Can't use Apple Account Balance to complete purchase

Yes using partial balance or full balance to pay will result in the same issue (making full payment with credit card should be fine), it's a stupid Apple system problem that prevents using account balance for ordering. It's better to call Apple support because I was told once they reset your account you won't see the same problem happy again in the future when paying with account balance.

I'm gonna go to my local Apple Store later today to see if they can help at all. I spent over 3 hours yesterday talking to various customer support reps and that got me nowhere.

That’s what they said to me on the phone. Loading multiple gift cards and trying again and again leads to fraud alert and block.

Anyone I would talk to I would say let me speak to your supervisor! Then I finally reached somebody who said they would open a case for me. I was on the phone on two separate occasions for two hours.

You guys are just gonna have to wait it out. The same thing happened to me a few months ago, took about 2 weeks for the funds to 'clear' and be useable.

Ah, so you loaded a large amount this morning and tried to use it immediately?

I read similiar situations on Slickdeals where some peoples payment was blocked after loading a large amount in a short amount of time.

Ok, I get the exact same messages - I think we're in a similar situation. I will certainly keep you apprised of anything I discover and please do the same :)

What I suspect is that our accounts got flagged / blocked due to what Apple considers suspicious behavior by their fraud team (for whatever reason; for me, it was likely because I added a lot of gift cards at once this morning). And the customer service agents we speak with have no idea since it just shows as active to them. I am trying to get the issue escalated to a higher level to hopefully gain further insight.

I thought it was a account security/block thing as well.

That was before I spoke to a person in the iTunes department and another in Apple support.

At least according to both they said "trust me, everything is fine from what we can see. The balance is there, there is no block. I'm not sure why its not letting you go through and purchase"

I plan on doing a follow up call to the supervisor tomorrow so i'll let you know what she says.

In regards to Gift cards, my account had $450 originally, then I added $150 and then an additional $475 two days later after the $150. The $475 comprised of 8 50's and 1 75.

What doesn't make sense is, the system allowed me to actually purchase the phone. It's just when I got cheeky and cancelled the original order to do same day delivery did this whole nightmare start.

It is really interesting cuz when I talked to the sale department, she told me that she knew my situation and there were lots of people complaining about this these days. So I wonder if this is just a temporary system problem. And then she transferred me to customer service and then the Customer Service said they needed to move me to another department....

Still cant solve, but I expect this is going to be solved for everyone for a short time, I believe Apple will take some action

I am pretty sure this will not work. The payment method is only charged / deducted once the product goes into “preparing to ship”. I predict it will fail then.

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.

No they don’t charge immediately with apple balance

the thing is I was able to make a purchase of the screen protector and case in order 1 , with the phone itself in order 2 on the 11th. Even after the successful purchase , the money was not removed from my apple balance ..I had to chat with the support to confirm if this was normal and I was assured that it was.

then the day the order 1 was shipped , sept 16 … the cost of the items were finally deducted from my balance, which leaves the balance of the phone cost but later that same day I canceled the phone order and that was when this issue started

so they don’t billed apple account balance immediately

Panda might be on to something. We are thinking the entire apple balance is blocked, but maybe only portions of it is, like maybe the amount of cancellation was only a portion of the apple balance and if you try to repurchase something iwith the untouched portion, it goes through?

So I can make purchase for cheap stuff like AirTags or cases but I can’t make any purchase with expensive one. Guess that’s because the money that I used to buy the phone didn’t really return to my balance after I canceled the order…

I also was waiting for the 24 hours for Block removal. Then Last Friday morning i tried and my purchase worked. but they never emailed me that it was resolved. So im guessing they resolve it without emailing you that they resolved it.

Why did you do delivery and not pick up?

It seems as though many people are successful in placing an order with their balance for delivery but if it's for same day pick up, it's erroring out/payment failed.