Many years ago we had an iMac at the house as the shared desktop computer. After a few years, it started to have the signs that the harddisk is going to fail, and also we were mostly moved away from Apple's ecosystem, so we decided to trade it in and replace it with something else that's not from Apple.

Since we don't have anything immediate to buy from Apple, we traded it in with Apple gift cards.

Later, my partner needed to trade in an old iPad for a new one, so we used that gift card with credit card for the trade in. For that trade in, you first pay the full price with gift card+credit card, then they refund you the trade-in value after the trade-in is finalized.

The trade-in value of the old iPad is less than the value we paid via credit card, so we would reasonably assume that they would refund the total trade-in value to our credit card. But nope. They actually calculated the original gift card vs. credit card split ratio, and refunded according to that ratio.

A simplified example is say we paid $200 via gift card plus $300 via credit card for an $500 iPad, with trade-in value of $200 for the old iPad. Instead of refunding $200 to our credit card (so it's eventually $200 via gift card and $100 via credit card), they refunded us $120 to credit card and gave us another $80 gift card. So we have to find ways to spend that gift card again, and it cannot involve any trade-in (otherwise we're not going to be able to use it fully).

Apple does not dispute they locked this man’s entire digital life without recourse because he suffered a fraud, and he only recovered because famous people intervened. You’d be insane to risk that.

You can reliably reconstruct a SSN that is missing the first digits, if you know where the person lived when they filed for it, but that's not the same thing.

Why Ebay built this idiotic weakness into their cards is beyond me.