Update: It appears Apple has resolved the issue. A few hours after writing this post, my mom tried the codes again and they worked. She's the proud owner of "Brothers" by The Black Lips and "Sea of Cowards" by The Dead Weather. Still, it would have been nice for her to have them a week ago, as planned.

Last week, I purchased two gift codes for albums from the iTunes Store. I slipped them into a card and gave them to my mother as part of her birthday present. I thought it would be fun for her to type in the codes, download the albums instantly, and sync them to her devices.

So you can imagine how upset I was when she politely mentioned to me over the weekend that she had trouble redeeming the codes. Switching into Mac Geek Son Mode, I hopped onto her computer and tried it out. I got the same generic error she did: "The iTunes Store could not process your request. Please try again later."

My mom had been trying "again later" for days, and got the same unhelpful error each time. I double-checked my receipt and check card. The transaction was processed and Apple took my money, so why wouldn't the codes work?

On Friday, I sent an email to iTunes technical support. Two days later, I got a response from a representative who apologized for the delay (they normally claim a 24-hour turnaround on support requests) and issued me a two-song credit to my account to make up for it. Okay, that's nice, but it doesn't address the problem of getting music to my mom.

The tech support rep went on:

After researching further, I tried to open it from my end and I received an error as well. I was then informed by my senior supervisor that there is an issue with redeeming gift codes and the Apple is currently working toward a resolution for the issue you have reported.

If you do not prefer to wait for the issue to be resolved, which I can't predict when will that be. Please reply to this email and I will certainly refund the gifts back to your credit card. Thank you for your time and I look forward to your reply, Gavin.

Gift codes don't work, support can't predict when the problem will be resolved, and the best solution Apple can offer is a refund? Isn't "Gift This Album" supposed to be a major feature of the store? It's unacceptable that the top music retailer in the US can't handle a request this simple.

I wrote back, asking if I could get replacement codes, or if there was any possible way I could get these two albums out of the store and into my mom's iTunes collection. While I await a reply, my lovely mom is waits patiently for these two birthday presents.