Locked out of Family Sharing for 364 days

Good to hear that this problem recognized by Apple. In my case right after upgrade of my and my wife's iPhones to ios8 I tried to organize family sharing on these 2 devices. It was working for iTunes, but not for App Store. I took out my wife's device from the family group and tried to rejoin again and surprisingly got this 1 year locking. In my case I didn't try to change family group, but reconnect it back. This shouldn't happen this way, cause it completely jeopardizes good idea.

I was locked out for 364 days after starting and then stopping family sharing twice during testing when iOS 8 was just released on September 17. I have not added any members to the family sharing list. The account was reset hours ago even though I have not called Apple due to many complaints by other Apple customers. Can an appointment to Apple Genius Bar handle this type of situation where they can actually see customers in person? Does the lockout still apply if family sharing is started and then stopped twice in the future? What is the current limit for starting and then stopping family sharing after the lockout fix? I was only testing the new feature of iOS 8 but do not have any family members to share with. Does merely starting and then stopping family sharing as an organizer still increment the limit counter?

Was contacted by Apple at 8:30pm Friday. They fixed the account and I was asked to try the invitation again. UNLOCKED and was able join the correct Sharing Account. WTG Support... It did take calling AppleCare and a couple of days. Also a GOOD Tier II agent that was willing to wrestle a bit with Engineering regarding it. Not sure if it helped but I did forward all of my emails to Tim Cooks email address that he put out that he check's every so many days. However it got done, 2 days after the issue with NEW software they fixed it. I'm please that they were able to fix it quickly however a bit disappointed that there are this many issues with this release. GOOD JOB for the care folks. Not so much for the Design and implementation folks that didn't give good thought to how this would affect the END USER.

The other day I was waiting for them to call me back, and when they hadn't by the next day, I logged on to support chat. They scheduled a call for me for the next day and said they'd resolve it then... but lo and behold, it fixed itself before my scheduled call! I had been "locked out for 364 days," but suddenly I was no longer locked and was able to accept my husband's invitation. I hope they are as speedy getting this resolved for others. If anyone else can't get sharing to work, once you've either started a share or joined one DO NOT leave it. If it's not working, download a new app from the app store and that will trigger it to start working. If you are locked out after having tried it twice like I was, they should unlock you, it just might take a couple of days; but I'm guessing they probably starting to do this faster since so many have complained.

My daughters were both locked out of family sharing on Friday. I spoke to tech support on Friday and was passed up the chain to another adviser who called my on Saturday morning. He the passed me up then chain again and I finally spoke to someone called Joey who told me he understood the problem and would pass it on to the iCloud engineers who would fix it on Monday. He called me back today (Monday) to tell me the issue had been fixed.

Both my daughters are back in my family .

Thanks Apple. It didn't quite "just work". But now it does. My faith is restored.

good luck everyone.

Ben

Add another voice to the family sharing lockout issue. Like many others, I played around with the feature after upgrading my household's iOS devices last week, just to see how it works.

Unfortunately, the support supervisor with whom I spoke earlier today told me flat out they couldn't reset the account, and that I just have to wait a year. Given that there was no warning that the account would be locked out, that's simply unacceptable, and, frankly, in my years of using Apple products and support, very uncharacteristic of Apple.

I understand the rationale behind locking out accounts, but I would hope with all the complaints they're getting, they'll give people a repreive.

ILife you've read through this thread it's obvious you got a bad support rep. Call ack ( you'll get a different rep) and try again. If you happen to get another one who can't help then insist on speaking to his/her supervisor. You were absolutely given bad information because they have reset many people's Aplle ID to fix this problem.

Thanks for all the responses.

