Unable to Join Apple Developer Program
The app is real, finished, tested, documented, and ready for submission.
All I needed was to join the Apple Developer Program.
[…]
When you want to publish an app on the App Store, the process is supposed to be simple: you sign in with your Apple ID, fill in your details, pay €99, and you’re in.
Except step 2 silently rejects me.
He contacted Apple Support:
And I was told, literally, that I cannot join, they will not tell me why, and there is nothing I can do.
[…]
After exhausting all normal support routes, I filed a formal GDPR request asking Apple for access to the data used in the automated decision that blocks my enrollment.
But he still didn’t get anything useful. Without sideloading, that means there’s no way to distribute the app.
Previously:
Update (2025-12-10): Ricardo J. Méndez:
So it’s not just my company and they have something borked in their flow, which on top of that is not set up to provide proper feedback.
I fucking hate when companies do shit like this 😒 They’ve done the same with one of my iOS apps long time ago.
Update (2025-12-12): Jeff Johnson:
I contacted Apple Developer Support on October 27 about my developer response stuck in a Pending state, unpublished in the App Store.
After back and forth with Apple, my case was supposedly “escalated” on November 6, but nothing has changed.
After my latest inquiry, my “point of contact” said yesterday that Apple Developer Support is closing my case and providing no further updates.
7 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
There must be a way to raise GDPR complaint that does not require a lawyer, probably through the country he lives in.
This sounds like a job for Paul Harvey (aka “There’s more to this story that we don’t know yet”).
I don’t like the reply even if he’s a member of SPECTRE, but there’s gotta be something he knows and hasn’t told us.
I can hardly bemoan other developers for trying to get their app in Apple's store, because for a lot of people there's no other game in town. But I don't want to work with any platform where my ability to distribute an app, much less make any money on it, can be taken away at any moment for no reason with basically no recourse.
"there’s gotta be something he knows and hasn’t told us."
No, there doesn't. Maybe there is something, but mistakes happen, and sometimes people are just victims.
I think it would be perfectly fine for Apple to deny people from their store as long as there was a viable option.
This is just devastating:
"major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I have no recourse."
