Can't check for purchases

Me too.
"Unable to check for purchases. The iTunes Store is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."

Very frustrating, especially with 23 songs I paid for that will not download.

Well at least they said "please". We really should cut them some slack. Since so many of us are sending them our money, it's understandalbe that we should have to wait in line for the service; just like at the bank!!!!!!!!

Just because they're a HUGE computer company, I don't expect them to have sufficient servers, software, or support personel. Oh well, I didn't really want the music right now anyway. Take your time, I understand!!!!

I'm having this same issue on a Mac. I've never had problems downloading music before, and when I went to buy a song the other day, I got this message.

I emailed Apple Support about it and their suggestion was that it could be caused by web accelerator software, a firewall, or a router/ISP that is blocking certain necessary ports. I have no web accelerator software or a firewall, so that eliminated that explanation. I removed my router from the equation by plugging my computer directly into my DSL modem. Same problem.

I tried logging into a different iTunes Store account, and it works fine. iTunes tells me that I've already downloaded all my music (which is true for that account), but back on the "broken" account I get the same error message as you do over and over no matter how many times I try. This is how I know it's not a connection issue.

It's been happening for several days now and is quite frustrating. I've emailed Apple Support back explaining my situation and my diagnosis of the problem so far. I'll post here if they respond with any solutions.

Same deal here. iTunes is apparently "temporarily unavailable" any time I try to check for purchases or click download from the My Account page.

I'm currently awaiting a response from support with the info that I supplied saying that the removal and re-adding of the album I bought didn't fix the issue. Tried to download on my main computer (Win), laptop and Mac mini. No joy from any, though I've bought albums before without issue.

I'm beginning to suspect it has something to do with this amended license agreement that was thrown at me in the middle of the purchase, possibly mucking up some account setting on Apple's system.

Did find a blog entry about this issue, from last month, where the person had their account "reset" and that apparently fixed things. Going to have to wait and see what happens.

Hey i have been having this same problem but only with downloading the new kanye west album Graduation. I put a pre order on it and it came out today and since this morning everytime i try to download it where it says "download now" in my account information that message pops up but i was able to purchase and download other songs.

Please help i've been waiting for this album for the longest and all i want to do is get this album into my itunes

Same here guys. I purchased 61 songs last night and ever since then it just says "Unable to check for purchases. Itunes store is temporarily unavailable"

I contacted apple support but they give me the usual "Check to make sure you don't have a firewall" and "maybe you're not connected to the Internet".

I have purchased another album since them and it downloaded fine.

Something's gotta give...

JG

same here. this is very frustrating. i also can't re-add the album i tried to download back to the shopping cart because i have 'already purchased it'. my account page also shows my 11 songs as pending downloads...but I can't get at them! I have never experienced this problem before...

It should be a very serious problem or probably the programmers are very busy dealing with Iphone problems .... one day and counting ... big mess !!! Really interesting (mean "funny") the Auto Replies.

How many posts do we have to write for this problem to be solved ?!! Probably Apple does not read this forum !!!

Have fun 🙂

7 songs purchased at 6pm EST yesterday (12 hours ago). Can put things in my cart now and get them no problem, but, the 7 items from yesterday still give me the error:
"Unable to check for purchases
The iTunes Store is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later."
There is nothing in support regarding this error and no "answers" to any of the posts here in discussions.
Apple has charged me for the 7 songs and still has not responded to my MULTIPLE inquiries regarding this issue.
Very disappointed...

I've been talking to "Jimmy" at iTunes customer support for over a month now. My HD crashed and I lost everything. Jimmy was nice enough to allow me to download everything 1 more time. The reason we have been talking for a month is:

1. The first time, he stuck ALL 650 things in my pending downloads folder. iTunes crashed at least 50 times in a week and I barely downloaded a Gig in that time. I was also getting tons of different errors including this one.

2. So, he started putting in smaller batches and all was well - until I started getting this error message again yesterday.

3. Jimmy (who works for Apple iTunes) said that it was happening because of a bad file. So he cleared my queue again and put a smaller batch back in. Apparently, he is correct because the first batch downloaded fine. The new small batch he put in is AGAIN giving me the error message which means the bad file is 1 of the 39 in my queue.

Answer - contact customer support - they need to clear your pending downloads and put them back in which usually corrects the bad file transfer (happens usually with more than 2-3 purchases/downloads at a time).

Also, there are MANY other threads pertaining to this error. If you look for them on Google, the first one has an alternate solution about deleting your Downloads folder in iTunes. You can try it, but it did not work for me - also supports Jimmy's reason.

Hope this helps!

Contact iTunes here:
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/download/

Well I fired off another email using that page asking them to reset my pending downloads. We'll see if anything gets done.

I just sent a bunch of them out. I told them I was no Monday morning quarterback and that this was a serious problem. I also mentioned that I wanted a refund if they couldn't fix it. I guess we will see what happens. BTW - I was able to download the free song of the week with no problem. When I purchased an album on the evening of the 11th I purchased a ringtone separately, of course, but back to back. The ringtone came through and that's when I got the error about connecting to the iTunes store. I've been bill, "like everyone else" and the album download in pending, but of course, checking purchases does help because of the error.

Let's get everyone hyped up so we can at least get a response. If they'd acknowledge a problem I could accept the time it would take to fix it but don't treat us like idiots and think the problem will go away.

I'll be sending off an email in a few minutes too. I've just got home from work and the store is still down. Meanwhile my two songs I purchased last night are still no where to be seen and I can't even access the Check Purchases screen.

Well I just received another email from their support group, but I haven't been home to try it out. This was received at 8:00am CST:

"
For a brief time, the iTunes Store was unable to process this type of request. Since that time, the issue seems to have been resolved.

I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If the issue persists, just reply to this email and Apple will investigate.

Sincerely,

Basia
iTunes Store Customer Support
http://www.apple.com/support/iTunes/ww
"

definately not the case for me. I am still recieving the error b/c Jimmy isn't working right now so I have to wait for him to get to work to clear the bad file. I hope it does work for you, though. Good luck!