purchasing pleco within china

[hektor2010]

got free pleco off of itunes and onto my ipod touch, went to the add ons page, clicked on complete bundle, typed in my itunes password and it says payment method was declided. tapped continue and eventually went to my account page where i put in all my correct card information, hit done and it came up again "payment method was declined. please enter another payment method." is it just impossible to get the bundle from within china? any advice here would be greatly appreciated!

sorry if this has been addressed numerous times elsewhere on the site.

 

[mikelove]

Widely-reported issue, yes, and not just confined to Pleco - it's rumored that Apple's working on a fix, but in the meantime a few things you can try are:

• Use an iTunes gift card; once you purchase one of those / activate it on your account iTunes should use it to fund in-app purchases as well as apps / music / etc
• Set up a VPN on your device to make it look like you're connecting from the US; that should hopefully get around the Apple bug.
• Contact iTunes support at http://www.apple.com/support/itunes, and be persistent - many people have reported success after a few follow-up emails.
• Call your bank to make sure the size of the purchase didn't set off some sort of a red flag on your credit card.

Aside from that there's not much we can do - we actually wrote Apple offering them the same 30% commission they get off of iTunes sales if they'd just let us process problem orders through our own website, but even under those conditions they weren't willing to budge. I did hear a rumor they may be working on a solution for initiating In-App purchases through iTunes on a desktop / through an external web-based store, though I don't really know if there's any truth to it.

 

[jiacheng]

Just got an iphone 4 and having the same issue. VPN isn't helping as I think they must have put a block on my account when I initially signed in from a Chinese IP. Not a great first experience with Apple. Maybe if you get that Android version out earlier, they will be more inclined to do something about it.

 

[mikelove]

Why not just sign up for another account? Maybe even one in the Chinese iTunes store this time around...

But I wouldn't look to Android for an improvement on this, ordering problems in Android Market dwarf anything in iTunes - at least for now most Android devices can run non-Market apps (and Google isn't threatening to kick you out of the Market if you distribute your software through another channel).

 

[jiacheng]

I tried setting my country as China at first, but I couldn't fill in the credit card address properly since all of them are US based. There is a pulldown where you have to select a province. I was told that there should be a way to have it deduct from your mobile phone balance, but I never saw that option. At any rate, I somehow purchased the anki app with my US based one, but when I tried to get Pleco, my account got blocked. I can't even download free apps now. I think updates will be a pain at this point if I have to get two accounts. I'm asking a friend to help me purchase some gift codes and send them to me as I think that might be a workaround for this kind of situation.

I just wish for anything that would make Apple less complacent about handling this after I just dropped almost 6k rmb for this thing. It's really ironic, a bunch of people on the street were looking at my unopened iphone box, then at me, then at my iphone box again. When I went into the computer market, everyone wanted to buy it from me. Apple, on the other, hand hardly knows I exist.

 

[mikelove]

Hopefully the gift cards will help, but have you written iTunes support yet? Try a few emails and it's very likely you'll eventually get them to un-block your account - it might take a few days or even longer, but most people report good success with that approach.

Electronically-delivered items are HUGE targets for credit card fraud - we've had a lot of firsthand experience with this in our own online store - so while in this case they're clearly going too far and need to treat their law-abiding China-based customers beter, I can't fault Apple for being militant about fraud protection in general; if they weren't, they'd be doing millions (or even tens of millions) of dollars a day in transactions on stolen credit cards from pirates too lazy to go on BitTorrent (or who want the very newest apps / music / etc that haven't shown up there yet).

 

[jiacheng]

I understand them being cautious, as hacked itunes accounts are openly sold on taobao. Just wish they would be a little more responsive. Paypal locked my account too, but I called them and verified some info and they removed it ASAP. Calling apple support on the other hand gets you nowhere. They said it was a policy that you couldn't use a US based account if you were in another country. Guess Apple doesn't take into account those of us who travel internationally.

 

[jiacheng]

It's finally working for me and I got Pleco up on my iphone 4 now! It is a beautiful thing. Can't wait till the OCR module is released. No notification from itunes, but my CC was approved when i submitted it through itunes using a proxy. I guess they must have unlocked my account, but I'm a bit afraid to access itunes now with no proxy as I'm fearful of trying to d/l anything from itunes now with no proxy for fear that it might lock me out again.

 

[mikelove]

It's finally working for me and I got Pleco up on my iphone 4 now! It is a beautiful thing. Can't wait till the OCR module is released.

Great! Very sorry for the hassle (and for the fact that OCR still isn't ready).

 

[gato]

I haven't experienced this problem with ordering on iTune with US credit in China. I have called my credit card company over the years to unblock other transactions, though. Some banks have a blanket block on China, I read somewhere.

 

[petrarch1603]

According to this website http://www.aeromental.net/2010/08/3...t-card-information-2/comment-page-2/#comments the problem is pretty widespread for many people overseas. I tried to purchase a module and now my itunes account is totally disabled. I can't even download free apps anymore. Anybody had this problem and found a way to fix it? Some of the people on that forum are being told that according to the user agreement that itunes apps can only be used in the country they are purchased in. This is so frustrating! :evil:

 

[mikelove]

Some of the people on that forum are being told that according to the user agreement that itunes apps can only be used in the country they are purchased in.

That sounds like typical customer support butt-covering; coming up with an excuse while they wait for the higher-ups / programmers / etc to actually fix the problem. There have been extensive and ongoing changes to iTunes' underpinnings the last few months (they just recently completely overhauled the system they use to make payments to developers) and this is probably one of a dozen major issues on their to-do list, but hopefully they'll be able to roll out a fix soon.

If you get that response when you write iTunes, though, try writing them again (not as a follow-up but as a brand new email) and hopefully the rep you get that time will handle the problem correctly by unblocking your account.