iTunes+PayPal -> fake charges

I, for one, do not want you to delete your posts, and I do not want any victim of robbery or fraud to be silent about it.

What I do want (and you seem unable to remember) is accurate information which would help us understand where the fraud or glitch or error occurred. Specifically, who did you give your PayPal password to, and what exactly did you authorize PayPal to do with regard to iTunes.

And I think the posters above are also not asking you to delete your posts or to be silent. I think they are saying that you should not assert, based on your limited experiences, that using PP to pay at iTunes automatically leads to fraudulent charges.

Your experience can help other people avoid similar experiences, but only if we know what actually happened. And if you cannot remember what actually happened, then you are not justified in making the blanket assertion that iTunes + PayPal = fake charges. The problem might have been with just one of them, or might have happened because of a compromised password at iTunes, since only music was charged.

 

No, I'm not advocating you not report what happened. What I'm advocating is temperance. Your initial statement was:

When the fact of the matter is you don't *really* know what happened. And the tone of a few of your followups strongly suggest that anyone doing what you did will have problems. That's all I object to, and even at that, not that strongly. You were upset - understandably so.

• When: I first charged iTunes purchases via PayPal in 3/09, have been doing it weekly ever since.
• iTunes Version: Currently 10.0.1, would have been 8.1 in 3/09 and every version in between
• Operating System: Currently Mac OS X 10.6.4, would have been 10.5.6 in 3/09 and every version in between

 

I'm supporting Bob's efforts on reporting this. He gave every detail he could and stated every detail he could not fully recall. His intent is to head off possible problems others could have. While the style may not be ideal for all, the detailed reporting was.

 

I'm sorry, but I disagree. Bob could not remember any relevant detail of the transaction: He could not remember whether he was directed to a payPal site, or whether he gave his PayPal password to Apple. He could not remember if he authorized a single transaction or an open-ended relationship. And then, even though he had no idea of what he had actually done, he jumped to the conclusion that this was an Apple+PayPal issue, and asserted that anyone who pays for iTunes purchases through PayPal will have the same problem, even though several people have reported that they pay that way all the time and have had no issues.

There is a lesson to be learned from Bob's unfortunate experience: Whenever you pay electronically, look very carefully, read everything carefully, know what web site you are on, and know exactly what you are authorizing.

 

Disagree about what? Bob reporting at all? (not what you indicated in an earlier post), Bob being honest about what he did and did not know? (I sure understood and you did too). Bob coming to conclusions not everyone shares? (Everyone posting on this thread is sure smart enough to understand the limits of what can be known or not.)

I'm certainly not trying to be antagonistic at all, but Bob posted trying to help, not provoke.

 

Full marks for reporting the problem and warning people to watch out.

However, C- for finding out what went wrong, how to fix it, and most importantly how to keep it from happening again (other than just not using Paypal on iTunes).

I've had more conversations that started this way:
Client: Help! My computer just died!
Me: Could you be more specific?
Client: It won't do anything!
Me: What won't?
Client: I don't know!

"My computer died" has turned out to mean everything from "I can't access my favorite pr0n site!" (solution: ask the net admin to unblock it, explaining to her why you need to access it) to "I spilled a Pepsi on my laptop." (OK, admittedly *THAT* is a dead computer).

 

I disagree with your statement that Bob made a good report. I feel his report was lacking in substance. It was incomplete and his conclusions were not justified by the meager information.

 

Why should I hire someone who doesn't even know which web site he was on, or what he actually authorized, to try to recreate something that apparently happens about once every twenty-five million transactions?

My best guess: someone got hold of your iTunes password, and PayPal had nothing to do with it. (Since all they did was buy a few songs, not raid your PP account for cash.)

I repeat, it is good that you reported it. I just point out (for the third ? time now) that since you don't know what you actually did, you cannot draw conclusions from it. As for recreating it in order to find out, it is pretty clear that it happens so seldom that it would take a million users buying songs for a month, or one user buying songs for many thousands of lifetimes, to get it to happen again. And you still would not know for sure whether it was a compromised password or a glitch in the system, or someone at Apple trying to steal a few bucks from you.

So your conclusion (that iTunes + PayPal = fake charges) is unsupported conjecture.