How stupid do you have to be to work for Apple? Well, the iTunes division, at least! I have yet to receive a workable, actually helpful answer from anyone at iTunes. Everyone I've dealt with there severely lacks attention to detail and can't even tell the difference between the "lite" version of an app and the "full" version, even with photos and links to the actual products! (Similar concept to "both hands and a flashlight".) Sigh. As we all know, iTunes has been experiencing tons of server issues for over a week now, with many paid apps going on sale and not being able to be purchased by users due to the dreaded "being modified" bug, sometimes for the full duration of the sale period. In one case I know of, that was 3 days! I experienced it again today, with a kid's educational app. There's a lite version and a full version, and the full version went free yesterday. I've been trying and trying to get it, but to no avail. Says "being modified" every time. So, before deciding to contact iTunes for support (which is what Apple is telling the devs to tell their customers), having been down that road to hell before, I decided to check out the lite version first, to see if the app was worth the trouble. I liked it, so I wrote iTunes support about the downloading difficulties and included a link to the full version (the one I was trying to, but couldn't, get). I got back, I kid you not: "...after reviewing your account ..., it shows that your purchased this app today (Thursday; February 9, 2012). That being said, it leads me to believe that your issue has been resolved." What he saw, of course, was the purchase of the LITE version, and NOT the full version for which I had sent a link. I replied stating that, and included a picture of the full version with the "being modified" bug highlighted. I got back... "after some investigating, it appears that the "Full" version of the app, ... has been removed from the iTunes Store. When this happens, customers will receive the "modified" error message, which you have been receiving. Now, please be aware that the "Lite" version of the app has been replaced with the "Full' version. That being said, I'm happy to inform you that you have successfully downloaded the correct version of this app." Holy crap! WTF?!! Did he proofread what he wrote before he sent that out?! The full version has been removed and the lite version is now the full version?! The iTunes rep included a note saying I needed to contact the developer on his Facebook page, which I had already done. I wrote back saying that if they had bothered to check out that recommended developer support Facebook page, they would've seen the following exchange: User: "Hello! I saw on the ... page, this morning, that your ... app is free. I went to download it into my itunes, and I keep getting the message "Do you want to buy", and then it gives me a message : "Purchase of this item is not currently available. This item is being modified. Please try again later." Developer: "This problem appears only in the US region and might be caused by service work in App Store. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please, try to download again later." And the developer further confirmed that the free download is supposed to be for the FULL VERSION of the app, which is the one I'm trying to get, and that it HAS NOT been pulled by him from the App Store! Is there ANY intelligent life working for iTunes?! Why does Apple produce such great devices and have such lousy customer support? I'm not waiting for yet-another wild goose chase answer from iTunes lack-of-support people. I'm giving up and will pass on trying to get this app. I really hope the problems the iTunes app store is experiencing get fixed soon. The problems with the servers are an embarrassment to Apple, but their malfunction is exposing a lack of anything even remotely helpful in their "support" staff and that's even scarier! Ah well, thanks for letting me vent.
I do agree with you mostly about the way Apple treat customers and their servers being a complete mess. I think your problem may well correct itself given time as they usually do. Apples staff always seem to be morons though I think they are probably just trained to deny there is any problems nomatter the circumstances. One thing that's been winding me up for a while now is iTunes updates which only download the old version. When I download an update of close to a gb and find I've just downloaded the version I have already I curse Apple every time and that seems to be something that is only getting more frequent.