My Apple Saga: Consumer Protections Needed Against Big Tech

Permanently disabling an account for fat fingering a date is like giving someone the death sentence (“permanent disabled”) for scanning but forgetting to weigh bananas at Kroger. Crime ≠ punishment.

Let me start this column by first detailing my over two decade allegiance to Apple. Since 2003, I have spent north of $50,000 on Apple products. My family has owned several iPods, more than a dozen iPhones, several iPads, several MacBooks, several MacAirs, a Mac desktop, several nanos, several iTouches, several AppleTVs, and even an Apple router. When I ran The Buckeye Institute, I outfitted the entire office with Macs. I’ve read Walter Isaacson’s book, Steve Jobs, and watched the movie, Steve Jobs. I’ve been an Apple shareholder since 2014. I defended Apple when I was a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for opposing federal efforts to force it to give the Federal Bureau of Investigation an encryption pass to unlock iPhones. Finally, I even met one-on-one with Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook in 2014 at the AEI World Forum. The punchline: I’ve been an unequivocal supporter of Apple for a very long time.

Now, my saga.

It all started on Monday, November 10, 2025. I was cooking dinner for my family while listening to music on my iPhone. I got an update message from Apple about the credit card tied to the Apple App Store. It was expiring, so needed to be updated. I made what turned out to be a fateful decision to update the credit card as I was busily cooking dinner. In my effort to multitask, I failed to notice that the expiration date of the new credit card was a month earlier than the old credit card, so I put in the old month three times. After the third time, Apple froze my App Store account telling me it had been “permanent disabled.” I figured “permanent” didn’t really mean “permanent,” so I used the Apple AI customer support tool to get the issue fixed. The useless AI tool merely kept sending me the link to the Apple Customer Agreement document in which it states under Section G:

G. TERMINATION AND SUSPENSION OF SERVICES

If you fail, or Apple suspects that you have failed, to comply with any of the provisions of this Agreement, Apple may, without notice to you: (i) terminate this Agreement and/or your Apple Account, and you will remain liable for all amounts due under your Apple Account up to and including the date of termination; and/or (ii) terminate your license to the software; and/or (iii) preclude your access to the Services.

Apple further reserves the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the Services (or any part or Content thereof) at any time with or without notice to you, and Apple will not be liable to you or to any third party should it exercise such rights.

The utterly one-sided boilerplate agreement wasn’t much help, so I took the next step to get things fixed.

I called Apple Customer Support to talk to a live person (Case No. 102747196921). I talked with Prab. Prab told me she would send in a request to turn me back on and that she would “take ownership of my issue” and get back to me with results of her work. She never did. I sent Prab an email on November 13 asking if she had learned anything. She didn’t respond. I sent another email on November 17, which also went unanswered.

Prab’s request was denied apparently, which I only learned when I then went to the Apple Store at Easton in Columbus, Ohio, on November 17. The Apple person there tried to be helpful, but simply put my on the phone with another Customer Support person (Case No. 102753687229). I walked through the issue again, with another promise to request that I be turned back on. This person also took ownership and promised to get back to me. He never did.

It was at this point that I started to learn just how devastating having your App Store account disabled is.

The first hit came when I lost the use of my Paramount streaming app on my iPhone. An update had been filed by Paramount, so my app needed to get the latest version. As I learned, you can’t update any app if your account is disabled. That meant that as each company with an app on my iPhone filed an update, I would lose use of that app on my iPhone. Losing streaming services (I have five on my iPhone and iPad) is one thing, but I have banking and brokerage apps on my iPhone that I use often. Losing those would be detrimental to how I run my life. My airline (and Marriott) apps are also on my iPhone, so no more checking in via the app and using the app for boarding passes. My event apps, too, would become disabled, which meant I’d lose access to mobile tickets. As I previously wrote about, my son and I went to Dallas during this fiasco, so I was anxious we’d lose the airline app and the Ticketmaster app with our Cowboys versus Chiefs tickets. Thankfully, we didn’t, but eventually Ticketmaster will file an update. As anyone who knows me knows, I listen to roughly 150 out of 162 Los Angeles Dodgers’ games a year on the SiriusXM app, as well as Colorado Avalanche hockey matches. I use the Manchester City app to listen to every match they play. X has become my “go to” for news several times a day, so losing it would cripple my work. I estimate 95% of my consumer purchases are now done on the Amazon app and I use the Panera app every day to order coffee. Finally, the various apps I use to monitor and control my home would stop me from doing those functions.

We just don’t realize how much of our lives have become dependent on the use of our smartphones until you stop being able to do things on them. I understand why Apple takes such a strong approach to stop fraud, but, given the dependency people now have on their tech, not having a simple remediation process that allows someone who fat fingered an entry to prove who they are is just not fair or appropriate anymore. It is the exact kind of anti-consumer position that should be reformed immediately by either pressure from the key federal agencies, state Attorneys General, state legislatures and governors, and Congress and the President. Permanently disabling an account for fat fingering a date is like giving someone the death sentence (“permanent disabled”) for scanning but forgetting to weigh bananas at Kroger. The punishment for fat fingers or bad multitasking far, far outweighs the crime.

