Cupertino (CA) – Apple’s MobileMe payment processing system is causing frustration among users as increasing number of people around the world report that they are being charged the full membership fee or  more for supposedly free trial accounts. The support team of the company appears to be overwhelmed by the problem and is delaying replies to angry emails from customers.

"Apple dropped the ball. Can you believe it?" wrote Tomislav Jakupec, a long-time Apple user and owner of a company that relies entirely on Macs to make and sell motion backgrounds at Videobacks.com.

"I held my credit card in hand on day one, ready to purchase a $149 MobileMe Family Pack when a friend from the UK phoned me up to say he has just been unexpectedly charged almost twice the annual fee for the supposedly free trial MobileMe account," he said. When several other friends confirmed the same issue, Jakupec decided to hold off on the purchase for now.

At this point, he does not even want to sign up for a trial account, fearing Apple may charge him for it. "Apple needs to get their act together and they need to do it ASAP," he said in a phone interview with TG Daily.

Unlike .Mac trial accounts, the new MobileMe service policy requires users to provide valid credit card details to create a free trial account. This strategy serves as an ID check to discourage spammers from using the service, it limits trial accounts per user and automatically charges the annual fee as soon as the trial period expires. The MobileMe terms of service state that "Apple may seek authorization of your credit card account prior to your first purchase to validate that you can charge the applicable fees to access the service." The authorization amount is typically $1, which may be credited towards the subscription fee.

But some trial accounts are authorized with a sum that equals or exceeds the advertised membership fee of $99 per year. Users from the UK appear to be affected the most by the issue, but we are receiving reports of similar issue from users around the world. The O2 support forum leads the debate, with users claiming to have been charged up to Ł120 for a trial account, well above the regular Ł59 MobileMe price in the UK.

To look a bit closer at the issue, we created our own trial account. We were able to successfully sign up for a MobileMe trial account using a VISA debit card issued in Europe. Our bank report revealed that Apple’s issue may be not limited to isolated cases. Apple did not charge the usual $1 authorization amount, but a whopping 99 Euro, which is above the official 79 Euro price point for MobileMe across Europe. To make the matter worse, authorization actually took real money from our bank balance. Had we chosen to use a credit card instead of a debit card, Apple's authorization would simply decrease our monthly spending limit by the authorized amount. Lesson learned: Avoid using a debit card for the trial account registration until Apple resolves the payment issue.

We then checked MobileMe web interface to confirm what we received in exchange for our 99 Euro – and that was a free trial account. Using the interface, we chose the Skip Trial option to opt for the full membership. The system once again asked billing information and we provided the same VISA card details. This time, however, our bank account balance was charged with 79 Euro. We basically ended up with an individual MobileMe membership that cost us 178 Euro (around $250 in total).

It was time to call Apple. A phone call later, all I knew was that the company "will look into issue." I then sent two emails to the support department on Friday and Saturday. Until today, the company has not replied.

It's unclear at the moment what is happening, because Apple chooses to remain silent and its support department is not replying to user emails. It will be interesting to see if Apple will acknowledge the issue and offer an apology to the affected users – and refund any overcharges.

We have to note however, that we did not receive an invoice for the excessive 99 Euro charge for the trial account, suggesting it may simply be an authorization that will disappear next month. Also, we were invoiced by Apple for our full membership that was charged correctly. But even if the 99 Euro charge is an authorization charge, we feel that this amount is outrageous.

If you would like to try or sign up for MobileMe, we recommend that you purchase a MobileMe box through an Apple retail or online store and use the activation code that is in the box to activate the full membership (that option is available during the trial account creation).

One user on the MacRumors forums is claiming that MobileMe accepted his gift card with no funds ($0) on it, using "Gift Card Recipient" as the name to start his trial. We were unable to confirm this claim.


MobileMe growing pains

The $99 a year MobileMe cloud service replaces aging .Mac service with a sleek web interface and desktop-class web applications that handle email, contacts, calendars, photos and online storage. MobileMe instantly pushes contacts, calendars, email and bookmarks from the cloud to authorized Macs, PCs and iPhones. You can read more about the service in this TG Daily article.

MobileMe saw the worst service launch in Apple's history. It was launched late and was affected by wide-spread outages and performance issues due to a heavy traffic load. Ongoing server issues forced the company to temporarily pull the MobileMe 1.0 Updater that enables MobileMe functionality in OS X. Apple later released the MobileMe 1.1 update available via the OS X Software Update mechanism, replacing the 1.0 version of the software.

Although the company has been struggling over the weekend to improve service availability and made noticeable progress in terms of service speed and performance, some users are still reporting problems with data syncing, webmail and contacts unavailability, sluggish web interface in Safari, disappearing user content and hiccups when pushing contacts to the iPhone.

Apple can do no wrong...

Jul 14, 2008 15:12     

Talk about a rocky launch of a product and service. I wonder if so many people will wait in line to get an apple project or just wait until everything "Just works".
Steve Jobs report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Unclear...

