Credit Card is Declined

Just buy a gift card. It's a pain in the ***, but it works for the time being.

@KEMH214 -- thanks for the suggestion.
This is certainly a partial workaround, but I don't want to use it to let Apple off the hook as it doesn't work on my AppleTV, doesn't allow me to access two pre-ordered albums that I am locked from downloading and doesn't allow me to download a growing number of App updates...

r.e. buying a gift card ... there only appear to be two ways to do that, the first is to buy a physical card and have it mailed to whichever country you're in which isn't terribly practical. The second is to buy yourself an e-mail card but that appears to only be doable inside of iTMS which just gets back to the problem of not being able to buy anything once your account is locked.

Even if you get somebody else to buy you an e-mail gift card does it work for locked accounts?

On the plus side my account seems to have been unlocked a few hours ago although I haven't gotten any e-mail from Apple about it. While I was buying stuff this morning I started getting error messages about not being able to do that in a sandbox account but they went away after a few minutes and seems OK again. Hopefully it's OK permanently but a number of people seemed to get their accounts re-locked.

I tried buying a gift card and even creating a new account in the UK (where I'm currently studying) with it and I was unable to do so. So I'm still lock out and now have a 15 pound gift card that is completely useless to me.

After the better part of 3 weeks I finally got everything back up. I complained every few days. The last one was not so nice.....but it seemed to do the trick. I told the rep helping me that I was going to go Android if it wasn't fixed now. The next day he sent me an email saying my account had been reset and to wait 24 hrs before tring to buy an app. Sure enough, all was well after 24 hrs. Moral of the story is to be pushy and dont be afraid to use a few capitalized sentences 🙂.

This issue is absolutely ridiculous. We purchase 10 iPads for our salespeople and the devices have been nothing but trouble since then. Two weeks later, they are all still sitting in their boxes on my desk because of bugs on Apple's side.

We are located in Japan, using the Japanese iTunes store, our credit card is issued from a Japanese bank, and there is NO REASONABLE WAY to contact Apple about this. Waiting 3 weeks for the issue to be resolved over email is an absolute joke! I have contacted Apple multiple times via email, and all they do is send me a form letter about how to set up Apple IDs (??? has nothing to do with my problem! our apple IDs are already set up!). Completely unprofessional. I feel like I am dealing with a couple of guys in a garage startup with no telephone rather than an international corporation.

Do you think I can get a US number am not having any luck?

There is no telephone support for iTunes issues, you can only get email support.

Have the rest of you been getting the run-around? I've been told that the problem will be fixed if I change my password. When that didn't work, I got a reply a couple of days later telling me to delete the cc from my account and reenter the info. When that didn't work, I was told to do this. Then that. This this again. Then do that. Nothing works and I'm tired of having to wait a good chunk of time between correspondences just so that I can jump through senseless hoops. I have asked them to reset my account because that's what everyone here seems to think will solve the problem, but they completely ignore that request and do not even acknowledge that I have requested it. I've had it. I've decided to switch over to another company for music downloads, but it would be nice if I could update and download apps!

My issue has now been resolved by iTunes support.
They will not tell me what they did, but I think it was a total account reset. They then told me to not enter any credit card information, but to download a free item from the store from each of my devices so they became 'trusted' and only then to enter my credit card info.
Note, however, that I was not getting the credit card declined error, I was getting an unable to verify your account error.
I think success is highly dependent upon what support 'specialist' you get. I was being given the run around until someone else picked up the case and escalated it.
I think, unfortunately, the best approach is to keep trying, including submitting multiple support requests, until the 'right' person responds.

I think you are correct. My experience with phone techs or any tech for that matter, is that when I get someone who knows what they are doing and how to assist, then I'm indeed a lucky fellow. But, when I get a tech who is largely inexperienced, at least with my problem, they "punt" until perhaps they might just luck onto a solution, however temporary, or fail miserably in assisting me, making a bad situation even worse.

I had the same experience when I first had the credit card denied problem. Eventually, I was turned over to someone who apparently knew exactly how to reset my account, did so, and it's been no problem since. Took two weeks, but constant pushing from my end finally got me to an informed tech. I think the original tech just got tired of my constant badgering! LOL I do, btw, make a point of sending a review of my experience along with a log of the conversation -- good or bad. Even if they don't survey me for one.

Same thing here. I'm in USA and just bought something not too long ago. All of a sudden (not sure if there was an update in between or what), everything was declined. I even redeemed and Itunes gift card and they won't let me download anything even though it shows $15.00 credit.
It has now been a week since being contact by Itunes support and I haven't heard a thing. You think this would be a big enough problem that they would inform everyone of this!

@STEVSH - If your communication with support is through email -- which I assume it is -- I recommend that you don't wait for them to send an update to you, send a follow up to them every day asking for a status report. This is what I did.

I have the same problem. I hope there is not a security problem. My info keeps getting screwed up. My account with paypal keeps going to a different address. This is aggravating. I can't update or download anything, even free updates. Sent Itunes an inquiry as well.

I requested an update one day ago, and have yet to hear from them still. Still waiting.......