Can't use Apple Account Balance to complete purchase

I am skeptical of anything that a level one customer support agent says. A good number of the ones I spoke to don't even understand what an Apple account balance is. I even had multiple agents tell me that the Apple account balance cannot be used to purchase products in the Apple Store (even though it's been over 2 years since they merged Apple Store & iTunes gift cards into one).

And with regard to your theory on the CC being the issue, that's not the case for me. I have a CC that's been linked to my account for years and charged many times (even in the past few weeks) without issues. Even knowing that, I tried using another CC and same error. It's certainly a technical problem on Apple's side when trying to "authorize" / deduct funds from our account balances. The only way I suspect this ever gets resolved is if we get enough traction to escalate past the customer support agents (level 1 and 2) and to a technical person in the right department (I am uncertain which dept that is) that actually cares to solve this problem.

Solved by first buying an iphone with full credit card charging, then waiting for 10min, then buying a second one with account balance + $1.8 of credit card charge.

Called many times but nobody can help me (1) change payment method of an existing order (2) unredeem account balance into gift cards (3) place an order for me.

Hope this can work for more people

I called customer service and spoke with an advisor that was super helpful. Apple was able to look into my user account and fix the error so I could complete my purchase using my Apple account balance.

Ask for post sales purchase block removal

I talked with a guy who got the same problem. He told me that the balance can actually be used in a physical Store, so I plan to go to a store again on the weekend to see if it can go through.

Also did you have any cancelled orders which had the payment of this apple id balance? I am wondering there would be some hold on the balance for cancelled orders

i just got them to submit a `request to unblock` for my two apple ids that i get this error

i literally just asked them to. `there seems to be a block on my apple balance, can you fix that? '

had same issue with apple balance.

Resolved by:

Use a different credit card. Yes i understand your whole balance may cover the order but add another credit card to your account and then run your checkout.

The question is whether your situation is similiar to what would happened with @andre:

"I am still unable to use my Apple account balance when ordering an item in stock at my local store (since it need to charge the balance immediately) but I can place an order for delivery a few weeks out since it doesn’t get payment authorization right away. I suspect it fails once it does. "

This sounds like what of the situations that happened with me. I tried to place an order for a case (a test order) for in store pick up but for some reason it declined and forced me into delivery which went through. But like @andre, I'm sure there was a high chance that that delivery order would've been cancelled when it was time to actually pull the money.

Mine is still failing on any product that is in stock and can be picked up in store today. However, I can purchase anything that will be shipped sometime in the future, since the authorization only happens when the order moves into the "preparing to ship" state.

@skiwalker -- was the order for an item to be shipped or in-stock at local store?

I experienced the same issue today. Ended up paying with debit card and then asked apple cs to change the payment method to apple account balance. No charge has been made on my apple balance and the payment method has changed to "apple account balance". The waiting time for my order is 4 weeks so I guess I will find out in October.

Nope! Tell them that this is the workaround suggested online. Like placing an order using credit card first and changing it to apple balance. Tell them to place an order using credit card on your file and later it can be changed to apple pay balance. You tell them this prior placing an order with credit card. So once placed, they would change it to apple pay balance

for me, costumer service did not help. Then, I was able to put my order by paying $1 using credit card and the rest using ID balance. Hope this helps you. Apple should solve this issue, at less give some hints what is going wrong..