Locked out of Family Sharing for 364 days

Well, if it WORKED, two attempts would be enough!

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 🙂

Yep it's now working for me also. Happy that it was fixed so quickly.

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.

Working for me also.

My wife has been able to join the family, but she does not have access to my music...

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?

Woke up this morning and was able to add my wife to Family Sharing. Seems that Apple fixed my wife's account After calling in my issue a couple of days ago.

Kudos to the AppleCare Team!!

Ditto here, was able to set it up.

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.

Is there still the same limit to the number of times I can turn family sharing on or off as an organizer?

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.