Jul 14, 2008 16:45     

This post isn't clear... at several times you mentioned that it was an actual charge of 99 Euro, then you mention it was just an authorization of 99 Euro. I too believe that 99 Euro is a stupid amount to authorize, but hey... the money isn't taken from your account. It won't charge you an overdraft fee because it's still there. I seggest you be more clear as to if it's an actual charge or if it's just an authorization. (Auths generally drop off the account in 3 - 5 business days)

JackCrackerMan report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Charge or authorization?

Jul 14, 2008 18:43     

In reply to JackCrackerMan: It's unclear at the moment if it was an actual charge or authorization of 99 Euro. What's clear is that it was 99 Euro - neither the equivalent of $99 MobilMe price point in the US nor 79 pounds that MobileMe goes for in the UK. It was clearly erroneous authorization/charge. I think Apple isn't the kind of company that should allow itself such sloppiness, especially if service terms explicitly state that the authorization should be around $1. The money has been taken immediately from my bank account since I was intentionally using debit card which withdraws the amount directly from your bank account - unlike credit card that deducts from your monthly credit card allowance that you pay for at the end of the month. Authorizations on debit cards directly takes real money from your bank account. At this point, however, I can't tell if this was actual charge or authorization and credit card issuer is still investigating the case. However, the fact that I was not invoiced for this huge "authorization" (while I did receive the invoice the second time Apple charged me for the actual subscription fee) leads me to conclude that this is authorization after all. It's Apple's bad that they authorized random sum instead of $1. My bad is that I used debit card but I did that intentionally for the purpose of writing the article ;) BTW, I'm not into overdraft because of this charge but I imagined a scenario where such unexpected charge pushes debit card user above his overdraft, incurring additional fee. Who would you blame for? I think Apple since any authorization on their part higher than the $1-$3 actually breaks their term of service. Hope this clears things up a bit. Anyway, thanks for posting your comment.

Christian Zibreg report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +5

In response to Christian...

Jul 15, 2008 00:31     

I just want to clarify something for you Christian, and other readers that may be sharing in your question. Lets say this transaction is just an authorization, be it a checking account that doesn't have the money available to cover the authorization. The account will show a negative balance however, due to the nature of a pending transaction it will not charge you an overdraft fee until it actually hits your account (is no longer pending). If it never posts, there will be no overdraft fee assessed. Now, lets say the transaction does post to your account. As you said, you used your Visa card to pay for the transaction. Simply contact your bank and we will dispute the transaction for you. A good thing about using your Visa card, it falls under Regulation E (That's for US accounts only - Sorry Euro's) which states that the bank needs to reverse any associated fee's, basically make your account look like it never happened. I just want to add my 2 cents to this whole Free Trial thing... I deal with free trials all damn day and I think its a safe assumption to say that if it says Free Trial and then asks for your credit/debit card # it was never free to begin with. I see small internet companies do this all day, the only thing different from them to Apple is the size of the company.

JackCrackerMan report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Apple's Woes

Jul 15, 2008 07:11     

Appple is getting sloppy, period. They might have the slickest interface / marketing stuff but their service and user support and mind you, their arrogance, sucks. They're more and more becoming Microsoft in every sense of the word.
Derrick Peterson report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Most complaints about Apple are silly....

Jul 15, 2008 09:18     

Most complaints about Apple are silly. This is one that should get someone fired. I think the real problem is that Apple tried to put too many things on the market at the same time. I think that Apple should try to pace themselves a bit better with next years iPhone launch.
Ralf The Dog report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

Most likely an authorization

Jul 15, 2008 10:09     

Knowing Apple [I've been an Apple customer for over 10 years now] I am confident you don't have to worry. They're probably the most ethical company I've been a customer of. This most likely is a pre-auth - used to validate your credit card is good etc. I keep seeing a lot of pre-auths when I buy stuff from the apple store and iTunes, but they're usually for 1 US Dollar. Why it is 100 Euros I don't know, but I can be pretty sure that this amount will never be settled because, well, it's a Free Trial. If I were you, I would check with my bank in a few days, and the amount would have been released. I'd be rather damn surprised [and jolted as an Apple loyal] if it happened otherwise.

DontWorry report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -2

In response to JackCrackerMan

Jul 15, 2008 10:30     

Thanks a bunch for your valuable input. Your claim is correct and confirmed by couple of banks that I talked to since this issue: my bank account will show a negative balance if a debit card authorization pushes the balance above the overdraft, but no overdraft fee will be charged until the pending transaction actually hits the account, meaning it is no longer pending. What's important to note, in my opinion, is that people should avoid using debit card to create trial MobileMe accounts until Apple sorts the payment issue. Best thing one can do is use a gift card or a credit card to avoid having your bank balance reduced should Apple happens to authorize your debit card by outrageous amount (as it happened in my case). But I don't agree Apple (or any other company) shouldn't call it a free trial because it asks for your cc #. I have no problem applying for a free trial and provide my cc#, under the assumption that I will not be charged a service fee before my free trial expires. The fact that Apple has not done its homework is surprising, no question about it. OK, they performed ID check by authorizing my debit card by $250 instead of $1. But i'm positive it's an issue with their payment system as I really doubt Apple would fool its customers into signing up for a free trial only to steal their money ;) They'll sort this out and refund affected users. On a final note, yes - it's inconvenient to us, debit card users, that now have a total of $250 less in our bank account, instead of $99.

Christian Zibreg report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0