Redundant Apple Music Charges (4.5 years)

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Redundant Apple Music Charges (4.5 years)

We recently realized that we have been paying for multiple/redundant Apple Music subscriptions. The main/organizer's account (under my name) is associated with our family account (Apple One Premier w/ 2 TB iCloud storage) which we've had as long as family sharing has been around with Apple. My wife erroneously signed up for her own Apple Music account (Aug-2021) and we have been paying for both the family Apple One account and my wife's personal Apple Music account redundantly for 4.5 years (we're now mid Feb-2026). The charge showed up as a generic Apple charge and I shrugged it off thinking it was just another podcast she had purchased. The total redundant charges amount to $614.50 in Apple Music charges (15 months of $10.82/mo + 38 months of $11.90/mo). Apple customer support is telling us that the most we can be reimbursed for is 2 months and it is IMPOSSIBLE (all caps because this was repeated to us several times) to receive any sort of reimbursement or credit for redundant charges going back further than two months in the past. We were told this was akin to "asking for someone who has died to be brought back to life" and that it is impossible (terrible analogy). My wife was told she has to delete her Apple Music app and since she signed up on our Apple Card (used to be Barclays ... now with Goldman Sachs) she will need to either "leave the family account" or sign up again for her own account and it will "automatically connect" and they still can't figure out why she doesn't have access to the family account. It seems like there should have been some safeguard here to prevent redundant charges. Any ideas here to get full refund or credit moving forward?

iPhone 17 Pro, iOS 26

Posted on Feb 18, 2026 10:57 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 18, 2026 12:44 PM in response to k_turley

The people here are customers like yourself. We don't have any special secret door into Apple's echelons.

To me it sounds like you have pushed it as far as it will go and you are not going to get more than two month's refund. From what I have heard others say on this forum, Apple is actually being pretty generous in doing even that much. I know we review our monthly credit card statements right down to determining the source of each charge (took me 15 minutes of research to find out a $1.50 charge from an obscure company in another town we had never visited was for a coffee from a vending machine at her work).

Apple does currently say in 'get an Apple Music Family subscription --> https://support.apple.com/HT205595

"If someone in the family group already has an individual or student subscription to Apple Music, renewal of that subscription is automatically canceled when they join the family group."

I don't know how long that has been in effect. I would say it should have worked but she may have done something to start her own subscription later. Yes, you can have to concurrent subscriptions because there are scenarios calling for it (e.g. somebody transferring to a different family and not wanting to lose their playlists in the 2 minutes they are not covered by a shared family subscription). She may have made a mistake, or Apple's system may have made it. It's unfortunate it took you so long to discover this. It's up to you if you want to continue to have this out with Apple but I would not be optimistic given that they have already reviewed this.

As for the two month limit, you would have to ask Apple accounting about that. To me it is like a store saying no refunds for items purchased more than 60 days ago.

Good luck.

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Redundant Apple Music Charges (4.5 years)

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