Whoops, there go your iTunes Store credits.
Apple released an update earlier today to their media management application iTunes. The 60MB update was meant to improve stability and performance and provides a number of important bug fixes, including a quality issue creating MP3s on some computers, a connectivity issue with the iTunes Store when using some Internet proxies with Mac OS X and accessibility with VoiceOver. However, a rather annoying bug has come along for the party.
The bug was reported to APC by the President of iMug (a Melbourne based Mac user group), Les Posen. If you've got credit in your iTunes account from a gift card or voucher, the credit simply disappears and you can't make any purchases. APC tested this by using account credit to purchase "Hancock", the new Will Smith flick. After the iTunes update, we were prompted to check our account details and acknowledge the iTunes Store terms and conditions.
Having done that, we went through with the purchase but a dialog popped up with the following text.
"Due to a problem with the iTunes Store, your store credit balance is temporarily unavailable for use in purchasing music; you may continue purchasing using a different method of payment"
Given that our account already has a credit card associated with it as well as the credit from a voucher, we were unable to complete the purchase. Even the weekly free music track could not be "purchased". We've tested this with different systems and user accounts to ensure that it's not a problem with a particular iTunes installation and we've confirmed that this fault is affecting users with accounts in both Australia and the US with credit from iTunes vouchers.