alt Hacker NewsI experienced something similar recently. There’s something going on with gift cards at Apple. It’s a bit fishy. As in they don’t want you to use it so they can report higher holiday season sales. Or they’re experiencing a huge uptick in scams involving the cards. I started wondering if the system they use is actually secure from a cryptographical pov.
My lessons were:
1) if you’re going to accrue gift cards for hardware purchases, use a separate Apple ID. Do not use that ID for anything else and especially not as family organizer.
2) save paper trails for all your gift cards. That’s your only way out of this.
3) be prepared to be treated like a scammer by Apple Support. They will even question where you got the devices you traded in at the store. Some support staff will basically say you stole them without any evidence.
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Addendum to 2: have a blog with thousands of readers which you can use to publicize your case, otherwise Apple won’t give a damn, like they did to Buttfield-Addison. He had the receipts, Apple didn’t care.
There are apparently large amounts of NEW gift card scams going around; Target has recently changed how they work and I've heard other reports.
Frankly, staying away from gift cards seems the best option unless it's blast radius can be limited (e.g., redeemed in person).