iTunes Store Unavailable/Cannot Redeem iTunes Gift Cards.

I've seen many posts about others having a similar issue. I have also noticed that there has not been a single answer or fix to the problem, but I cannot seem to get to the iTunes store home page to redeem my gift cards. It says, "We could not complete your iTunes request. The iTunes store is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." I haven't used the store in months, but I got a lot of gift cards for Christmas and have gotten this error message ever since the 25th.
If such an abundance of customers are experiencing this same problem, why hasn't anything been done to resolve the issue? I'm about to ditch Apple altogether.