instead of blacks it displayed glowing green in the dark). But I’d already returned a chronically overheating iPhone 12. And an iPhone 12 Pro that was unbalanced and cramped my hand. I finally settled on a 12 mini with a defective display and that 12 Pro Max. I did eventually trade them away.
So, these bans can be misused into intimidating customers into keeping sub standard products. But I do understand that enough consumers misuse return policies that it’s affecting all of us and causes such bans to exist. Unfortunately, companies often hide behind an implacable system instead of meeting customers and treating them as individuals.
I think in this case what is needed is direct person to person communication with Apple and from Apple. There needs to be human intervention and interaction here and not just slapping a customer repeatedly against “the system.” So Apple can see if OP was abusing the system or a genuine victim of it and of a run of bad luck with poor quality control. I know OP supposedly was in communication with someone but how much attention was paid? Was the person interested in helping or just wanted to stamp this as solved and move on?
I’ve gotten enough wonky products from Apple to know that though they are excellent compared to the competitors, they are not perfect or remotely close to it.
The thing is, they’re so much better than most competitors that it’s hard for us to accept it when we hear where they failed a customer. So we tend to meet such accounts with derision and suspicion.
And maybe OP did create his own problems (or maybe not) but I think we need to keep an open mind and be careful for our selves. Don’t take anything for granted. A lot of people who get slapped with a ban or get locked out of their social media accounts thought it couldn’t happen to them.
Above all we should not take Apple as the pinnacle of everything and with that allowing them to treat customers as they wish.
I did have some terrible MacBook Air units, som were bent out of the box, to an extent the 4th foot couldn+t touch the tabletop unless I pressed it too hard to be good.
Another one almost caught fire while on charge.
Aside from units with scratches and dings on the aluminum case out of the box.
Would anyone paying full-price for a new product keep a product with defects from factory?
I believe not.
And another detail: it's Apple itself that encourages customer to be picky with quality. Their marketing advertises perfection, beauty and incredibly built products. And charges for it.
It should be no surprise when customer won't accept poorly built or defective products while paying steep prices.
In this case, I believe I must have been wrongly flagged and caught in there system.
Issue is that Apple does not have nay mechanism for a customer to appeal and request a revision of the decision.
It's simply a blind system that bans, and apples the slience treatment.
No matter how many times you request, they just pretend nothing is going on.
Now, thing got too far as what they did was to steal my money.
They are simply keeping me to access a balance I paid for.
If they are doing that, the least they can do is refunding the customer. But no, while this ban lasts, Apple "can't do anything regarding that balance blockage".
Unreal!
