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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

Nuking the 24-hour return policy and replacing it with a 15-minute one was a huge mistake. I've seen reviews of people who said they uninstalled it because it didn't download within the 15 minutes, so they had no choice.

Sure, some people will return within 24 hours if they got enough in that time... But seriously, if people can get sick of your game in 24 hours, I don't blame them for refunding.

So now those devs are definitely losing sales, where before they just probably were. I know I'm -much- less likely to purchase an app than before since I have to have 15 minutes free to play with it, where before I could buy something spur of the moment and then refund later that day if it's bad.

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I sell A LOT of units (games) in the Android Market.

The 15 minute window has literally been a Godsend and has had no negative affect on sales at all.

I get far fewer people refunding minutes before the "refund window" is over AND I only received ONE complaint from a customer who thought they still had a 24 hour window a couple days after the new Market app went live.

You are still welcome to email the developer and ask for a refund if you don't like the game. I certainly refund money if someone hates my games, I don't want them leaving bad comments in the Market, and I don't want their money if they don't like my product, that wouldn't be fair.

"...where before I could buy something spur of the moment and then refund later that day if it's bad."

I believe this is exactly why it was "nuked". If it took you a couple hours to decide if the game is "bad", maybe it wasn't that bad and the ~$1 to ~$6 you paid for it was adequate for the time you spent playing it - whether you liked it or not.

When you go to an arcade, if you pump $3 into a machine, play for 4 minutes, and decide to get a refund, do you get it? Nope. The App Market is the new Arcade. BUT you get to keep the game to play over and over and over again for just a few dollars.

EDIT: I'd like to add that in-app purchases will be awesome.

If I bought a game and hated it, I wouldn't email the creator for a refund. I'd either use the built-in refund interface or give a bad review. I suspect most people are the same way.

You seem to be immune to that because you have created good games, but that is far from the norm on the market.

Also, you have no idea how many people didn't buy your game now that they can't refund within 24 hours. Just like piracy, it's impossible to measure actual lost sales. You can only make a guess.

I'm working on a android game start-up, would you mind emailing me? I'd love to ask you a few questions, or at least see what you've put out. Thanks!

It would be nice if the 15 minutes (or whatever timer) started from the initial opening of the app. You can download a bunch and then evaluate when you have spare time.

That's how the iTunes Media Store works when you rent a movie: You get 30 days to start watching it, but once you hit play you have two days before your rental wraps itself up in the eleventh dimension and vanishes into a wormhole. You an pick a few movies , download them, and watch them later.

I'd still be using it today if they rented HD movies to people with Mac Minis.

Yes, but you can't get a refund once you've purchased it, a la Android Market.

It's even a bit worse than that because of the Market's restrictive file-size limitations (versus the App Store). Many larger games download data from some other server after they've launched. It can easily take longer than 15 minutes to go from game-installed to game-being-played.

IMO, 24 hours is too long, and 15 minutes is too short. What's a good time? I would think that 60-120 minutes would be about right.

I'd personally like to see a 2 hour window. That gives enough time to wait for the app to download, and to take some time to actually use it and figure out if it actually does what you need it to do, and then return it if needed. You just can't make any sort of reasonable evaluation with only 15 minutes to do all that.

Why not leave it up to the app developer?

I think I agree with this. It would make perfect sense for the developer to specify the return period. I mean, even a choice between 15min/ 60min/ 24h would probably be enough.

In honesty, though, I'd be very surprised if the vast majority of Android handset owners were even aware that the 15 minute return policy existed, nevermind that it was previously 24 hours. And in this respect, it still doesn't compare unfavourably to iOS appstore.

The 15 minute return policy is displayed very prominently after you buy an app.

But you're right, since a majority have never purchased an app, they may not be aware of it.

Actually, that 15 minute policy is a big source of piracy. All it takes is a rooted phone and you can get ANY app you want for free. Honestly, from a developer's point of view, Apple's way of doing business is a lot better.

Also, if you're like me, I can get sick of any game in 24 hours. Or at least, complete all the levels (Angry birds just takes a few h), so with the previous 24 policy you could enjoy paid games for free legally.

Wow. That's a pretty dodgy thing to do to a fellow developer.

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