So I got an iPod Touch for Christmas, as I mentioned. And, as I mentioned, even though I hadn’t even asked for it and when I opened it, wasn’t entirely convinced I wanted it, in the two weeks I’ve had it I’ve come to love it dearly.
It didn’t take long for me to start exploring the app store, and most of the apps I downloaded were the freebies. (I have to admit, I am highly impressed by what you can get for free. And, in a delicious coincidence, my new task at work is to figure out how to make our Web site more mobile-friendly, and even look into creating an app of our own. Wicked cool, and wickedly serendipitous.) But, of course, there were a few games that sucked me in. I had no problem forking over $4.99 for Sim City, and I think Tetris set me back $2.99. The one I play most often is Boggle — I think that set me back another $2.99. I didn’t mind splurging a bit on games, though, because Beloved also gave me a $25 iTunes gift card to go along with it.
(Many of you are nodding along, because you know what’s coming. I have to admit, I had no idea, but I am peeved.)
I didn’t realize anything was amiss until I happened to see the $1.99 and $2.99 charges to my Visa card. Apparently, in Canada you cannot use an iTunes gift card to buy apps. That is annoying in and of itself, but to me even more annoying is that I had no idea. Not when we gave our niece and nephew $25 each gift cards for Christmas to use on their new iPods, and not when I entered my iTunes password to purchase the apps. It did not give me any sort of indication that I was bypassing my $40 gift card balance and instead charging the purchases to my Visa card. A friend of mine with an 11 year old didn’t notice until there were nearly $100 worth of charges on his credit card, so I guess I got off lucky.
So I started poking around on the Internet, figuring there must be some sort of workaround out there somewhere, but there isn’t one that I could find. What I did find was post after post after post of angry consumers, many of whom had contacted Apple and received paltry compensation like a credit for a free song or two. Apple seems to be claiming that they are unable to allow the use of gift cards to purchase apps because of what one Apple customer service rep called “Canadian Commerce Laws”.
Then I found a guy named Jim Whitelaw who showed a hell of a lot of initiative and managed to get Industry Minister Tony Clement to address the issue in a letter to his own MP. I mean, if the Minister of Industry doesn’t think it’s a problem, and if Sony and Nintendo and other companies allow the use of gift cards to purchase games and software, I have a hard time understanding why Apple is choosing to draw this particular line in the sand.
I’ve had lots of reasons to interact with Apple over the years, and I’ve always found them reasonably responsive. But this totally taints my opinion of them. I’ve been seriously considering both an iPhone and a Mac, but if this is how Canadian Apple customers get treated, then I’m not sure I want to invest any more of my time or money with Apple. It’s a bit of a tarnish on my love of my shiny new iPod, too. I’ve written to Apple (feel free to do so yourself if you’re as ticked as I am — they say they are responsive to customers) but don’t expect anything more than a cursory response.
Consider yourself warned, if you haven’t already found out about this one the hard way like many of my friends already have. The policy itself is bad enough, but the lack of information is inexcusable.
Edited to add: while Apple did respond to me, the response was rather unsatisfactory. The first e-mail told me, rather unhelpfully, that gift cards could not be used to redeem apps in Canada. When I replied that my initial query stated that very fact, and that I was asking instead about the “why” of the policy, I got a second response that said:
According to Apple policies, canadian customer’s are not able to purchase Applications using Store Credit. I know this must be really frustrating.
I encourage you to use the iTunes Feedback page to submit your feedback below, it may help us to improve our customer satisfaction. We will be considering your feedback very carefully:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.htmlYour efforts to share your feedback are very much appreciated.
So, I took their advice and I encourage you to do so, too. Have at ‘er, bloggy peeps!
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