"There is a problem with a family member's previous purchase"

Turning of family sharing will only clear up the problem if it is your account that has the discrepancy. In my case, I turned off family sharing and was able to update my account but as soon as I add the family back - same problem.

Like willywill2 - mine was caused by a purchase my daughter made (had to have billing to tell me this but I guess I could have done this with all the kids). We could have fixed it by adding an iTunes gift card to her account but instead, we just removed her from the family share, updated the credit card info in her account then added her back.

Now everyone's accounts are working.

I had the same problem. My credit card was reissued by the bank due to possible identify theft of the other card. My wife then tried to make a purchase and it was declined. I'm the family organizer and tried everything I could think of to find out what the problem was. I read somewhere that you HAVE to go to iTunes on a computer and go into your info to see if you have an unpaid balance. I did this and nothing was showing.

After a bit, I thought, "even though my wife is on my apple family thing, maybe since she bought the declined item, I have to log into her iTunes. I did this, went to account info, purchase history, and sure enough, it had an outstanding balance. There was a button right there to update the payment info and upon clicking that, it had my new card info in there (which I'm assuming it grabbed from when I updated that on my account) but just needed to confirm the CVV on the back. After doing that, the balance was paid immediately, and within 10 seconds of that I hit "update all" on my phone.....and they started updating right away.

So there key here is that you have to log into iTunes using the specific account that made the purchase that didn't go through.

When you have an issue like this it's easy to set it up so that Apple calls you and when the issue is your account and not a warranteed Apple product there aren't any charges for the help.

Apple ID security issues -

Account security issues almost always require you to speak directly to an Apple representative to securely establish your identity as the account holder. You can set it up so that Apple calls you, either immediately or at a time convenient to you.

1. Go to http://www.apple.com/support/appleid/

2. Choose Contact Support and click Contact Us

3. Choose Other Apple ID Topics and choose the appropriate topic for your issue (Security questions or password)

4. Choose, No Thanks, Continue

5. Choose the best method for you for contacting Apple

This was happening to me. My credit card on file got hacked so I had to cancel it. In the interim, my wife purchased something on itunes and the payment didn't go through. We owed 99 cents. I tried updating the card on her account but it still would not update. Called Apple - sat on hold for 1/2 hr, got transferred twice but finally got a guy who told me the only 100% way to fix this is to buy an itunes gift card and redeem it on her account since she had the charge. WORKED!

I had the exact same problem. I cancelled a credit card that was used as my iTunes registered card. Even though I'm the family organizer, I was not able to update my credit card info to my new card: I received the annoying "Ask your family organizer to update their billing info" message. After spending 45 mins on the phone with Apple Support, they found the problem. There was a pending credit card charge that my wife had made on her phone that needed to be paid before any changes could be made to the account. The problem was that she was unable to provide credit card details as long as I was the family organizer and I was unable to provide credit card details as long as she had an outstanding balance.

The solution suggested by Apple was for my wife to leave family sharing temporarily, update the credit card info to pay the outstanding balance and then re-join the family. This worked. The downside is that there is an annual limit on how many times (2?) that you can join a family so this workaround is clearly not a sustainable solution. Apple needs to fix this bug in their payment system to (1) make the error message describe what is happening and (2) provide a way of updating credit card details without having to leave the family.

@jcybillI I had the same issue (of course). I was able to log into each of my family members iTunes account > click on "see all" under purchase history. I found one failed purchase. I was them able to re-type the CCV from my current credit card. After that all the updates and pending purchases worked like a charm.

having the same issue. In my case old credit card was lost and so cancelled. Trying to change it with a working one but not letting me. new one is a working credit card issued by Amex.

I had this problem.

There may be other solutions to this but what worked for me was to disable Family Sharing, update my payment info, then re-enable Family Sharing.

I couldn't personally find any other way to save my new card info and make the change actually "stick" without doing this.

I just had the same problem but after a bit of digging around discovered it was straightforward to fix. My card had been cancelled after being cloned and after I updated my account started receiving the same message.

It turned out that there was an outstanding balance on my daughter's account (via family sharing) and the fix is to log in to iTunes as that person and go the previous purchases in their account. You will be presented with a message that tells you how much is outstanding, and given the ability to pay it (using the three digit code on the card signature strip for authorisation). Once the balance has been cleared everyone's account springs back to life!

I have this same issue - the iPhone will not update apps, but I can't identify what the billing issue is. Apple iTunes billing support pages indicate that you should be able to see the billing issue, but I can't. From either the iTunes app or from the web, when logged in as the family member with the problem, it does not show any billing issues. The help page claims "If there's a problem with a previous purchase, you'll see a message when you sign in to the iTunes Store or try to make a purchase." but this was not my experience.

We corrected the payment card issues with the family organizer, but this one family member is still broken.

Mine is one I've had for years with my credit union but was recently re-issued. So I've updated twice with the new expiration date. Still got the same error message so I again updated to a debit card from my bank that I've also had for years. Same error message. Can updates apps. Can download even the "free" music track from iTunes....AND I believe it is keeping my wife from from restoring her iPad since I'm the family organizer.

Can anyone help?

Same. I followed the suggestion of logging in to my son's account and did see that there is an outstanding charge of .99 that came through after my credit card expired. I'm now stuck in a loop... I am unable to update my credit card (I'm the family organizer), I am unable to remove my son and add him back in as he's under 13, and when I'm logged in as him and it asks for the credit card security code, it won't accept the expired card's number. Stuck stuck stuck. Please help!

Exact same issue. I just updated my credit card info and am the family organizer. The error isnt helpful in determining what exactly needs to be resolved.

Yup, exact same here as well. Please post your answer if you find it.