(Wow, what a mess)
Sounds like what happened to my mom a couple of years ago with Xfinity/Comcast for her cable TV and internet. The āhelpfulā folks at the Xfinity Store tried to fix her problem by temporarily turning off her service. But then it turned out she was grandfathered in to an old plan that isnāt offered any more and the new plan was $30/month more expensive. There was no option on the computer to choose anything else. She was stuck. She couldnāt even switch to a different provider since she was in an apartment complex where Xfinity is pre-wired to all the units!
She has just moved and I am literally planning on going to Xfinity tomorrow to turn off her old service and I just know they are going to figure out some way to screw it up.
One other issue seems to be that if you have multiple people using a Mac with different Apple Accounts and they log in regularly, itās probably not a good idea at this point (if ever) to add a Mac to AppleCare One, since each time a new Apple Account logs in to that machine Apple will probably start a 24 hour timer requiring the account registered with AppleCare One to logout and log back in to the machine.
Hopefully Apple fixes this for people in this situation. Perhaps one solution would be if Apple adds a family plan option(s) to AppleCare One that lets a family protect all of their devices, with something like adding $7.50 per person to the $20 price?
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There are other issues with AppleCareOne. About every 2 days I receive 2 emails saying my MB Pro coverage will be discontinued. I havenāt signed out or signed in. Iāve called Apple Support and they are investigating but canāt determine why it happens. At first the said the emails were phishing - but they werenāt.
At the same time the emails come in, I get notification (System Settings/GeneralAppleCare & Warranty) that āDevice will be removed.ā
Apple support has elevated the issue but it has not been resolved.
The emails I keep getting - two at a time - say:
"Sign in to keep coverage
A new Apple Account has signed in to your MacBook Pro. To avoid losing AppleCare One coverage, you must sign in to the MacBook Pro with the Apple Account associated with your AppleCare One plan.
You have 24 hours from when this email was sent to sign in, or your MacBook Pro will be removed from your AppleCare One plan.ā
No one has signed in to my MacBook Pro - including myself - with any account.
The notification in System Settings goes away after awhile but comes back when I get the emails again.
Weird.
Still working with Apple Support.
I have 3 devices covered on my account and my wife has 3 on her own account (maintained on her own MB Pro.) We donāt swop signing into accounts.
David
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If she was leasing any equipment, hand-deliver it to their office and get a receipt. They have a reputation for conveniently losing returned equipment, forcing a long drawn-out fight to get them to not bill you hundreds of dollars for worthless 10-year-old equipment.
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Not the only company to do thisā¦
Funny, off-topic, but last year I had to return a few Spectrum TV boxes when we finally cut the cord and switched to streaming, and made a reservation at the local store at 1 pm to do exactly what you suggested. I walked in at 1 to see a bunch of people sitting around waiting and stood in line behind the person being helped when somebody waiting said āHey Mac, what are you doing?ā. When I said I had a 1 pm reservation and was waiting to be helped, the Spectrum employee said, āOh, we donāt follow the reservations. Itās first-come first-served here.ā 
45 minute wait behind all of the people already there, but I also never got billed for outstanding equipment.
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A follow-up: John Sircusa posted the following on Mastodon (bold by me):
I finally called Apple Support and resolved my AppleCare One problem. It is as I suspected: AppleCare One does not correctly handle multiple user accounts in macOS. This is a known issue. No ETA for a fix.
The solution? Cancel AppleCare One and sign up for individual warranties for the devices that were covered under AppleCare One. These new plans will cost me more than AppleCare One and more than I was paying for the plans they had before I signed up for AppleCare One.
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Iām confused: when I first heard of this issue, I thought it was Apple Accounts (i.e. Apple IDs). But Sircusaās post talks about user accounts on MacOS, which are totally different. Since hardware can be associated with an Apple ID, having a laptop registered with a spouseās Apple ID not being allowed on your AppleCare One plan makes sense. But I donāt get why having multiple user accounts on a Mac would make any difference.
Can someone clarify if this issue is related to Apple IDs or it really is about user accounts?
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Even that makes little sense. An extended warranty is on the hardware, not some user experience.
It should cover any equipment purchased by and owned by the holder of the extended warranty plan, without regard to who is using the equipment.
If Apple isnāt doing it this way, then I call shenanigans.
In John Siracusaās case, they are not. He has user accounts on his Mac Studio for all of his family members, and they all have separate Apple Accounts associated with the Mac user accounts. My Macs are the same - I have user accounts for my wife and I (plus a separate admin account, in case my account has a problem), and my wife and I each have our own Apple Accounts.
But the way I am reading this, I think even separate user accounts on the Mac cause this problem.
Iād say itās more incompetence. Yes, a warranty is on hardware, but Apple limits AppleCare One to a single Apple Account. It sounds like a use case - what could be a common, though not majority, use case - that Apple didnāt consider testing.
Apparently people are having this issue on Apple TV as well, since tvOS now supports multiple Apple Accounts.
Ah, I wondered if it was something like that!
I have multiple user accounts, but they are all me, and all associated with the same Apple ID.
I can testify to thisā¦ I had attributed the removal of my AppleTV from AppleCare One to having separate iTunes and iCloud accounts. in any case AppleCare+ costs 1$ a month for the AppleTV, a device highly unlikely to ever fail. Not much savings to be had.
As I understand it after talking with Apple Support, the Apple ID you are signed in with on the computer makes a difference. User accounts donāt. If more than one person uses the device and signs into their Apple account on the computer when using it - it will be a problem.
Iām the only one signing in on my computer. Havenāt signed in with a different user account.
Iām still getting emails saying the computer will be removed.
Apple Support is trying to help but they donāt have an answer yet.
David
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I changed my AppleCare+ warranties to the recently added AppleCare One and will save a few dollars a month. Even though I live in Japan and bought my devices in Japan it was ok since I use a U.S. account and current warranties were in that account.
Previous device AppleCare+ subscriptions:
iPhone $9.99/month
iPad Pro $5.99/month
MBP $99/year = $8.33/month
Total $24.31/month
Changed to AppleCare One for $19.99 and saved $4.32/month.
And got automatic refunds for the remaining previous warranty subscription periods.
I did too.
BTW, when AppleCare One was announced, I tried to activate it. I never could get it to work. It always said I didnāt have any eligible devices. That was weird because many of my devices seemed to be eligible according to Appleās documentation (for instance, my Vision Pro which is obviously not that old). Even my new iPhone 17 Max wasnāt eligible, I guess because I bought it through the Apple Upgrade Program which includes AppleCare.
However, I think the problem was that none of those devices had AppleCare active. I had never added it. So even though they are within the age limit of an AppleCare One device, since none had AppleCare active or were within the purchase window of AppleCare, I was not able to ever activate AppleCare One. Very weird!
Well, hereās an update: I recently (over the holidays) bought a new iPad M5. While I was setting it up I noticed something about AppleCare One in Settings. I had stopped bothering trying to get it to work, but it seemed like the M5 iPad was eligible. The bizarre thing was that once I added that new device to AppleCare One I was then able to add several other devices (including Vision Pro). The total cost is $20/month ā not cheap, but worth it for the Vision Pro alone which is expensive to repair (and the warranty also covers the new iPad and my MacBook Pro 16"). I could add other devices (like Macs or Apple Watches) for just a few dollars each if I want (though some of my equipment is too old to qualify).
The bottom line: if youāre having trouble getting AppleCare One to work, it might be because you need a new device that is eligible for AppleCare to be added.