Next up, I learned that any subscription (app or not) started via the App Store would expire because the system stops running charges when disabled. You can’t even use a computer to go directly to the company to change the credit card, as it directs you back to the App Store. That meant streaming services used off the iPhone also would be disabled on your television or other devices.

On November 18, I again called Apple Customer Support (Case no. 102755250132). Same song and dance. Later the day, Kathia from Apple Customer Support emailed me about my claim. Again, nothing happened.

I also tweeted on X to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Apple an appeal for help as follows:

I got no response.

Then, the next bomb dropped on me. You may not know this about me, but I LOVE music. I mean, it affects me in a way few things do. I listen to all kinds of music. I make lots of playlists. Yes, I have my top-notch 1980s playlist and my A+ Country playlist, but any concert I go to, which I do frequently, gets a playlist of the set lists of all performers. I made a playlist for my lovely lady friend (we called them Love Tapes back in high school). I have a specific playlist for when I’m driving my old Saab convertible. Heck, I even made a playlist for my 2023 exploratory run for governor that I’d play at events (see the picture below). I listen to music throughout the day. With the App Store disabled, my monthly Apple Music service expired, so I lost all of my music, as well as playlists. Thankfully, I had used the video record function to record every song I had and the contents of every playlist so I could recreate them, if needed.

When I talked with the Apple Customer Service folks, their only suggestion was to create a whole new App Store account, delete all apps from my iPhone, redownload the apps, and reenter my account details. They said unfortunately I would lose all of my music and playlists by taking this action. I couldn’t believe that my decades of loyalty to Apple and the amount of money I had spent on their products were worth literally nothing to Apple. I was shocked Apple didn’t have a remediation process that would allow me to verify that it was me and not fraud. I decided I’d hold out as long as I could before swallowing the bitter pill, but, if I had to go that route, I would buy an Android or Samsung phone and wean myself off of Apple.

Finally, the biggest and most devastating bomb dropped on me. On Tuesday morning, Apple killed my email because my monthly 200GB storage fee wasn’t paid. Again, the App Store disabling my account prevented me from using a credit card to keep it alive. Now, I’ve used the same email for my business for eighteen years. If you ever did any business with me, you did so through my .mac/.me email. If you sent me an email after it got shut down, you would have gotten a “mailbox is full” message. I couldn’t send email either. Even worse, if any account I have required a password update, I would be unable to do so because every account I have used the .mac email as my contact, which the accounts use to send you a link to reset your passwords. Thus, over time without access to my email, Apple effectively was shutting down my account accesses — even those accounts completely disconnected to Apple. By shutting down my email, Apple was leaving me largely dead in the water.

My iPhone was becoming an iBrick.

In sheer desperation, on December 2, I used the online Apple Customer Support system to again request I be enabled (Case no. 102766875884). After confirming I was engaging with an actual human being versus AI, the person made the same pledge as the previous ones. At the end of this request, I noted that if Apple did not turn my account back on that I would be forced to use my extensive media contacts to increase awareness of the issue and begin legal proceedings against Apple due to the impact the loss of email would have on my business.

After this last request via Apple Customer Support, I sent the following email to CEO Tim Cook via a Google email:

I also made another appeal to Apple CEO Tim Cook via X:

Lastly, I reached out to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost for help. Yost indicated his office would help me, as I wasn’t the only Ohioan dealing with this issue.

At roughly 1:00pm on Wednesday, I tried again to use my account. It worked!!!! Now, I don’t know if I got turned back on because of my last engagement with Apple Customer Support, my outreach to Tim Cook, or Yost’s office, as I never got a message from Apple. It just started working again. Regardless of why, I want to thank Yost for his willingness to help. Most surprisingly and thankfully, after a few hours, most of my music and playlists were repopulated.

As I stated above, Apple and other tech companies need to reform their fraud processes so users have a way to prove who they are and disprove potential fraud. We are simply too dependent on and our financial and business lives are too intertwined with our smartphones and other technology for tech companies to be able to disable our accounts without a redress process. From mobile banking to music, from stock and bond trading to business emails; from streaming shows to travel and concerts, our lives are on our smartphones. Tech companies simply should not be able to disable our accounts for fat fingering or bad multitasking after doing everything they can to get us to conduct most of our lives using their devices. I hope one of the federal agencies, Congress and the President, state attorneys general, and state legislatures and governors demand that companies create redress processes so consumers are protected from having their entire lives turned upside down over simple data entry errors.

After this saga, the shine is off my Apple.

P.S. At this point, I expect to hear from my old friend, Chris Littleton, who is one of the few on Earth I know who doesn’t use an Apple iPhone. Preemptively—yes, Chris, you are right:-)