Send this in an e-mail to tcook@apple.com. He has a team that reads for stuff like this and can magically fix issues.
I've had to do it before, also for a gift-card-related problem (different from yours), and I was contacted by a member of the Apple executive escalations team a couple days later.
That's an unhelpful and unnecessarily nasty comment. Millions and millions and millions of people trust Apple. Whether you agree or not, to say they "deserve" something like this for doing what any normal person on this earth would do (and is marketed-at to do) is obnoxious.
"deserve" is an unnecessarily harsh word, but I'd be lying if I said you weren't courting fate. The day iCloud is revealed to be a FVEY racket, I won't feel pity for the users.
I don't see stories anymore from this working. Back when it was under Jobs, there were more concessions from his team operating the account. And maybe in the early Cook years. Apple has trimmed a lot of fat.
I did read about part of the product development org having a standup about trending social media cases, and prioritizing followup on items that were under public scrutiny.
I have a friend who did this last year after he had a poor support experience with AppleCare for his Apple Watch and he got a call from Executive support early the next morning
Basically, I bought a physical Apple gift card via the Apple online store, and it was never delivered. UPS tracking (on Apple's own site) showed it never left the origin. I called to get it re-shipped, and they (in so many words) accused me of fraud, because apparently the gift card had been redeemed and drained.
Obviously someone either at Apple's gift card printing contractor or at UPS snatched it.
Apple's suggested "solution" was for me to issue a chargeback on my credit card -- yes, the vendor suggesting a chargeback. I refused, because the credit card in question was my Apple Card, and I have read elsewhere that doing something like this can lead to your Apple account getting locked.
The exec escalation was the only way I got it resolved. It was Kafkaesque.
I think one major lesson to take from this (and other physical gift card vulnerabilities, like people that go and peek at the numbers on unredeemed cards in stores and then wait for them to be loaded) is: don't use physical gift cards anymore.
I've had to do it before, also for a gift-card-related problem (different from yours), and I was contacted by a member of the Apple executive escalations team a couple days later.