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Comment by todd3834 | Hacker News Reader

I’m an Apple fan all around. (Even own a homepod). But I have to disagree with “cancelling is easy”. Cancelling a subscription on iOS is so hidden that I can’t say it’s easy. I hope they change this.

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Not to mention this new(?) tactic with "free trials" that automatically turn into a subscription.

I was trying out a bunch of weather apps (why is is so hard for a simple concise app with a radar without a bunch of needless fluff/wasted space) and 1 of them automatically turned into $99/year after 3 or 7 days (I forget).

The app didn't even work and would almost _always_ have the time wrong making the weather HUD also inaccurate. I tried to tell apple about this and they refused a refund. Thankfully my credit card company allowed a chargeback

I can only blame myself for forgetting these things, but it would be nice for a prompt prior to the subscription starting next time you use the app.

Europe (maybe just the UK but I think it was EU-wide) banned claiming something is "free" if in fact you must sign up to pay money.

You can tell people what it'll cost and ask for a card, or, you can say it is free and not ask up front (you can ask later if you want but having not given you a card for the free trial if the customer has lost interest they're not going to give you one later)

Chrisan was presented with that information in the subscription confirmation page. (A free trial is a subscription with a delayed start.) However, the weather app probably misrepresented what the subscription confirmation would say. The FTC in the US has rules surrounding this but they obviously aren’t as well applied as they should be in the App Store.

Quebec has a similar law. As a result, Canadian services with a format of "free one month trial and then $x for the next twelve months" tend to be available in Quebec as "$x for the first thirteen months".

My experience is that it is easy once you find the right screen. A Google search always leads me to the right screen. Apple could be better at making the location more transparent but they couldn’t make the act of canceling, once you get to the right location, easier.

Sure but the fact you have to google it every time is not exactly what I’d expect from Apple. I’m sure they will improve this. They must get a ton of support calls over this.

As a dev who works on a fairly large app with an in-app subscription, we are the ones that get a ton of support requests, even having the unsubscribe link in our own settings.

The problem is a huge percentage of users assume deleting the app will also stop their subscription, but it does not.

Sounds like something Apple should fix. They know you have a subscription for the App you're deleting. They should ask

"You have a subscription for this app's services through Apple Pay. Do you want to unsubscribe?"

They could even say something like

"You have a subscription for this app's services through Apple Pay. Do you want to unsubscribe? Note that this app is still installed on your iPad" (assuming you deleted it from your iphone)

As a tangent I notice that while Apple's hardware and OS are best in class their support infrastructure is arguably close to worst in class. Every time I have to deal with their support and order systems (apple.com) I run into issues that make it almost seem like they're still doing everything on paper and that none of their systems are connected.

Anything is easy once you know how to do it. :P

Not necessarily. Have you ever tried cancelling a cable or internet service over the phone?

Yes. In EU it's a piece of cake, as there are laws that protect consumers from companies.

You go to the App Store (logical place to look), tap your profile pic (a standard way of communicating "my account"), and tap your name in the menu. You'll arrive at the Account Settings page which has an obviously labeled Subscriptions button. Once there, subscriptions are neatly sorted into active and expired. Clicking on a subscription instantly shows you all options, you can change among them and get a full prorated refund for time on the old plan. You can cancel with ONE tap (and a confirmation)--cancelling does not interfere with what you've already paid for, and it tells you exactly what date you've paid through. All auth is by Touch/Face ID.

I've never seen a simpler and more straightforward billing UX as Apple's.

> I've never seen a simpler and more straightforward billing UX as Apple's.

Settings -> <Name> -> Subscriptions

I don’t believe this is correct on iOS and it isn’t correct on the Apple TV. In iOS you need to go to

Settings -> iTunes & App Store -> tap on your Apple ID at the top of the screen -> tap on view Apple ID -> scroll to subscriptions and tap on that

It’s not obvious or intuitive in my opinion.

That's the same as going to iTunes Store -> Sroll Down to Apple ID -> Tap Apple ID -> View Apple ID -> Subscriptions on iOS... there is two ways to get to the same thing.

You can also like the parent poster said, use App Store -> Profile Picture -> Tap Apple ID -> Subscriptions.

I didn’t know there was a profile pic in the App Store app until I checked again after reading your comment. I don’t have a profile pic setup so that’s probably why I never noticed the icon on the right hand side of the page. I never thought that could be clicked. It’s not obvious or intuitive to me.

https://imgur.com/a/qhdXiSr

> I've never seen a simpler and more straightforward billing UX as Apple's.

I don't like how it doesn't show the purchase method on the TouchID screen - it's fine if you are using it a lot, but if you only use it infrequently, it's annoying to not know which payment method it is using.

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