Double-billed, have a purchase you didn’t make, or just have a problem with an iTunes purchase and wondering who to contact an how? There are millions of users and credit cards on file with iTunes, so every once in a while weird issues are bound to pop up. Unfortunately iTunes doesn’t have a phone line to call but they do have a pretty good support team that answers e-mails and deals strictly with iTunes billing issues. Keep reading and we’ll show you how to contact them!

All you’ll need to do in order to contact iTunes customer support is find the problem invoice on your iTunes account and e-mail them a little blurb explaining the issue. You can find your invoice in either the email receipt iTunes sends you after you purchase an app (or a few apps, they try to bundle them to lower credit card transaction fees), or by logging into your account via the iTunes desktop app and then clicking on Purchase History.

Once you have the right invoice…

• Click on the Report a Problem link directly from the problem purchase and you’ll be routed to the iTunes support site instantly. Just jot down your invoice number.

• Once on the iTunes support site, on the left hand column navigate to iTunes Store Account and Billing.
• Next select the topic you need. Most likely Billing Inquiries.

• Then click E-mail us and fill out the form. Your invoice number isn’t required but I’ve found they respond a lot faster if you submit complete information. Also make sure you provide a valid e-mail address and that your Apple ID is correctly input.



• You’re done! You’ll receive an automated message stating an iTunes rep will respond within 24 hours. Shortly after, you’ll receive correspondence from an iTunes rep that can help you resolve your issue.

I’ve always had a great experience when dealing with them. They always seem to respond promptly and resolve the issue at hand. What was your experience? Let us know!

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to news@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

Having problems with your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad accessories and wondering how to troubleshoot them? Here are a few basic tips which will help you identify the issue. Stick with us after the break.

Check for defects

If you have another iOS device, or have a family member, friend, or colleague with an iOS device, try the accessory out on their iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. For example, if a earbuds don’t plug properly into your 3.5mm headset jack, or a case doesn’t fit quite right, see if it plugs in properly or fits better on theirs.

If there’s a defect, you can contact the store or manufacturer and arrange for an exchange.

Search our Forums

Head on over to our TiPb Accessory Forums and see if there are any discussions already going on about your accessory. If anyone else has already had and solved the same problem, you’ll save yourself a lot of effort by following the same steps yourself. If they haven’t solved it, you can help crowd source a solution. If no one else has discussed the problem yet, you can start a new thread and get it going!

We have some of the best readers in the world and they will be able to let you know if there’s an issue (or not).

Check for compatibility

First thing you should do is make sure that the item that you are using is fully compatible with your iPhone or iPad. To do this you can head over to our accessory store , or to the website of the accessory maker and double check to see which iOS devices are compatible.

You may find that some devices are only partially compatible with your iPad or iPhone. For example, some older car adapters may allow you to play music through your FM radio but won’t charge your iPhone (a very common issue).

Bonus Tip: Our most awesome Managing Editor Rene Ritchie has mentioned that some accessories may also popup an incompatibility warning because they’re not officially part of Apple’s program (haven’t paid the made for iPhone or iPad licensing fee), but still charge you iPhone fine. Either way, find out for sure.

Unplug and Reset

Take out the accessory. If the accessory has a off button turn it off and then restart your iOS device. When your iOS device restarts fully, try to plug the accessory back in. Here’s [how to reset iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad].

Some accessories may require additional steps to start fresh. For example, Bluetooth headsets may need you to press certain button combinations to put them back into Pairing Mode. Check the instructions that came with your device, or check the manufacturers website for details.

Restore

If you know the accessory is not defective and that it’s supposed to work with your iOS device, try to restore your device. Sometimes that will clean out any glitches and get you back to a fresh, default state.

Not sure? Here’s how to restore your iPhone or iPad.

Update iOS

Some accessories may need to have the latest iOS software in order to function properly. For example, iOS 4 added Bluetooth control support that wasn’t available in iOS 3. If your accessory isn’t doing everything it should, make sure your software is up to date.

If you’re not sure, here’s how to update your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

(Note: if you are are jailbroken you may lose your jailbreak if you update.)

Hope you found this tip helpful. If you have any accessory trouble-shooting tips of your own please share them into the comments!

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to news@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

Back in late June/early July, I reviewed an app called Wi-Fi Sync for jailbroken iPhones. You can find my revised version of the review here. Originally this seemed like a pretty neat app. It’s a bit pricey for what it does, but it did it well.

Now I’ve been having several issues with iTunes over the past 2 months. I couldn’t restore or upgrade firmware (it would hang up at the very end and leave all my devices in never ending recovery loops). To my dismay, it also broke backups within iTunes. I found this out after I wiped one of my devices and then noticed my last backup had been 2 months earlier. In frustration, a buddy on Twitter (@snoslicer8) asked if I by chance had Wi-Fi Sync installed. And without a doubt, that was the problem.

Needless to say, click along to see how to fix these issues if you’re having problems with iTunes and you’ve previously downloaded W-Fi Sync. Odds are, it’s the culprit.

You’ll need to complete these steps exactly in order. If you have already uninstalled Wi-Fi Sync and that didn’t seem to solve the problem, re-install it and do these steps completely in order. Odds are you didn’t complete the first step before uninstalling and that can cause your backups to still epically fail. So after you re-install, reboot your Mac before continuing.

*Side note: I am on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6.4). I do not know if this effects previous versions of Mac or PC. If you know or have any input, please feel free to leave it in the comments for future users who may have the issue.

