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Apple products are declining

Apple products are declining and I do not know how long I will continue to weather this disappointment... I use my phone primarily for business (and I would not continue to have Apple products if I was not using them for business related functions). For as long as I can remember Apple products were among some of the best (they made it easy for someone to pick the phone up and use it for whatever they were doing). I manage from $25 million to $50 million dollars in assets a year so I clearly use my phone for business and I have used Apple products in the same way for the past 10+ years. All of a sudden I am getting threatened with "Shadow Bans" and "Constraints" on how I am allowed to use my device related to iMessaging (iMessaging is not intended for business related messaging and if you continue to use it for business messaging then the proper steps will be taken to either block me or take away my access to iMessaging). The problem is you are threatening me with "shadow bans" and removing my accesses but you are not offering me viable solutions or ways to prevent these things from happening (also it is very cheap that I was banned and was not even notified, "bait and switch" comes to mind, or you are just thinking we are not worth being notified, and these things tell me how much you actually value our patronage for the past 20+ years of using your products). And I get that you have people intentionally misusing your products, but you are clearly roping everyone together under the same category, and ironically you are not helping anyone in this situation (yourself/the person who might be reporting spam/etc., or your company). Sometimes customers get new phones, don't save your information, forget you are reaching out, or even can be referred so might not know you are reaching out; all of these could lead to someone either maliciously or not maliciously intending to report you as spam/etc. (and I say maliciously or not maliciously because sometimes they have intent to do you harm thru these reports and sometimes they do not, and of course apple doesn't offer any other actions then something negative like "report spam"; if apple offered other actions I wonder how customers would actually treat these situations). Also don't you think it would be more beneficial to your user if they knew who was reporting them as spam/etc.? Now I can either chose to contact this customer a different way (even ask them if there is a best way to contact them), or even choose to remove them from my clients all together (things like this would not only fix these situations but enhance your actual users experience of the apple products, god forbid a company took two seconds to work on a solution other then resorting straight to shadow bans that don't help tell the users what they are doing wrong). Now that I know this is a problem with not being allowed to use messaging for business related messages (which I have been for 10+ years, which is an insult that I am being randomly shadow banned now all of a sudden, rather than just being notified of these policies), your company does not offer viable solutions from switching messaging on or off, so it is left on 100% of the time (and honestly would be silly/pestering to turn it on and off every time I want to send a message to my customers since I don't know who has an iPhone and who doesn't), so the only option I have is to not use imessaging which now limits my perks of having an iPhone or Apple products. Personally I am going to switch to Android because it isn't worth my time or frustration of all of the limitations Apple puts on their devices, and they are not even the best phone for business anymore so why would I limit myself and my work by continuing to use and purchase your products. Personally I know you don't care about my opinion, and it will take year-over-year lost revenue to finally cave or realize changes need to be made.

8 replies

Not even sure the point of your post as you have already decided to switch to Android and that is perfectly fine, and makes no difference to any of us here. You can also see posts on the Android forum that they are fed up with their devices and switching to iPhone. The posts just appear to be rants.


iMessage is a personal service not intended for business/commercial use. You can certainly have your account restricted when others have reported your communications as Spam and it is their right to do so as it violates the Terms of Use for using the Apple Account service. You would need to use a business messaging app if that is what you are intending to do, and comply with their Terms of Use.

This is a user-to-user forum. Apple may or may not read postings here.


You can provide your feedback to Apple.


Using iMessage commercially can get the account access suspended, yes.


If Apple products don’t meet your needs, use whatever else that does. If that’s Android, by all means use it.


Commercial messaging options beyond Messages for Business include Twilio, among others. And Twilio integrates with Apple Messges for Business. Probably others also integrate, too.

If you're using your iPhone and Apple Account for business then get a business account.


The reason that Apple doesn't release details of who reported messages as spam is to prevent them being hassled, threatened or menaced by angry spammers.


Year-over-year of lost revenue? If you were spending the sort of money on Apple products and services that they'd notice in their £400 billion annual turnover then I assure you that you'd have hands-on, personal support on speed-dial.


TLDR: you're using a personal account for business, annoying people with messages that they consider to be spam and complaining when Apple protects them from you.

FYI, you’re only addressing fellow users here:


Here’s an alternative you might investigate for your business:


Apple at Work - Apple


Zurarczurx wrote:
TLDR: you're using a personal account for business, annoying people with messages that they consider to be spam and complaining when Apple protects them from you.

Thank you for the summary. I only made it about halfway through.

Paragraphs are a wonderful invention.

Is there a question for the community buried somewhere in this rant.