The iTunes Store IS OUT TO GET YOU.

Question

I just finished watching the 2nd season of Lost, and I thought to myself, "Gee, it sure would be nice to catch the first few episodes of the current season, so that I could watch along with the rest of the new episodes."
And of course, I use iTunes (although I've never used the store before), so I knew I had access at my fingertips. I set up a new account, eager to get to the episodes, and downloaded episode number one. The file was going to take a couple of minutes, so I checked my email.
Suddenly, the iTunes window disappeared from behind my email program. "What the...?"
Check the dock for confirmation -- yep. It's crashed. Gone. Not even the courtesy of an error message. I've been abandoned. I restart iTunes and sure enough, my Lost episode is gone. Check my downloads -- iTunes SAYS it downloaded just fine. And that I'll be charged accordingly. I scour my hard drive for anything resembling a video file that might be recoverable. Nada. Zip. Nothing.
Now, 1.99... not the end of the world. I'm more upset about the episode -- and since I'm not allowed to download it again unless I pay for it once more -- well. I'm a firm believer in the "Fool me once..." philosophy. So I shoot off a nasty email to iTunes store support, and I begin rooting around for the place where I'm allowed to cancel my account -- no point in leaving my credit card information out there in cyberspace if there's no use in it, right?
Yeah. That was a long time ago. Still haven't found it. Either Apple has so effectively buried the iTunes store account cancellation website/hotline #/post address/CB handle that I cannot locate the tiniest shred of evidence that it even exists -- or it just doesn't exist.
Is this legal? If I have an account with a store and they have my personal information on file, including my credit card number, aren't I allowed to cancel that account and force them to remove my information from their records? I understand of course that they can keep the info until they verify the payment on services and products I've already purchased (although 'purchase' usually implies 'receipt of goods'). But I have no long-term commitment with Apple. All they are doing is putting me at risk of financial loss through identity theft. After all, my credit card number is longer and harder to guess than, say, my iTunes store password.
This is all very scary to me. I just want to go to Blockbuster and forget that the iTunes store even exists.
powerbook 17   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

Answer 1

Max,
I'm really sorry to hear that you've had a bad experience with iTunes. I've been using iTunes and Mac OS since 2003 and have had great luck. I mention this for a reason, though there are users that have been around longer than I, I've used os 10.2 - 10.4. That being said, I noticed that you're using 10.3.9 and I'm wondering why you haven't upgraded. You may have experienced an error the way you described because of the operation system you are using. I know that sounds far fetched, but actually, it's not. 10.3.8 was good but it had airport stability issues. Soon after it was patched with 10.3.9 and the whole system because solid all the way through. Now Apple builds software to support x number of years of hardware and creates software to function on x number of system versions; however, new versions of iTunes (for example) are going to take advantage or newer OS releases. I've been brave and kept current versions of iLife suites with current versions of OS X and everything has been solid as a rock, I promise. I would have presumed that it was related to Windows XP, which most extreme problems are, but you're on a PowerBook just as I am.
All of that aside, imagine the sheer volume of users on iTunes at any given point. Take all the Mac users in the US and then Expand that to Windows users too. Then expand that to several countries with both operating systems. (Want proof, look at everyone walking around with white earbuds.) I could imagine how it's hard to get a response so be a squeeky wheel because sooner or later you'll get some grease. I'm not trying to tell you, "tough," or anything of the nature. I feel bad that you are uncomfortable with iTunes. I assure you it's been great and I bet if you upgrade to 10.5 when it's released, you'll find less quarks. By the way, I've experienced less of "This app has unexpectedly quit" while using 10.4 that when using 10.3.
Best of luck to you.
Dan