An Apple Care agent accidentally erased a large 20 year collection of music from My IPhone while trying to execute something else. They said it's gone forever. I asked for help and I got a heartfelt "too bad". Does anyone have an idea of how to address this with Apple?
iPhone 17, iOS 26
Not sure i follow. Erased from your device, sure. Certainly you have a device backup, no? Even then, the music can be downloaded again if purchased. Your other music can be synced again from your Mac or PC - the same way it was first added to your device.
Unless you subscribe to iTunes Match or Apple Music streaming, music does not sync to the cloud. Your music remains on your Mac and is synced to your devices. Your Time Machine backup will contain your music files and you can restore from there. Otherwise, assuming you digitized your music, you’ll need to digitize it again.
You can restore from your backup or sync the music back to your iPhone from your Mac or PC. That's about all that you can do.
Thanks for your response. My explanation was intentionally short to not have people dismiss an overly long post. I have copied my original letter to Apple. That might explain better.
In December I purchased a new iPad and as I own an iPhone and a Mac, I was able to download from the cloud to put it into service. After a week or so I noticed my music library had not transferred and I attempted to download it again. I then realized none of my music was synced to the cloud or my Mac laptop. My music was only on my iPhone. I wasn’t that concerned as I mostly use my phone to play music, but I wanted a backup in the event something happened to my phone. I called Apple Care to get help, but after an hour with an agent they were not able to figure it out. I made a few more calls to fix the problem, but none worked. Sometime that same week, I spoke to someone that was partially successful. She was able to transfer approximately 1.2 GB of the 6.4GB of music from my phone to my laptop. She wasn’t able to explain why only this small amount transferred, but said syncing my phone and laptop together would transfer the remaining 5+GB from the phone’s library to the laptop. She assumed that it would then transfer to the cloud. She ended the call saying that the process would take time and that I could call back if needed. Unfortunately, the sync worked backwards. Instead of my phone transferring it’s music to the laptop, the laptop transferred it’s smaller library to my phone and deleted all the music in excess of the 1.2GB on the Mac. I lost about 1200 tunes. An hour later, I spoke to a senior tech who said the music was gone forever. He explained what had happened, offered me his condolences and a small accessory gift for my troubles. Through no fault of my own, more than a decades worth of collected music was gone. I explained that the cost, both real and in time spent, far exceeded his offer and I asked if I could have access to Apple Music for a limited time to rebuild what was lost. He said he wasn’t authorized to do anything further and told me to contact you as my only recourse. So I ask, is there anything Apple is willing to do to help me with this. The situation was caused by an under-trained Apple employee and I hope you will stand behind your implicit offer to help clients that call into AppleCare. I can be reached at XXX-XXXXXXX .
That would be nice, but the music is GONE. This has been elevated to the most senior agent level and they said it's been totally erased.
Apple agent crashed and burned my phone data