Fortunately, this isn't a deal-breaker for us, so I'm going to wait a few days and see if the issue bubbles up and Apple gets their stuff together. If not, I'll hammer on them until they do. 🙂

Asking for a Tier I supervisor isn't the resolution step that I would advise. As a former apple employee, if you don't get the resolution required. Request Tier II assistance. Many Tier I agents are new and still learning their way around the Knowledge Bases and often will give answers that aren't correct. This isn't for lack for training but is from lack of experience. Especially during large scale roll out of NEW items. Many don't know what do say to issues as nothing has been written yet on it as it's evolving. In this case, Tier II has access to the Engineering teams assigned to resolve the issues. They were and are tracking issues and this one blew up big and fast. It became and issue when enough folks started responding here as well as on other social media platforms they were monitoring like Twitter. A method to address reset's was established Friday Evening around 8:30 central and that is when the Tier II agent who took OWNERSHIP (big word to get the agent to agree to) of my same issue called and did just that. Now do Tier I agents of their supervisors have a tool for UNLOCK yet. No Tier II may not either but Engineering does now and is working the issue on a case by case basis. One thing that was brought up is that some accounts that were having some issues with the sharing were Developer accounts. They were not locked out but content was missing. I was informed that Engineering was proceeding cautiously with the issue so no data would be lost on those accounts affected.

BTW if you don't like what an agent has told you ask for their response via email. And fire it off to Tim Cooks email address he has given out to the media several times. He did indicate he does read those emails. However I'd only do that if you didn't get assistance after talking to a Tier II Customer Service agent.

I ran into the same issue the night iOS 8 dropped. INCREDIBLY annoying as I've been waiting for years to find some way to more-or-less "merge" my Apple IDs so that I have one for everything. I got locked out of the one with all my purchases and opened a case with a Tier II agent and stopped into an Apple Store - no luck! Testing things out now as it sounds like some might've been reset. Will post an update if anything worked. +1 for making this topic more of a priority.

SUCCESS! Here's my resolution...

What you need:

1. Two iOS 8 (or higher) devices. In my case an iPhone 5S and 3rd Gen iPad

2. Two or more Apple IDs

Steps:

1. Logged in with my desired, main Apple ID on my 5S

2. Sent an invite to my second Apple ID (in my case, I had to separate out my Apple IDs into two contact records for the invite to work). This was the one that was locked out for 364 days.

3. Signed in with my second Apple ID on my second device, the iPad.

4. Followed the prompts to accept the invite. Success!

This was done to essentially "merge" two Apple IDs' purchases. I own both Apple IDs and am now able to access all the purchases from my second Apple ID (that has all my purchases from the last few years) with my main one that I want to start using. Note that the apps don't get added to my main Apple ID's purchase history. Family Sharing simply gives you "access" to download the apps.

Hope this helps some folks out!

Got around to revisiting the issue today, and discovered that they've reset my account. I'm not sure, but I suspect it might be because I responded to their request to evaluate my support experience with a clear explanation of my dissatisfaction with their response.

Worked here, too. I didn't have two devices song had to log in and out from the same device, but it worked. Thank you!

Edit: I realized I was still signed in to my old Apple ID on App Store. When I signed out of that one and re-signed in with the desired Apple ID, I was unable to view history again. I was, however, no longer locked from my Family Sharing account. I was one step farther. I ended up doing a full restore as a new phone to see if that would work. It did...

I am now having the same problem. I did 2 family sharing configuration because it never worked well, and i never had a warning telling me that I wouldn t be able to use family sharing anymore for 1 year....

Now I can't use something I was waiting for a long time with iOS 8.0, just because of this stupid restriction....

I called apple care twice but they said they could nt do anything for me and that the only solution was to wait one year...

How do you guys fixed that ?

Thank you

actually there are no laws pertaining to the use of cvv codes for child safety. I've had my identity stolen from an online stored credit card. I don't do that anymore. Instead I have a separate savings account linked to a debit card. no way to steal identity with this process. Apple is not without issues of stolen credit card numbers. I'm sure they can figure out another way. Microsoft has without issue. I think my daughters iphone will be going back to Verizon and we will get her a windows phone instead.