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Lion download charged me 20 time more = $599.80 - Help!!!

I purchsed OS X Lion from the app store and now paypal statement shows that itunes store charged me 20 times more, a total of $599.80.

Please help, what am I supposed to do. I already talked with paypal and they said they will look and I emailed apple customer service, no reply yet.

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MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 11:57 PM

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89 replies

Jul 22, 2011 1:31 PM in response to abhas

They charged me 4 times. Has it been refunded to you yet? If you understand what's going on between your bank account, Apple, and PayPal, then please elaborate a bit. No personal info, just help me out here because I have a similar issue.


I bought Lion from iTunes and I got charged 4 times. Since this has withdrawn through PayPal, it went from direct withdrawal from my bank account which takes a few days to actually go through. So no money has actually been taken from my bank account (yet). I called Apple and explained what was going on and while I was on hold, I refreshed my PayPal account page. When the page reloaded, it showed that I had been refunded. The money is still in bank account so I am going to wait it out a few days and see what happens as for now I am pretty confused about the entire situation.


Customer support was very helpful after I got connected, and explained a lot more about the situation. I also had a 2nd issue that I was having unrelated to this incident, and that got taken care of as well. I'm starting to become more and more loyal towards Apple.


But I still haven't even installed Lion yet...

Jul 22, 2011 3:15 PM in response to JustinIowa

looks like you will be refunded .... I am still talking to apple and paypal. Paypal has created a dispute ticket and told me that they will talk with apple. And actually the whole $599.8 had been deducted from my bank by paypal, but I talked with the bank and they just deleted the 19 transaction leaving just 1 chagre of 29.99.

But I was warned by the bank that, if paypal claims the money, I need to pay for it.

So right now I am on dispute with paypal, and still talking to apple about the whole deal.

Lets see what happens.

Jul 22, 2011 5:52 PM in response to abhas

I just got off the phone with PayPal. They said that even though Apple has refunded the balance and it shows that in my PayPal account, that they will not refund the money back to my bank account. It will wait until it withdraws the full amount from my bank balance, then it will be refunded to my PayPal balance. From there, I would be able to withdraw back to my bank account. This process is going to make me have overdraft fees and also miss a payment with my debt consolidator. Now the ball is in PayPal's court.


The other problem is, I had a balance of $47 in my PP acount already, so they refunded one complete Lion purchase and a partial one. They said they will still withdraw the entire $120 from my bank account and then they will refund it to my PayPal account. So I am going to lose about $47 bucks since they refunded it, then they are going to withdraw the full amount and only give back the rest of the partial refund. I think. Next week is going to suck when I get my bank statement, that's all I understand...





PS: I really hope you get yours straightened out a lot easier than it's been for me.

Jul 23, 2011 1:03 PM in response to abhas

Hi,

Same thing happened to me. I bought/downloaded/installed Lion and everything went smoothly. A few hours later I got a PayPal notice saying iTunes refunded the payment. Late that night, I get four more notices saying iTunes has charged my PayPal account $29.99 (4 each). I log into PayPal and change my password and dispute the four unauthorized charges. The charges are refunded within minutes. Then a final unauthorized charge shows up after that. PayPal's investigation division tells me all the charges were made by the iTunes store with the payment agreement I had set up and all originate from the same IP address. Apple just keeps saying the iTunes store only charged me once which is true, looking at my iTunes account. Apple insists it's a PayPal problem and PayPal insists it's an Apple problem. Apple pushes the issue off to Apple Care and the Corporate Office saying they can't look at their own PayPal account. They also tell me nobody else has had a similar issue. Why can't the iTunes customer service serve iTunes customers? I just hope it's not Apple's way of inflating their OS download count. I am glad that it was through PayPal though, because that bought enough time for me to scramble to save my bank account.

PayPal cancelled the payment agreement I set up with Apple because of the unauthorized charges and had me call my bank to warn them only one $29.99 charge from iTunes is valid. My bank confirmed that only one charge was pinged to my account and if the others showed up they would be removed and any overdraft penalties would be waived. I got lucky, but I took action within minutes of the PayPal emails. If I had been sleeping or away from my computer it would have been much more complicated.

Jul 23, 2011 2:27 PM in response to teknikks

you got lucky on this one... I responded quickly as well, purchased Lion during the day time, saw the email in the evening. I am still in dispute with paypal, and they already took $599.80 from my bank.

