Open Radar

 
Summary:
In signing up for the iPhone Standard Company, Enterprise, and University Programs, the terms and conditions must be accepted by a person with the legal authority to bind the organization to the terms and conditions. In many cases, this "signing authority" rests with a person or department that does not have the expertise nor the desire to act as the Program Agent. This creates a catch-22 situation that either prevents enrollment in the programs at all or engenders "creative" ways to allow someone other than the person who agreed to the programs' terms to administer the programs.


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have your CIO decide to get your organization on the App Store.
2. Be told by your manager to handle the signing up and administration of your organization's iPhone Developer Programs (Standard Company, Enterprise, & University).
3. Go through the sign-up process.
4. Realize that you don't have the authority to agree to the terms.
5. Find the department or person that does.
6. Walk them through signing up for an Apple ID and enrolling in the program. (Note the Apple ID/password that you create so you can use it to administer the programs later.)
7. Wait for Apple to approve the application.
8. With the Apple ID from step 6, purchase the Developer Program product from the Apple Store (We have a B2B Apple Store. Why can't I purchase it from there? I suppose that's a separate bug report.)
9. Fax your sales tax exempt certificate to the number given by the order confirmation page [(512) 674-XXXX].
10. Wait several days.
11. Call the Apple Store to find out what is holding up the order.
12. Be told that you should call the Apple Store for Small Business.
13. Call that number.
14. Be told that you should fax and/or email the sales tax exempt certificate to a different number/email address because the one originally given to you is a "general" fax number.
15. Fax and/or email the certificate to this new number.
16. Wait some more.
17. Finally get the activation code in an email.
18. Attempt to activate the program.
19. Find out that your activation has been placed on hold because the name of the person who agreed to the terms of the Program is not the same as the name of the person who is paying for it. You are neither of these people.
20. Tell the person who agreed to the terms (50 miles away) that they need to fax a notarized copy of their ID to Apple.
21. Wait for something to happen.
…

After you finally get into the program you can use the Apple ID from step 6 to administer the program in the Program Portal, but if/when you need to call ADC Support you will have to go through the hassle of being told that the person who initially sign up (the person with the legal authority) needs to be the one to call ADC Support for any account issues/changes.


Expected Results:
The person who agrees to the terms and conditions of the iPhone and Mac Developer Programs should be able to designate a delegate that will perform the Program Agent functions. Alternatively, the person who signs up for the programs should be given the option of providing the contact info for the person with legal authority so that they can agree to the term separate from being involved in program administration.


Actual Results:
As it is now, someone in our purchasing department had to enroll in the programs since they had the legal authority, but since I have to administer the programs, I need to have her forward my requests for support onto ADC Support since they won't talk to me when I call.

Another option that I've considered was to change the name on the Apple ID associated with these programs to my name, but I'm not sure if this is an acceptable workaround. If so, please let me know.

In any case, it shouldn't be this difficult.


Regression:
Of course, if you're the person who has the legal authority for your organization, wants to act as the program agent, will be paying for the program with your own company credit card, and don't have tax exempt status, then these problems don't exist.


Notes:
I actually haven't gotten to step 17 mentioned above yet (I'm still waiting), but step 19 is what I expect to happen. That is what happened when I attempted to activate my Standard Individual program. I signed up for the program for myself, but it was paid for by my manager's commercial credit card. The fact that the billing name for the credit card was different than my name was a show stopper as far as ADC was concerned.


See also:
rdar://problem/6489643
rdar://problem/6489882