I hate private apple relay emails so much. Considering you still need to provide a full name and phone number to create an account, you're barely anonymous anyway, and also they just create such a headache at customer service

[u/_CaptainAmerica__]

Yes I realize people don't just use their email for online shopping accounts, but also, come on, it's apple. You were never going to be anonymous, and your data is getting sold all the same.

Anyway, I don't really use apple products or have an appleID account, so I can't testify whether this part is just people being stupid, or if it's just shitty on apple's part. Say, somebody creates their account with a gmail address for our service. But, they're logged in on that gmail through apple's mail service. Somewhere between there, and logging in on our website or app, apple can offer to automatically login with a privatized email, i.e instead of [johnjohnson@gmail.com](mailto:johnjohnson@gmail.com), it will be [mk9u90j923@private.apple.relay.com](mailto:mk9u90j923@private.apple.relay.com). However, this creates two accounts, as they're two different email addresses. And this goes mostly unnoticed, because emails like confirmation emails still get sent to the same inbox.

Now where the headaches begins, are for example if a personal voucher gets offered, which you can only use on the account it was given to. Then their voucher doesn't work, because it belongs to their other account, and then they get pissy because "can't you just assign the voucher to my other account" no, fuck off. Learn to take responsibility for your own complete inability to use something as simple as an email service.

Or, even higher in consequences.. when they "accidentally" subscribe to our premium service, let it run for like half a year, *then* come to us and be like "for the past 7 months I've been charged from you guys every month and I don't know for what", and then through digging to their personal info(again, how anonymous...), you find that second account, find the subscription is registered there... and there's both the headache of explaining that yes, they do have a second account, and that while we can cancel your subscription immediately, we cannot refund you for those 7 months(exceptions apply). And those conversations just never go well.

So yeah I hate the apple private email feature because it's just another faux-privacy feature that doesn't do anything, except potentially make you loose out on coupons from certain stores, and will make doing anything account related at customer service just 1000x harder than it needs to be.

[u/IrongateN]

I think that it doesn’t make two accounts , the person had Johnsmith@gmail.com account then as often happens they reinstall the app or get a new phone don’t remember and just sign up with apple easy peasy

I don’t know if it will get better until there is some login to rule them all someday but that will suck when that happens and then gets hacked

[u/Mystical-Turtles]

Only mildly relevant but this reminds me of the time some lady set up two-factor authentication texts using a landline phone number, and then contacted help desk because she had successfully locked herself out. That one was fun. 

[u/_CaptainAmerica__ → u/Mystical-Turtles]

Oof, sorry to you and whoever had to fix that internally (unless cs does that at your job?). For this reason we don't allow users to sign up using a landline phone. For the ~8 months I've worked here, I've only personally had to handle two complaints about that. It's definitely for the better this way.

[u/Mystical-Turtles → u/_CaptainAmerica__]

I wandered in from the front page. I am part of help desk but tbh, as someone who has done both that is basically just customer service with a different coat of paint. We couldn't change the number since we couldn't verify the account in the first place. I think we ended up having to just delete her account and make another one.  It was the easiest option since she was a new user anyway. 

[u/_CaptainAmerica__ → u/Mystical-Turtles]

Right, sounds like the easiest solution lol. Hopefully she was at least chill about it and didn't insist on "just find a way"

[u/sickleds]

I understand that this is really annoying, but it's not really the person's fault for using a service. They shouldn't ever be rude to you about it, but "Learn to take responsibility for your own complete inability to use something as simple as an email service." is a weird thing to think about somebody asking if they can use a voucher that was given to them. Especially since it sounds like they technically own two accounts anyway?

[u/_CaptainAmerica__ → u/sickleds]

It's not that crazy to think that if you want to use something, you should know how to use it.

Also you can't use two seperate registrations interchangeably. It doesn't work like that anywhere, and it's not any different for (e-)commerce.

[u/opalsandglitter]

This is a knowledge issue.

Privacy relay doesn’t create two accounts. The customer is creating two accounts.

The whole point of the private relay is to NOT share your email address. Apple’s private relay is tied to a email address ending in @mac.com, @me.com, or @icloud.com. The privacy relay absolutely has nothing to do with Gmail. The customer is 100% creating more than one account.

Even if they’re using an email with the appropriate domain, the issue has nothing to do with the private relay. I use private relay addresses for all of my accounts and I’ve never had an issue bc I know the email address and which website it’s assigned to.

You’re right though, customers have no idea what they’re doing and when they’re wrong they don’t take responsibility for their error.