Apple itunes store is still denying that they have not charged me 20 times. So still talking with them, looks like its gonna take few more days to resolve the issue.


@JustinIowa - can you tell me what customer support number did you call to resolve your issue, because I have called a few numbers and on all of them, they ask to me to email the problem, no one wanted to talk about it.

Thanks.

Jul 23, 2011 5:26 PM in response to abhas

Ok, I spoke with a man named Geoff yesterday and he actually wanted me to ask you to call his extension because he would like to help the situation. While I was talking about my 4 charges, I mentioned how you had been charged 20 times and he is a great listener and problem solver. He helped me out anyway. Here is the phone number and extension, let me know how it goes! I also want to make sure you get taken care of.


1-877-388-0879 extension 40180. Please, everyone else, do not flood him with phone calls about everything else that's wrong with your mac or ipod or whatever problem you may have. There are plenty of other specialists that can assist you at the same phone number, just not that extension.

Jul 23, 2011 6:26 PM in response to teknikks

update: all the charges ended up in my bank account today and overdrafted it and incurred fees. now have to wait days for the refunds to take effect and more days to put them back in my bank account.


App Store agents have told me this is now a known issue and Apple is investigating the specific causes. So far they can only blame an overload in their automated payment system from all the Lion downloads...


app store agent email selection:

"Please know that your email was escalated to myself because I have been dealing with concerns such as yours and I hope that I will be able to explain to you, to the best of my abilities what has occurred.


As you can imagine, with the launch of the new OS X Lion, our system has experienced a higher than normal volume of traffic. This has caused some irregularities within the Mac App Store, including with our automated billing system. Please know that Apple is aware of the issue and is currently working towards a resolution.


While I wish that I could provide further details in this regard, please understand that Apple has a team of engineers dedicated to resolving the issue. Any developments in their investigation, along with any actions they might take, will not involve me directly. As such, I'm not able to provide any specific updates. I apologize for any inconvenience and hope to have your understanding in that regards."

Jul 23, 2011 7:33 PM in response to Akicita

I just got charged twice more making it a total of 6 times charged. It was already refunded back, but it's still going to withdraw from my bank account. From there it goes into PayPal as Apple has already refunded the payment (or so it says in PayPal) and so it still leaves me screwed over. I have to have that money in my account for a debt consolidator. It will take days to get the money from PayPal and then get it back into my bank account. If they keep taking random payments from me, without authorization I should add, I might be looking into being broke for the next week or two.


I don't understand that if I purchased Lion yesterday, called and got the issue "resolved", and then they take two more unauthorized payments today. I just don't get it. How can they screw up this bad?


@abhas: You may want to check your account again too, because this just happened a few hours ago so they may have taken even more payments from you as well.

That also goes for anyone else who has this issue as well-just check your accounts and make sure you have everything in order for safety.

Jul 23, 2011 8:31 PM in response to JustinIowa

Hi,

I'd suggest canceling the iTunes payment agreement from within your PayPal account until this all blows over. I have the same situation as you. I'm waiting for PayPal's "temporary hold" to be lifted on my refunds. My bank was overdrawn because of this as well. PayPal says if my bank has a negative balance and the unauthorized charges have all posted to my bank account, that means my bank is covering the money to be given to PayPal; but that PayPal has to wait for this to complete (even though all my PayPal statuses say complete) before I'll see the money in my PayPal balance. Once it's there, I can return it to the bank, but until then, there goes my weekend at least.

Jul 24, 2011 12:07 AM in response to abhas

Hi,

The charges ended up out of my bank account as well after all. Does your iTunes account show more than one charge for Lion? Mine has only ever showed one charge for Lion, even when there were multiple charges for it on PayPal. iTunes Store agents kept telling me it's not their problem because they only see one charge, but the App Store agent says it's definitely an issue with their automated payment system and they're trying to figure it out.

Email the App Store and they will reply with the same info. Then give that email to your bank and PayPal to help resolve everything.

Jul 24, 2011 12:00 PM in response to abhas

This is happening to me, too. I have been charged 5 (4 extra) times and it has come out of my bank account 5 times. Same stupid response from the iTunes Store Customer Support. I have disputed with PayPal, canceled the iTunes payment agreement and will be calling my bank.


This needs to stop. Now.

Lion download charged me 20 time more = $599.80 - Help!!!

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