For 26 days now I have been trying to register and pay for a new developer account in Thailand. The experience has been a complete and total disaster and failure at every step of the way.
I am at my wit's end and decided to register in the forums and share my experience with the hope of attracting a resolution.
This has materially hurt my business financially and competitively. I have been paying developers for almost 4 weeks now who have nothing to do because of this problem.
I have sent multiple emails, voice emails, made phone calls, international phone calls, all at our expense of time and money.
In contrast the Google Play account was opened and paid for within 24hrs on the same day.
Problems I have experienced with Apple:
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DUNS number didn't match business name despite Apple themselves sending me our DUNS number after its own lookup of our business name. Application rejected.
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Apple Developer App is unable to register new account from my iphone following the suggestion of Apple to use the app to register. Multiple error messages. Unable to register.
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After attempting again from a desktop to register, we entered payment information. Application unable to accept US Based credit cards, paypal, Thai prompt pay, bank transfer or Thai checking account. We paid with Thai debit card - card was successfully charged and I assumed account was open.
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After this payment, we were still not getting access in the account portal to add other admins and devs. So I contacted Apple and was told to reregister a new account. This was not an option as we already paid.
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After 2 weeks, our payment was reverted and refunded with no explanation whatsoever. Every back and forth email with Apple has taken 4 days or no response at all. There is no direct phone support with the payment department. Application was closed.
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After starting a new application from scratch, I called the Apple developer support center in Singapore. The issue was escalated and I was able to speak with a native english speaker. She informed me it would be 2-3 days for a response/resolution. It has been another week.
As of now, it has been 26 days of this. Frustrated doesn't appropriately begin to describe how me and my team are feeling.
This entire experience has been nothing short of a trainwreck. As of now we still do not have a developer account open and devs are still sitting doing nothing. I have no choice but to persist and endure with Apple because they have a monopoly on the App Store.
This entire problem could be solved with a single supervising team member with phone access to the payments department and access to the entire account to fix this problem immediately.
I am furious.
