Locked out of Family Sharing for 364 days

Update: After 53 min on the phone with #AppleCare (France - senior level), this problem isn’t (yet) solved, but I leave with the impression I was heard + understood (#kudos AppleCare).

They've aggregated all the similar calls and reports, and are filing a report and opening a bug report ticket with regards to the missing warning dialog box.

They logged all the family members Apple IDs and hope to get a reset in the following days, and a bug fix in the next release.

They were very much aware of this issue, and agreed that an advanced warning and reset mechanism is urgently required.

I'll post any follow-up news I receive from Apple.

lauraflorezc_ob wrote:

Since the "My purchases" button was showing only me as family member (and only in the iPad), I thought I did something wrong so I deleted and re-invited her. Now she's blocked out both the Apple ID she uses for iCloud and the Apple ID she uses with iCloud.

I will have to include my Visa in her account to buy her the same application I was hoping to share. And of course, no shared Calendar...

Does she need the app right now?

Likely the app likely doesn't cost much (why do you think the price is $.99? ) but why not wait a few days and see if Apple gets this sorted?

The updated language makes sense. But most people here (and on the other boards) got locked out after trying to rejoin the same family multiple times -- this is different from switching to a different family group. Makes no sense to lock us out for joining/re-joining one "family" a few times. Especially when most of the rejoining occurred because family share was not working in the first place.

Based on my calls with Apple, they realize this. Hopefully they will have a fix soon...

I, too, ran into the problem of having my wife's Apple ID being locked for 364 days after signing her in and out trying to get the shared apps to show. Last night I went online and scheduled a support call from Apple for 10:15 this morning. My first surprise was when my phone rang exactly at 10:15. My next surprise was how helpful the support personnel were. The first lady i got hadn't received any prior calls about this problem but understood it when I explained it t her. In their training they were informed about the limitation of signing up for sharing only two times in a year. She said that she didn't have a so,union but immediately connected me to the next level of support. i got connected to Jesus who had already handled several of these same calls. He said that Apple us now well aware of this issue and the techs are working on a way that will allow the telephone support people to reset an individual's Apple ID while they are on the support call. He doesn't know how soon that solution will be available, but in the meantime they(phone support) can forward the individual issues to the techs who will reset the IDs on the cases submitted. He to,d me that this would tak 2-4 days depending on the volume of cases, but my wife's Apple ID account should be reset in a couple of days. He said she would receive an email when it was done and that he would also receive one and would personally call me to confirm it was working properly. He also gave me his direct phone number and extension so I could get in touch with him.

Although I've had Apple devices for several years this was my first experience with their support and I am impressed!

My wife and I are in the same dilemma and I'm posting here in hopes that Apple will see the many people having this problem and will come up with a solution. When I called this morning about being locked out of family sharing they had no idea what I what talking but at least they were very nice about it and did everything they could to find a solution. Apparently engineering is looking in to it. I think there really should have been a better warning about not being able to sign up for family sharing more than twice a year which I think is a pretty ridiculous rule to begin with. I'm hoping Apple will at least wipe everyone's slate clean if they don't want to remove that rule.

Yeah, I am on the same boat with my son. He has been locked for 364 days.

I did talk with two different people at Apple and one had no clue and the other called the supervisor. Randall. Nice guy but his final say was that Apple was working on a solution and he would hope the next iOS update would fix this issue.

So not much success.

This problem is very weird and I see no reason why calling Apple they could not reset it. I guess this is just a bug they did not expect. So no matter who do you talk there now it won't help.

I Posted earlier today about the great experience with Apple support in dealing with this issue and that Jesus, the support person said expect it to take 2-4 days but he would get my wife's Apple ID reset. To my surprise, Jesus just called me back and itold me it was already taken care of! I just finished setting up the sharing with my wife and everything is working perfectly, including the sharing of apps.

anyo e reading this thread most likely has already been locked out, but here is a helpful hint for once you get that fixed. If you set up sharing and some things don't appear to be shared (I.e. apps) try signing out of the Apple id account and signing back in. That should then solve the problem.

again, I was very impressed with the professionalism and care from support.

sjthone,

I totally understand your issue cause I have the same issue. Locking out the the account own is the dumpiest thing I have even seen from Apple since they got rid of iDisk which is now back as iCloud Drive. I called Apple and they have hundreds of users with this issue and are working on a solution.

Based on the last few posts I tried again. My family share worked. or more accurately, I was able to add my wife. That was half the battle though family share did not actually show our respective purchases on the others' phone . But then we each downloaded a free app (saw that tip on other boards) and we are up! So my recommendation: try again now. They seem to have fixed the issue.

I Had this same issue. I logged out of my itunes&app store account and logged back in and it fixed the issue. Apple may have put in a fix or some how logging out of your itunes&app store account resets the timer. Obviously I would not expect this to work but it worked for me.

This happened to me and my husband immediately after we upgraded. I started a family share with my account, not realizing he already had (that's 1), and then had to delete it so I could join his (and 2). Then, it didn't work. (I've since discovered in other forums that if you go to the app store and "purchase" a free app, it magically works.) Because it didn't work, my husband deleted his share and I left it (that's one for him). He then started a new one, and I couldn't join, and I'm kicked out for 364 days. We have yet to share any purchases or even have access to them through each other's accounts.

After much time on the phone with support, they then told me that we could put my account in "troubleshooting mode" and I would have to change my password to something they gave me "so that their engineers could look into it." I haven't heard back and that was this afternoon... I am now terrified because someone I don't know (or someones?) has access to my account, so I'm planning to change my password again because I don't like this.

In the meantime, if they do not fix this, I'm getting an Amazon phone ASAP. I don't have time to sit on hold all day just because I made one tiny mistake.

During a follow-up phone call with a very helpful Senior Advisor named Brian Houston today, I was told that my wife's account was in troubleshooting mode and that he expected to hear something in 24-48 hours and promised to call back. After reading that a few people here were having success and that maybe it was a sign that the engineers had found a fix, I decided to try adding my wife to our family again. It worked! At least the adding part. There was significant troubleshooting on my end to get all the features running, but I learned my lesson. I tried everything BUT removing her from the family group. What finally worked was signing her out of both her iTunes and iCloud accounts, hard resetting her devices, and then signing her back in to both. Viola! Kudos to Apple, especially the support team, for working through this issue.

I Could see that many people managed to re-include family members to the icloud family. I have one question. I believe the Ask to Buy question should be valid for all family members not just for 17 under. Do you agree?

I managed to add my daughter who was locked out. Apparently, the counters were reset for those accounts that have reached the limit.

Additionally, a new screen was presented before adding the member which enables you to confirm which Apple ID will be used by the family member to complete their purchases. That is what prompted me to remove my daughter as she was associated with an incorrect Apple ID.

Kudos Apple for fixing this issue as promptly as this!

Kudos to Apple Support and AppleCare for handling it professionally - very impressed 🙂