Earlier this month, Greece instituted new regulations amid the country’s financial crisis that blocked users from renewing iCloud subscriptions and buying from iTunes and the App Store. At the time, this left many users wondering what would happen to their iCloud data, seeing that they legally couldn’t pay to keep their subscription alive. Now, however, it appears that Apple is stepping up to ensure that user data remains intact during Greece’s financial crisis.
Greek website iPhoneHellas reports that Apple will not charge Greek iCloud subscribers for their paid storage plans until 30 days after the normal renewal date, effectively giving users a free month of storage. This contradicts the emails Apple originally sent to users in Greece that stated accounts would be downgraded to the standard 5GB tier if the renewal charge was declined.
The company notes, however, that if charges are still declined after the 30-day grace period, users will need to reduce the amount of iCloud storage they use and look for alternative services.
The full text of the email Apple is sending to iCloud users is below:
Dear iCloud customer,
To prevent interruption in your iCloud service during the current fiscal crisis, and to make sure you have access to your content, we’ve extended your iCloud storage plan for an extra 30 days at no additional cost.
We won’t attempt to charge you for your plan until 30 days after your original renewal date. If we are unable to renew your plan, you may need to reduce the amount of iCloud storage you use.
The iCloud Team
The financial crisis in Greece, as it stands right now, means that Apple cannot legally accept payments from anyone with a Greek account. The country’s problems stem from a combination of low levels of tax collection and the global financial crash. Officials in the country put new stricter economic controls in place, such as the ban on overseas payments and transfers, to prevent the banking system from completely crashing.
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How do I change my accounts country? 😂
loolllllll. It would be funny if tomorrow we were to read in the papers ‘Greece has more iCloud users than it has debts.’
xD (of course impossible as Greece has 340b€ in debts but still…)
I know it’s off topic, but I couldn’t find where to post such questions.
Anyway, I find it strange that in El Capitan when pinning 9to5mac it doesn’t work right. I can pin other pages and they load just fine when going to the pinned tab, but when going to 9to5’s pinned tab it just doesn’t load.
There are so many bugs in El Captian and iOS9 right now… I suggest you wait for future betas to fix the issues.
Mine works fine when I pin it. Try unpinning it and fully closing safari and pinning it again.
mine works, but it insists on opening it in a new tab too!
Now, if only Germany had as much money as Apple! Oh, wait. They have much more. If only they weren’t applying a repayment formula that increased the debt over five years of payments, because it crippled the GNP.
Just what the Greek people need – more services they will never have to repay. Keep feeding the Bears they forget how to hunt.
One thing that would help many more users is allow us to remove our credit card. NOBODY in Greece at the moment can UPDATE their iOS/OSX software, because iTunes requires a chargeable credit card linked to our account.
I would also recommend to the author to avoid any comments on why the Greek economy has gone belly up, because his view on that (“The country’s problems stem from a combination of low levels of tax collection and the global financial crash”) is far from educated. It would have been a lot more accurate if it were “…low levels of tax collection from the (~50) select families of the country and some German companies active in Greece” (e.g. Hochtief, which runs the Athens airport and owes over €500 mil to the govt, which the govt recently decided to write off). But again, Mr Miller is far from qualified to comment on why Greece is in the state it is now.
Actually, Mr. Miller’s description is quite accurate but it does not go into the same level of detail as your’s does. By avoiding the detail, he avoids becoming political – your comment strongly implies that the majority of Greeks are not playing the tax avoidance game! This is the first time I have heard that suggestion.
Exactly. For the average private company and self-employed tax payer, the greek tax system has them in a total gridlock. We pay 20 to 30% tax in advance, plus another 23% VAT. And then there’s the obligatory national insurance (another 20+ % on the average salary here). Now, most of that money goes to waste and our biggest cause of bitterness with the current and past (40yrs) political system is that nobody got punished. The bureaucracy is so bad for the average Joe over here that if you want to start a new private company (anything from a cafe-bar to a small factory), you have to pass through a ton of paperwork and tax declarations in order to prove that you’re not an elephant.
On the other side, there’s a few extremely rich families who run all the big media and all the big construction companies in the country, they owe the government truckloads of money and they constantly get their debt written off or never collected anyway. And guess what, they’ve absorbed the vast majority of all the EU funds over the last decades.
To sum it up, the average Greek has long felt that the government works against them, that we’re being punished for being the loyal+willing parts of the system, while cutting slack to the extremely rich and curiously to all sorts of foreign companies, big and small, who have embarked on all sorts of shady practices to avoid taxes.
and, to give you an insight into the kind of money being written off, it has been calculated that if the government asked the top 18 people/companies to pay up their debts, they would collect over 11 billion euros.
But no, we had to get ourselves another EU loan, put the country’s “silverware” on sale, and get a new set of austerity measures so that we (the average … Kostas) pay up -again- through the nose :/
(so yes, most greeks are currently VERY pissed of with how things have wound up)
Yeah, because greeks really deserve this :))
I’m from Slovakia, we’re poorer than Greece, no one gives us money, we’re nor asking for them because we are not cry babies who don’t work their whole life and expect something for nothing and no one does this for us. Will you give me a free acc as well? I doubt that…
@miroslavbujna, before you open your mouth next time, you’d better educate yourself on one situation. If you just gobble whatever propaganda you’re fed, you’ll just stay in the state that you are.
I’m sorry but you first should learn about the situation. They are lazy, it’s their fault, they should find the way out not taking from OUR money!
Really? You really believe that there is a place in this world that nobody works, but gets paid?
In Italy a lot of people gets paid without being productive.
Italy and Greece are very similar countries in this aspect.
Not actual not working but working like a lazy ass.
Well all countries have their fat rich lazy asses. And you know what? None of them are paying their taxes and that is why they get even more rich. If you claim you are poor, then you should blame the rich fatty liars of all countries who got rich from the people who really work. Don’t blame the poor Greeks, because for sure they don’t ask for loans and they didn’t ever ask for them. But they pay for the loans of the French and specially German banks and they themselves don’t know how to survive this situation. And finally consider this… The last agreement is about us, poor people, who gonna pay even more. So don’t claim we have benefits, when we work more than Germans, get paid like Bulgarians and have a cost of living like English. And in addition we have people like you who claim we are lazy thieves. Thanks you very much for your support!
Miroslav, in case you didn’t notice, I AM Greek. And I find your opinion on how much we work and what sort of “filthy thieves” we are grossly uneducated.
Kind regards
I haven’t but I would like to hear your opinion on huge resorts not paying taxes, on people getting retirement payments for dead people, for retirement pays of 2000 – 3000 Euro, massive money wasting and so on. The whole country is a joke. If you went to use our system 4 years ago (all taxes being raised to 22%, ALL!, cleaning the mess in your whole system and setting retirement payments to 300 Euro just like here, you would be out of that by now).
Then Miroslav blame our government, not us. Because there are some thieves that do whatever they want, doesn’t mean that Greeks approve this, and doesn’t give you the right to blame the Greek people in general. Unless you think that all or most of us have this kind of privileges. However, allow me to inform you that we haven’t. As for the pensions, I inform you that they are really low for the vast majority of greek people, while Greece is one of the countries with the highest prices in Europe.
Apple should consider extending the Apple Developer program too because we cannot make a payment in order to renew our membership. My current payment is still pending…