Q: All of my family members are adults. How can we have a family share account and pay for our own items? We don't want t ... more
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Oct 20, 2014 8:21 AMby HyperNova Software,When you join family sharing, you are only sharing access to the apps, etc. that you purchase with the other people who have joined family sharing.
Each person's purchases remain with them; the other members are given access to them as if they had purchased them.
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Oct 20, 2014 9:33 AMby Capree2,Michael, thank you for your reply. Let me rephrase the question: My son-in-law recently purchased some music. It was billed to me, but remains in his account. We get that. What we want to know is how each member can pay for their own content. In other words, we don't want to share the cost, just the content. Does that family member have to remove themselves from the family share account, make their purchase, then re-add themselves in order to avoid the "head of household" having to pay for their purchase? There should be a way that every adult member can pay for their own purchases, but share the content with the rest of the family. Thank you for your time.
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Oct 20, 2014 9:44 AMby Phil0124,Actually, in Family Sharing all purchases are billed to the Family Organizer unless the family member initiating the Purchase has Gift Card or Store Credit balance in their accounts.
Not sure what happens when there is a Credit card assigned to a family member's account though.
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Dec 12, 2014 11:10 AMby ClydeMcK,This is wrong. While each member uses their own Apple ID to make the purchase, the bill goes to the organizer, and there appears to be no way for a member to choose whether to bill to the organizer or themselves.
IMHO, This lack of billing choice among adult members will severely limit widespread acceptance of Apple Family Sharing.
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Dec 12, 2014 11:14 AMby KiltedTim,ClydeMcK wrote:
This is wrong. While each member uses their own Apple ID to make the purchase, the bill goes to the organizer, and there appears to be no way for a member to choose whether to bill to the organizer or themselves.
IMHO, This lack of billing choice among adult members will severely limit widespread acceptance of Apple Family Sharing.
That's a completely inappropriate use of Family Sharing. That is NOT what it was intended for. The "owner" of the content, must control all of the devices it's distributed to.
What you're trying to do is find away around the fact that you can't share purchased apps.
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Dec 12, 2014 11:34 AMby ClydeMcK,KiltedTim wrote:
ClydeMcK wrote:
This is wrong. While each member uses their own Apple ID to make the purchase, the bill goes to the organizer, and there appears to be no way for a member to choose whether to bill to the organizer or themselves.
IMHO, This lack of billing choice among adult members will severely limit widespread acceptance of Apple Family Sharing.
That's a completely inappropriate use of Family Sharing. That is NOT what it was intended for. The "owner" of the content, must control all of the devices it's distributed to.
What you're trying to do is find away around the fact that you can't share purchased apps.
Not at all. It's merely a reflection of Apple's stereotype of what "family" means. Typically a family has two adults, but may have more - what about grandparents? What about children over 18? Our preside says children can stay on parent's health insurance to age 26, right? I'm divorced, but my ex-wife and my single children are ages 31 and 28, and we all still interact with each other intensively but tend to keep our spending separate.
Even Apple says that when a child makes a purchase, the child retains ownership of that purchase, not the organizer.
All I'm suggesting is that when making purchases, adult members of an Apple "family" be presented with the option to bill their own Apple ID or the organizer's.
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Dec 12, 2014 11:42 AMby KiltedTim,ClydeMcK wrote:
Not at all. It's merely a reflection of Apple's stereotype of what "family" means.
Excuse me? You're accusing Apple of stereotyping? You don't pay much attention to the news do you?
The simple fact is, that's not how it works and that's not how it was intended to work.
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Dec 12, 2014 12:03 PMby ClydeMcK,No problem. I just said the lack of offering one simple option during purchase ("bill to: _my Apple ID _<OrganizerName>") will limit its adoption. And the more I think about it, the more I suspect it will become a major headache for Apple Support, as more and more families realize the can of worms it opens up, when permanent ownership of a purchase is assigned to the purchaser (even a child), while billing of said purchase is paid by someone else. Lawyers and courts and class action suits, oh my!
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Feb 19, 2015 2:06 PMby CorinafromSBCUSD,I agree this is a problem. I was very excited about Family Sharing until I ran across this problem. A family member and I shared an iTunes account when we first started because we shared a computer. Now, she has her own computer and wants her own account, but she still wants access to the books, music, and apps she paid for in the shared account. But, if she creates a new account and switches to Family Share, one of us will have to pay for everything. That means gift cards are no good because they would all have to be loaded to the master account.
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Feb 19, 2015 2:30 PMby Phil0124,CorinafromSBCUSD wrote:
That means gift cards are no good because they would all have to be loaded to the master account.
That is wrong. Family Sharing expressly bills the Gift Card Balance or Store Credit assigned to the person performing the purchase first, before billing the Family Organizer.
Family purchases and payments - Apple Support
After you set up your family, any time a family member initiates a new purchase it will be billed directly to your account unless that family member has gift or store credit. First, their store credit will be used to pay the partial or total bill. The remainder will bill to the family organizer's card. As the family organizer, any receipts generated by the transaction will be sent to you. Learn more about how iTunes Store purchases are billed.
Which means you can totally add Gift cards to a member account and use that balance to pay for purchases.
