Why is apple so unhelpful when it comes to activation lock?

I bought an iphone second hand and the owner removed their information from the cellphone, I signed in on my icloud… Connected everything and that was that. However when i updated the phone to 7.1.1 my phone was now asking for the activation lock. I explained to apple the situation and even had photos in my photostream to prove the phone was connected to my icloud. Why won't apple help me when i have proof? The previous owner obviously had to be the one to sign themself out because they made the removal of their account possible only by having them have to enter their password. Why won't they help me?

Apple's policy. Stockpiling more cash than any other company on earth in the history of mankind takes precious time and doesn't involve third party transactions. They don't care. They sell new phones. They have never ever involved themselves in third party transactions or people's drama. Sure, you can 'prove' it's your's but they don't know that. You could've photo shopped a receipt, bribed some guy off the street, made up a great story. They don't know and don't have the time to find out if it's legit/lost/stolen or you just had a falling out with your ex and they reported it stolen and locked it. Contact the previous owner again for the unlock. They should've removed that phone from their account and logged that account out of the phone. Something's not right. Have you even tried you're own iCloud info in it? Have you even set up your own iCloud yet? You said your photos to your iCloud. So, put in the password and move on. Best luck.

What makes you think they should handle this? This is a great security feature, they aren't in charge of little petty arguments between people on who had the phone and who didn't. It's going more this way also, other companies are scrambling to copy the find my iphone features so its going more and more that direction to prevent theft.