Re-enable backups via Wi-Fi Sync

This is why I said to re-install if you had already uninstalled. You’ll see the icon for Wi-Fi Sync in your top taskbar, it looks like a tiny iPhone like below.

Click that icon to get a drop down menu, you’ll see one like the one below. If disable device backups is checked, UNCHECK it. For me, device backups were disabled by default. If you don’t do this before uninstalling, you will still have issues with backups even after uninstalling.

Only after you’ve done this, will you be good to uninstall.

Uninstall Wi-Fi Sync

A lot of users were wondering how to uninstall Wi-Fi Sync. I’m not quite sure why the developer did not include the uninstaller in the bundle, but you’ll have to go here to download the uninstaller for Mac. Download that and run the terminal app. It may prompt you to enter your admin password.

Reboot your Mac

After you reboot, your problems should be solved. To make sure, simply open iTunes, connect one of your iDevices and sync it. It should saying backing up, which it didn’t say before. Or another way to know is after you sync, go to iTunes —> Preferences –> Devices and look to see if you have a new backup. If you do, you should be good to go. If you are still having issues, leave a comment below and we’ll try and help you out.

Thanks to @snoslicer8 for helping me out with this one! And as my revised review states, I can’t recommend this app until the developer does something about this. This is app is not worth paying for when it breaks core functionality in iTunes. So until it’s resolved, I can’t recommend anyone pay money for this application. I tried contacting the developer over 2 weeks ago to no response. I attempted to contact him on Twitter as well, to no avail. I can’t seem to find a workaround other that completely uninstalling the app, and the issue seems pretty prevalent in several forums and boards. If anyone else found another solution, let us know!

No doubt about it, issues with battery life remain a hot topic for iPhone 3.0 and iPhone 3GS users.

Now, if your battery drain is caused simply by use — you never put the iPhone (or iPod touch) down and are always playing games, pushing IMs, watching movies, etc. your only choice is to get a few more charging cables or battery extenders. If, however, you’re doing roughly the same things you’ve always done and getting substantially less battery life for your troubles, there’s a chance a few troubleshooting steps might just help get your power problems back under control.

Reboot iPhone

If, all of a sudden, your iPhone starts burning through battery and getting hot at the same time, there could be a “rogue process” just churning away in the background. The answer to that is a good old-fashioned power cycle.

Hold down the sleep button until the red “Slide to power off” arrow appears. If your iPhone is frozen or otherwise in dire straights, you can hold down the home button at the same time as the sleep button to force quit all applications and bring up the red arrow. Then just swipe, let the iPhone turn off, wait a few seconds, and hold down the sleep button again to turn your iPhone back on.

Redo Push

Since iPhone 2.0 we’ve seen Push gone wrong really cause a hit to battery life. With 3.0, Push Notification means not only could mail, calendar, and contacts start misbehaving in the background, but your IM, Twitter, games, and all sorts of other apps can as well.

Apple says Push can cause a 20% drop in battery life, but if you think yours is worse then it should be, the next step is to redo anything that involves Push, including MobileMe and Exchange accounts, and apps using Push Notification. Now, you might want to try doing one at a time, check your battery life, and if you don’t notice any improvement, try the next one. If you find the culprit quickly, that approach could save you some time. If you just want to get it over with, you might want to do them all at once.

For the accounts, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, choose your MobileMe and/or Exchange accounts, scroll down to the bottom and hit delete. For apps, go to Settings > Notifications and look at the list of any apps using Push Notification. Go back to the Home Screen, hold down the home button until the icons start to jiggle, and delete the Push Notification app.

Then, for accounts, go back to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, hit Add Account…, choose Mobile Me and/or Exchange, and re-enter your settings. For Push Notification apps, either sync them back from iTunes or go to the App Store app and re-download them.

Restore as New iPhone

We won’t lie to you — this is the nuclear option. It’s scorched earth. But to be frank, we at TiPb almost always default to this step because it almost always “just works”. We do this every time we get a new firmware and every time we notice something just isn’t right, and we have excellent battery life to prove it.

To restore your iPhone as new and get a fresh, clean start, attach it to your Windows or Mac via the USB cable and launch iTunes. A Restore button should be front and center on the screen. Hit it, then wait as iTunes goes through the laborious process of wiping your iPhone and installing the firmware again from scratch.

IMPORTANT: When iTunes asks if you want to restore your data from backup or set up as a new iPhone, choose NEW iPHONE.

Yes, you will lose your settings and any data saved in apps that don’t provide some sort of sync functionality, but it’s possible (even likely) some corruption in those settings or data is contributing to your poor battery life, and with an appliance like the iPhone, this is the only way to get rid of it.

This will also kill your Jailbreak, if you’re jailbroken. But if something in your Jailbreak was killing your battery life, like backgrounder gone awry, trying out your iPhone without the Jailbreak is a good way to establish that.

Once your iPhone is set up as new, you can sync your info and media back over using the iTunes tabs as normal, and/or setup accounts and download apps on the iPhone itself.

Conclusion

iPhone 3.0 and iPhone 3GS should have roughly the same battery life for you as iPhone 2.2.1 and the iPhone 3G. If you’re getting something substantially less than that, there could be something wrong with your iPhone 3.0 install or your iPhone 3GS’ system.

Rebooting the iPhone, redoing Push-enabled applications, and restoring your iPhone as new are three escalating steps you can try to fix your battery problems.

Let us know how they work for you.