iTunes/App Store Sign In and Purchasing Woes, Hidden Purchases, etc

[joejoejoe]

Since updating to 7.0, I've been experiencing a problem that seems to be plaguing lots of iOS users, and today I learned everything got worse.

For a while now, I get a "this item cannot be purchased at this time" error when purchasing certain apps/songs etc on my phone. Then, when trying to sign out and back into the app store via settings, the phone hangs and ultimately cannot sign me in.

There are some odd temporary solutions out there like switching your keyboard language, and one user found success in resetting all settings and resyncing the phone.

There's a thread at Apple Support communities here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5350326?start=0&tstart=0

The problem is a lot worse than I originally thought. A couple weeks I tried to buy the new Beyonce Visual Album (wut wut) and got the same freaking error on my phone.

I go to my iMac, and miraculously the album was there, but still nowhere to be found on my iPhone, iPad or MacBook Air.

I checked to make sure that "show all music" was turned on in my settings, it was. When navigating to the album in the iTunes Store, it showed I had purchased it, but it didn't show up in my purchased items list (so that I could redownload it), and it never showed up in my music apps. I was stuck with it on my iMac, and couldn't get it to stream or download via iCloud on any of my devices.

After 2 days of chatting with Apple Support, I found the album in "hidden purchases" in the itunes store app, along with some other albums that were suspiciously missing from my library.

Why was the album there? I have no clue. And I still get the unable to purchase error from time to time.

I never thought I would say this, but it's really frustrating to not be able to buy an app or album when all my info is correct and I'm doing nothing wrong.

For those of you having the same issue with music, check your hidden purchases (Itunes Store, Music tab, scroll to the bottom, click your ID, select View Account, Select Hidden Purchases).

(anyone using 7.1 beta who had this issue in this past find it to be fixed???)

--

p.s. I know from the beginning I could plug my devices into my iMac and transfer the music that way. That was not the point. The album is huge thanks to 17 videos and hogs memory, I wanted to be able to stream the videos when I wanted via iCloud and not eat up all my phone's memory.

p.p.s. - how freaking annoying is it watching videos in the music app? turn the phone into landscape and you get the new coverflow. go to the videos app and it's all in alphabetical order, not album order.... oyyyyyyyy.

 

[hafr]

Streaming the videos saves them on the internal storage... Not a space saver

 

[joejoejoe]

Streaming the videos saves them on the internal storage... Not a space saver

i thought it only saved the video if i actually hit the cloud icon with the arrow. if i just tap the name, doesn't it temporarily save it on internal storage, and then theoretically delete it?

in any event, it does save space to stream a couple here and there from icloud vs putting all 17 videos onto your phone at once.

very interested though on what happens when you tap the song name vs tap the cloud icon with the arrow vs just save them onto your phone via itunes to begin with...

also, it's helpful to have the songs/vids show up in icloud for future devices. would be annoying to always have to go back to my old imac to move the songs around.

 

[hafr]

i thought it only saved the video if i actually hit the cloud icon with the arrow. if i just tap the name, doesn't it temporarily save it on internal storage, and then theoretically delete it?

When you start playing a video from the cloud, it triggers a download and will download the entire video even if you only watch a small portion of it. I my experience, the automatic deletion rarely seem to work the way it should.

also, it's helpful to have the songs/vids show up in icloud for future devices. would be annoying to always have to go back to my old imac to move the songs around.

The purchased items will be available in the cloud for your other devices either way

 

[joejoejoe]

The purchased items will be available in the cloud for your other devices either way

Not in my case unfortunately, as noted above. Until I found it in hidden purchases for reasons beyond my understanding.

 

[melissapete24]

For those of you having the same issue with music, check your hidden purchases (Itunes Store, Music tab, scroll to the bottom, click your ID, select View Account, Select Hidden Purchases).

THANK YOU!!! I just noticed that my album Losing All by Day of Fire wasn't on my iPad even though it was on my iTunes Match, and the iTunes store said it was purchased, but it wasn't in my purchased and there was no download option. I was going INSANE trying to figure out what happened! And there's SO MUCH music in my hidden purchases! What the frack??? Just glad I finally found the answer. Again: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!