Shopping Cart inaccessible; error codes (5002) or (-4); can't music shop.

Question

Level 1

15 points

Shopping Cart inaccessible; error codes (5002) or (-4); can't music shop.

About 5 days ago, I could no longer access my Shopping Cart which contains many items I've researched for purchase.

When I try to connect to my Shopping Cart, I consistently get error message: “We could not complete your iTunes Store request. An unknown error occurred (-4).”

When I try to add a song to my Cart, I get error message: “Could not add an item to your cart. An unknown Error occurred (5002).”

This happened a year ago March-April 2008. At that time, Apple iTunes reps convinced a number of customers they had to allow deletion of their "corrupt" Shopping Lists.

Other customers persisted in their complaints to Apple, requesting that the blocked Shopping Lists be restored from back-up tapes, if necessary. On April 2, 2008 suddenly and without notice the Shopping Lists of these users started to work again. All old data was intact and often new songs, which had received the error message 5002, too!

A fellow forum user recommended I create a new Playlist and call it "Wishlist", select all the songs from my Shopping Cart and drag and drop them into "Wishlist". I did this, and thus have a backup from a year ago. Alas, as this isn't nearly as convenient as the Shopping Cart itself, I haven't been very reliable in updating this backup. So here I am again, threatened with loss of all that I've saved recently in my Cart including some songs I was trying to get in to purchase.

Most of the time, I am much more comfortable shopping with a cart. Otherwise my impulsiveness could get out of control! I could switch off Shopping Cart and choose the 1-click mode of buying, but I am just not comfortable with that.

If Apple is having thoughts that some of our Shopping Carts are getting too full, then they should write this to us or provide an automatic warning as the Cart fills up to near the Apple-imposed limit. With no such notice or warning, though, it is just not acceptable to block our access to our own Carts and have the support people tell us we have to delete the content of our Cart and start over.

I just did a chat with Apple Service (Jeremy) and was told, just as a year ago: "you must let us delete your contaminated Shopping Cart". Obviously I know from experience there are better solutions for long-time large iTunes Store customers like me. I sure hope Apple will let me access my Cart, at least one time to back it up and downsize it myself, if necessary. Just tell me what system limits you have set so I can comply; don't just freeze my account and tell me to start over. That is customer non-responsive.

24" iMac 2.8GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.7), iPhone 3G

Posted on May 22, 2009 9:02 AM

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Answer 1

May 22, 2009 12:23 PM in response to SEBrew

I am currently having the same problem. I haven't been able to access my shopping cart for 2 days.

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Answer 2

May 22, 2009 9:43 PM in response to SEBrew

Alas, I'm having the same issue. It happened not longer after updating my system. I did receive a warning that my cart was full, so I did what any sane music-loving person would - I purchased around 70 songs or so that were in my cart. Problem solved. In the next few days I downloaded some free items (TV shows included) but have been locked out of my shopping cart since. The dreaded error 5002. I have tried everything from this forum and others on the internet to resolve the problem: updated billing info, reinstall, permissions fix, library relocation (a HUGE ordeal), etc. Nothing has worked. I absolutely CANNOT lose the contents of my (now much smaller) shopping cart. If this were to happen, it would definitely signal the end of my iTunes purchases. If a vendor is going to offer a shopping cart feature, then they should be able to fix it/restore from backup. Do you think Apple uses Time Machine? Anyway, here's hoping for a quick resolution. I've been waiting a week now....

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Answer 3

May 27, 2009 9:22 PM in response to SEBrew

Just a quick follow-up. I've exhausted every "fix" and every avenue I have through Apple. They refuse to do anything other than empty the shopping cart to fix the problem. After a few emails back and forth, I was informed that the shopping cart was "meant to provide a short term location to place items of interest, not to be used for storing content for prolonged periods of time." So there you go. No fix, no willingness to restore from backup, no willingness to escalate the matter any further.

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Answer 4

May 28, 2009 2:13 AM in response to SEBrew

If you have items that are in the cart and have been removed from the iTS and are no longer available then that can create a problem accessing the cart. This is nothing new - has been a problem for several years. Either buy or delete seems to be the iTS way. I don't see a lot of complaints in the Forums about this which indicates that there are lots of happy users out there or users that accept the system as it is currently.

Go to the super market and 'store' items in a shopping cart for purchase next week they are called 'go backs' and are returned to the shelf. Not waiting for your next visit.

