iTunes Drama Finale

So I heard back from iTunes support... they are refunding the cost of tracks that I purchased. I'm very pleased with the outcome, and can't complain. I should see the refund in the next week or so and then I'm not sure what I will do. I definitely want the complete Goat Rodeo Sessions albumand out of curiosity clicked the 'Buy Album' button again, which now reflects the purchase of one of the videos with a reduced price of $9.00, and I still get the same error message, 'The item is being modified, please try again later.' So there is something still amiss, and in general I've noticed some wonky behavior with streaming content in general, I have an Apple TV and for the past couple weeks I've frequently received an ambiguous error message when trying to watch video from Apple, NetFlix, Vimeo and YouTube. I don't think the scaling of iCloud and other on demand streaming services is going a peachy as would be desired.

iTunes Drama Part IV

So I've heard back from iTunes support and... yeah no resolution. I will freely admit that maybe I didn't explain this issue as clearly as I could have, but remember I was racing the 'Session Timeout Gremlin' so now that I have real email contact I will try again to explain my current problem. Here is the response I received from Apple support.

Dear Jason,

Welcome to iTunes Store Customer Support. My name is Nisha and I am glad to assist you.

I understand from your email that you are missing the "The Goat Rodeo Sessions" from your Complete My Album. I know how valuable your purchases are and I will be happy to help you, so that you can enjoy the iTunes Store as soon as possible.

Jason, the iTunes Store gives you the ability to download your past purchases without incurring additional charges as long as what you want to download is shown on your Purchased page. You may be able to download this particular purchase using this feature.

To enable this feature, you must have the latest version of iTunes. It is available on the Apple website:

http://www.itunes.com/download

The latest version of iTunes will not affect your library or any items in your account.

To learn how to download past purchases, check out this article:

Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2519

If you don't see what you want to download in the list, it may have been removed or modified since you purchased it, and no longer available for download.

If you have trouble downloading any of your past purchases, please reply to let me know.

You will now be able to re-download your purchases.

If you have any further questions, feel free to contact us and we will be happy to assist you.

Have a nice day!

Sincerely,

Nisha
iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

Please Note: I work on Sunday - Thursday, 7:00 AM- 4:00 PM CST

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assist you. You may receive an AppleCare survey email; any feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.

So we are close but no cigar, I had already thought of that and checked my previous purchases to see if the whole album was there. But remember I haven't purchased the entire album, just a subset of songs that very closely match the total cost of the album. So we will try this again, here is my response.

Hi Nisha,

Thank you for your prompt response but this does not resolve my issue. I am using the most current version of iTunes, update yesterday here is a screen shot

                     screen shot

and I did check my previous downloads to make sure that I had not purchased the entire album and didn't realize and that the files also did not download to my computer for some reason. Here is a screen shot

                     screen shot

I will try to explain again in more detail, I was rushed in my previous message because I was racing the session timeout in my account on iTunes and the comment box for contact support does now allow cut-and-paste.

Yesterday I initially purchased the song and video

Here and Heaven
Hear and Heaven (Live)

from the album 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions' iTunes LP. A few hours later I decided to purchase the entire album. When I returned to the iTunes store and click on the 'Buy Album' button for 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions' I received an error message. I wish I had taken a screen shot of the error message but unfortunately I did not, but other have had this same problem and here is a thread

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1219341?start=0&tstart=0

in the mean time I purchased one more video and four more songs from 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions' while waiting for the ability to purchase the complete album, here is a list of the items purchased in order

Attaboy
No One But You
Inside the Goat Rodeo Sessions
Helping Hand
Hill Justice

After purchasing the song 'Hill Justice' I noticed that 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions' iTunes LP was no longer in my 'Complete My Album' cue in the iTunes store and that when I viewed the album directly in the iTunes store my previous purchases are not indicated (via grey'd out effect over the track) and that the purchase price of the album also did not reflect my previous purchases and was the total price of $10.99.

One additional detail I did notice is that the total sum of the tracks purchased from the album

5 * $1.29 + 2 * $1.99

five songs plus two videos is $10.43. So by my reasoning I should be able to purchase the complete album at a cost of $0.56.

Thank you again for your quick response and assistance.

Regards,
Jason Goodell

iTunes Drama Part III

So I gave it one last try, I retype the whole letter that I previously posted here and was able to submit without a time-out of my session. I'm sure it is not exactly like the copy I pasted here, but it should reproduce the spirit. Let's see what comes of this.

iTunes Drama Part II

Well this update came fast, trying to contact iTunes' support is not so easy. After clicking the 'support' link at the bottom of the iTunes store page you are presented with a FAQ site, with a contact support option. Selecting the contact support option presents you with an express lane option that cost money, unless you have a Apple Care support package or are still under the complimentary first year service after a hardware purchase. In the fine print you can find that iTunes store support is available via email... okay. So some more searching through the apple online documentation and I find a page showing you how to send one of those emails to customer support that doesn't cost money... but it's out of date. I click around for a while and figure it out and go to paste my pre written letter... you can't cut and past into the support page comment box. So I start typing and retype the whole letter into the comment box, no errors appear I guess I'm not over some text limit and I click submit... and appears the popup 'Your session has times out. Try again.'  Nope I'm not kidding folks I will be redrafting the letter to make it shorter and reposting it here. To be continued...

iTunes not allowing purchase of remaining album content, album disappears from 'Complete My Album' option.

So yesterday I stumbled across 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions' album by Yo-yo Ma, Chris Thile and Co. I soon realized that most of the musicians involved had works that I was familiar with and was very impressed with the track 'Here and Heaven' I bought the song and the video then decided to purchase the remainder of the album, but was unable to. A pop up message kept appearing claiming that the item (being the album) was being edited or altered and was not available for sale, and to try again later. I purchased several more songs a video from the album when I then noticed that the album has disappeared from my 'Complete My Album' cue on iTunes that when I view the album in the iTunes store I presented with the album at full price and none of my previous purchases are indicated. This morning the receipt came in from iTunes, and lo and behold my purchases from the album nearly equal the total cost of the album. I'm contacting iTunes with the issue and have drafted a letter which I will attach below, we will see where this gets me, I'm not getting my hopes up but I maybe surprised.

Yesterday I purchased a song and video from 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions' by Yo-yo Ma, later that day I tried to 'complete the album' and complete the iTunes LP but received the an error message, to para phrase 'Sorry this item is being edited and cannot be purchased at this time, please try again later.' I received this message several times over the course of the afternoon, in the mean time I purchased several more songs and another video from the album while waiting for the ability to purchase the complete album. After the purchase of the track 'HIll Justice' , 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions' iTunes LP album disappeared from my 'complete the album' option in my iTunes account and when I view the album in the iTunes store 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions' iTunes LP I no longer see a discounted price with my previous purchases indicated but the complete album at the full price. I would like to purchase the remainder of 'The Goat Rodeo Sessions' iTunes LP for whatever balance remains on the full price, I'm assuming this is a technical issue. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Regards,

Jason Goodell

I'll post any and all resulting correspondence here.