Tag: Cards

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Apple’s Cards App NEEDS to Group Purchases

So as I mentioned a couple days ago, I’ve been playing with the Apple’s Cards App on my iPhone 4S and have been mostly satisfied with the experience so far, but I hit into a couple hitches today.

The first thing I noticed was the server was overloaded this afternoon. Half the time, I would get an alert telling me there was a problem connecting to the server and to try again later. But if I tap Buy again, it usually went through.

Then I got to a point where my card was being declined. I logged into my credit card’s website and looked at the pending transactions:

Apple Cards App Charges

No, I didn’t create that many cards. Half of them are $1 authorizations. Of the remaining half, about 1/3 are duplicates from server failures, which I’m hoping I won’t be charged as these duplicate orders don’t show up under my account. The cards are $2.99 each + tax. If you want to deliver them internationally, it’s $4.99 + tax.

So I expected a call from my credit card fraud/security team, but that call never came. I eventually called customer support myself assuming that the flood of Apple transactions was the cause of my card being declined. After speaking with someone on the security team, it turns out there’s a limit of 25 transactions per day before my card starts rejecting additional charges. And each of those $1 authorizations count toward that limit.

Here’s my suggestion to Apple: Please group multiple card orders like you group iTunes purchases and make one charge at the end of the day. Given it’s the holiday season, the perfect time for someone to use your Cards app, sending out 13+ cards should not be uncommon and that assume I won’t be using the credit card anywhere else that day. Plus with your server issues, some charges are showing up twice. If needed, I can even create all the cards I want beforehand and then submit them all to be charged together, but that’s currently not an option via your app. This would not only avoid having so many transactions which would easily trigger fraud alerts, but you wouldn’t have to make so many separate authorization checks. Plus it’s better for you in the long run too, since you’ll be saving on per transaction credit card fees.

I’ve already submitted the same feedback at Apple – Cards – Feedback. Hopefully we’ll see this fixed soon before the holidays are over.

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Apple Cards App

Apple Cards AppGiven it’s the holiday season, I got a chance to play with Apple’s Card app. Despite the greatness of iPhone 4S’ camera, it still wasn’t as great as my Canon 60D SLR, so I took the picture I wanted with my Canon and imported it into iPhoto. Like magic, it was on my iPhone Photo Stream moments later.

The app is still rather primitive. The selection of templates to choose from was decent, but still felt lacking. I didn’t really find a particular one that stood out to me, but I guess the card is really about the photo you’ll be choosing.

After you select the photo you want, it allows you to zoom and move around. I guess if you wanted to edit the photo, you can use iPhone’s new photo editing software, which is supposedly good, but I haven’t had a chance to mess around with it yet.

The text was where I found the app lacking. There was no way to choose a different font or change the font size. When I wanted something left aligned, there wasn’t an option for that. Given a box, the font, size, and alignment were unchangeable. It also wasn’t immediately obvious that some text can be changed, but I soon found out that any text can be changed.

You can enter a name/address to mail the card to, but it was a lot easier to pick the person out from my address book.

Halfway through making a card, but need to stop temporarily? No worries. The app allows you to save the card and come back to it later.

I was hoping they would allow me to use my iTunes credit to purchase these cards, but unfortunately it’s hooked up with the Apple store and not the iTunes store. After logging in, it showed me my credit card on file and ask me to enter the card security code.

Then ZOOOOOOM, off my greeting card goes. The total cost was $2.99 + tax and I got my receipt in my email shortly.

Update: They also need to fix their Online Order Status for Cards. I’m not even talking about the inability to cancel the order as I can see how once your order is submitted, it could be processed for printing immediately. What I’m talking about is there’s no indication which order is which. You can click on order details or print invoice, but the only info you’ll see is your own. The email they send you does include who it’s for, but even on that email, there’s no confirmation of the mailing address. You can open the Cards app and confirm the mailing address there, but there’s no order # in the app so you can easily look up the order status.