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Locked out of Family Sharing for 364 days

I setup Family Sharing following the directions exactly. It didn't work. So I stopped family sharing, followed the directions and still no success. So, I figured I just did something wrong during setup. So, I repeated the process. When I went to setup family sharing the 3rd time, I received the message that I can not join or create a family sharing account for 364 more days because I am limited to 2 times per year.


Now I can't use the 1 service I was excited about in iOS 8. Apple support says they have no idea how to help me.


Any suggestions?

iPhone 5s, iOS 8

Posted on Sep 17, 2014 4:30 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 17, 2014 7:40 PM

not only is it totally ridiculous, but why is there no warning about this? "Hey, I see you're about to unjoin family share, just so you know you will be blocked for an entire year because apple rocks if you do this again!"


How hard is that to have that as a warning?

149 replies

Sep 18, 2014 5:49 AM in response to sjthone

I was having the same issues setting up family sharing between my phone and my wife's phone, and tried exactly what everyone else seems to have tried only to be blindsided by a 364 day suspension. I just got off the phone with tech support and have reached the same disappointing endpoint: the initial support guy forwarded me to his supervisor, who did some more checking into the issue, and eventually came back on and said that there was nothing that could be done. I was assured that he would personally get back to me when something got figured out. Pretty disappointed that there wasn't a reset worked into the limit. Like others have said, this was one of the main features I was looking forward to using, and now I'm locked out of it.

Sep 18, 2014 6:11 AM in response to sjthone

Ran into the same issue. Added me as an Organizer and invited my wife to family sharing. No content was shared though. Restored the phone of my wife twice as well as removing and re-adding her to family sharing. After that - 364 days locked out. I am scared what is going to happen once she and I get our iPhone 6's by tomorrow. Will it eventually lock my account too then? Never was aware that this could happen. Haven't read the fine print either; guess I am too used to Apple's ease of use products and services. Hope they will still do something for people like us, but honestly cannot see it happening too soon. 😟

Sep 18, 2014 6:43 AM in response to fdsafasdfsdafdasfdafdfdasfdasfdsa

Then give feedback at www.apple.com/feedback. It's not going to take a year to fix it. Give some time for Apple to work on a solution. What some of you people fail to realize is that the initial public release of any software is still a beta, even if it's not officially called that. iOS 8 was tested extensively by Apple & developers, but there is no way that they can test on the same scale as a global release. There are always glitches that only get discovered after a public release of software. Even with 100,000 people testing software, once that gets into the hands of 100 times as many people, there's going to be new things that the testing team didn't find. It happens in all software. The only difference for an end user is whether or not they run into that particular issue. If it gets by the testing team, then it's obviously not a problem that affects a large percentage of people.


It slipped through the testing. It's been identified in the public release. And it's going to be addressed, just like the release day iOS 7 issues (and iOS 6, and iOS 5, etc.) were addressed.

Sep 18, 2014 6:46 AM in response to TJBUSMC1973

You cannot leave "feedback" because they have not updated their "feedback" site to include iOS8 nor familyshare yet. So, good luck submitting that feedback. No one is saying it's going to take them a year to fix it. There is nothing Apple is saying is wrong. They have BANNED OUR ACCOUNTS FOR A YEAR.


Please people, read the thread before making comments or suggestions.

Sep 18, 2014 6:47 AM in response to TJBUSMC1973

If you have this issue, stop posting here and call AppleCare.


The Feedback link is for things that "would be nice," like new features, but bugs are addressed most efficiently through AppleCare.


New Apple software, which iOS 8 definitely is, comes with 90 days of free AppleCare phone support.


The only way Apple will know multiple people are having an issue is from the complaints they get via AppleCare.

Locked out of Family Sharing for 364 days

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