As for it being your 'cart' this is not true - it is not yours until you purchase. And even then you may only have the rights to use but still don't own the item.

As Apple is in control of the access I guess that they can call the shots. If you don't like the system you can provide feed back via the iTunes Drop down menu.

MJ

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Answer 5

May 28, 2009 3:40 PM in response to SEBrew

I finally got my cart to work again. I ended up filing a tech support request to have my cart reset, and it worked. Based on other posts, I did have songs stored in my cart that were marked as no longer available.

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Answer 6

Jun 2, 2009 6:12 AM in response to SEBrew

I just started having this problem today. I've read a bunch of threads on this and it seems like Apple is not willing to help its customers other than saying they'll empty the shopping cart, which is UNACCEPTABLE! This is not even the first time I've been frustrated with Apple's service and inability to help their customers properly. Not only that, but the price of songs are going up! I'm now going to use Amazon to purchase my music, and if you are as unsatisfied as I am, I urge you to do the same.

Thanks a lot, Apple!

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Answer 7

Jun 2, 2009 7:22 AM in response to kimberlymichelle

There are sure a lot of satisfied customers out there - how many tunes sold and all those apps. That must mean really bad service.

It isn't a perfect world. You are free to vote with your pocket book. To complain it is better to voice it though the iTunes drop down menu - Provide ...... - that way your complaint will get to Apple. Apple likely reads the posts here in the Forums but is just as likely not to respond. Sometimes you get lucky.

MJ

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Answer 8

heilmatt

Level 1

0 points

Jun 8, 2009 6:34 PM in response to Mike Johnson12

I am going to go ahead and say I was a satisfied customer up until about a week ago. I had my laptop stolen, Unfortunately it was a fairly new laptop which had all my songs loaded, some of my art/design work, and all of my iTunes. None of it was backed up. I was told basically never to get my stuff stolen again because it was too much of an inconvenience for their tech support to send all my downloads again.

Understandable. It probably is a pain in the *** to send 3000 files again.

Until I got to about 800 left and nothing is downloading anymore. I can sometimes get to my shopping cart, the rest of the time I just get error -4.

Lovely.

Not only that but every time iTunes loads up it decides to send that frickin error message a thousand times just to slap me in the face.

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Answer 9

ArmyMac

Level 1

13 points

Jun 12, 2009 8:39 PM in response to SEBrew

I too am having this "Unknown Error" 5002, and I do not and never have used the shopping cart feature. I've read in many posts to delete and re-load my Apps, and I've fixed my permissions, etc. But I still get this error when I try to download a free TV episode, or anything considered a purchase, free or not. Judging by the number of times this issue appears over the last three years, it would seem a pattern is emerging. Like when Apple updates Safari and Java crashes it until everything is copacetic again, when iTunes delivers some updates for iTunes, purchases go awry. I did clear up many ghost apps that I thought I had long deleted but were really lying in wait to return to my library, I have a feeling that this issue will resolve itself at Apple when the free episodes I want to download are no longer free.

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Answer 10

Jun 12, 2009 9:03 PM in response to ArmyMac

I just got off the phone with IPOD support - who can't help me because only the "store" can fix the 5002 error. However, they IPOD support people admitted that cart has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ERROR. It is a recurrent bug that can sometimes be fixed with a cart-empty. Truth-be-told - it's a bug they can not figure out, and never have fixed - it's transient and they have no idea what to do. So, sometimes the cart-empty works - sometimes changing your billing information works - sometimes waiting 24 hours works. It is just flat out broken.

I have NEVER used the cart, and I have encountered this 4 times in 3 months.

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Answer 11

Jun 21, 2009 9:45 PM in response to SEBrew

I been having the same problem for 3 days now is there anything that can fix this without deleting anything from my shopping cart. I can add music to my cart or access it. HELP!

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Answer 12

Jul 9, 2009 6:29 AM in response to SEBrew

Just thought I'd post a follow-up on this topic. With the recent update to iTunes 8.2, my shopping cart is all of a sudden available again. I'm glad I didn't elect to have Apple reset it by dumping all the contents. I was able to export my cart contents into a PDF and my "wish list" is now safe in my own hands. For those of you still having issues, don't give up. If you have a substantial collection of data you'd rather not lose, I suggest just waiting a bit longer. The data is not gone, so don't believe otherwise. Best of luck.

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