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Comment by bsg75 | Hacker News Reader

I'm actually happier to pay a small premium for IAP based subscriptions because of the cancellation options.

Having been subjected to asinine "retention" policies that make ending a subscription service an onerous and time consuming process (ex: NYT), and having seen first hand how a company purposefully makes subscription cancellations difficult, being able to open a single interface and click `Cancel` is a massive UX benefit.

I'm not debating if a 30% cut is reasonable, but in the drive to move everything to a subscription model, I have started avoiding services without an IAP option.

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This is the opposite argument to what the problem is right now. It's not that IAP is bad, or that it shouldn't be available. It's that there's no alternative permitted in addition to Apple's IAP model. You're not even allowed to HINT at the fact that you might have alternative ways to pay for the things you want to pay for. Even if your name is hugeservicethateveryoneknows, you can't tell people that you have a website where they can manage their account.

IAP is great, and setting rules such that if apps offer IAP, they have to at least offer the platform's own payment service as initial and preferred choice, is perfectly reasonable. But it's extortion if you own the entire ecosystem and promise to ban anyone who wants to offer additional, alternative means of account/service management for a product/service that you have no business ownership of.

This seems like a pretty large misreading of the situation.

Yes, the most disagreeable thing about Apple's IAP policies is where they forbid links to alternative purchase pages. But it is also the smallest of the current complaints.

It's not "additional" means of purchases many companies are pushing for. They want to be able to avoid offering Apple's IAP whatsoever.

I mean, ProtonMail did not have IAP in their app at all, but offered options to pay for their service on their website. Apple insisted, as you suggest, that they "at least offer the platform's own payment service as initial and preferred choice," and now ProtonMail is saying that is "Mafia extortion."

Yea, I have trouble understanding how this is any different than how people purchase things in person. When you go to Best Buy and buy a TV they obviously aren't going to let the TV manufacturers advertise that you can buy the TV for cheaper directly from the manufacturer.

Obviously it's not a 1-1 comparison, but Apple is giving the apps a similar platform to sell their product.

It's not a 1-1 comparison only because it sidesteps the crux of the debate completely and focuses on the strawman portion. What's argued as anticompetitive against these app stores is the integration of consumer devices with storefronts not that independent storefronts exist and don't advertise other storefronts.

Well, a slightly flawed analogy is that you bought a Best Buy house and the only way to get a TV is to get it through Best Buy.

It's the fact that not only are Apple providing a platform to sell the product, they're also the only distribution method for the product and are slowly clamping down on the loophole of providing a "free" app that requires a subscription bought elsewhere.

To continue the flawed analogy, the Best Buy houses are clearly the best houses in most other respects in the opinion of a lot of people and it's hard for the market to apply pressure about this one specific limitation. Whether that's fine or not is basically the philosophical argument being had.

> Well, a slightly flawed analogy is that you bought a Best Buy house and the only way to get a TV is to get it through Best Buy.

Not really. For Epic, you can buy things in Fortnite on other platforms and you get them in the iOS account. Same goes for ProtonMail I assume. The issue is that you can't advertise in the app that users can purchase the things elsewhere.

Except in that real world, you only have two choices, Best Buy or Walmart ( iOS and Android ).

The problem and complain is much more complex once all these additional factors comes into play. It isn't so much a problem if we look at it in isolation. As in your Best Buy example, which I agree is perfectly valid.

The huge difference is you can buy your TV from many places (BestBuy, Target, Walmart, Amazon, etc) but you can't sell your iOS app outside the AppStore.

That's not what Apple insisted, if you have IAP you can't have a button below that says "or buy direct 30% cheaper". It's either IAP or no mention of payments.

ProtonMail had no IAP in their app at all, but offered paid subscriptions on their website. Apple insisted that they offer IAP in the app, and ProtonMail is upset. Here:

> "Out of the blue, one day they said you have to add in-app purchase to stay in the App Store. They stumbled upon something in the app that mentioned there were paid plans, they went to the website and saw there was a subscription you could purchase, and then turned around and demanded we add IAP. There's nothing you can say to that. They are judge, jury, and executioner on their platform, and you can take it or leave it. You can't get any sort of fair hearing to determine whether it's justifiable or not justifiable, anything they say goes. We simply complied in order to save our business."

Yes, as I said, ideally Apple would allow other forms of payment alongside IAP, but that's not even the issue here. The issue here, as I said, was that ProtonMail was trying to avoid implementing IAP at all.

The problem is bigger then that. Apple takes a 30% cut(and the fanboys will say it is legal and fair and theoretically Apple could make it 99% and should still be legal) and on top of that cut they are forcing you not to inform the customer about alternatives, YES Apple prevents you to be informed by better reals and deciding for yourself what is better, so you could say that Apple is protecting you because you are too stupid to decide or you can just be honest and say it is just for money and Apple protects their budget.

Yeah, Apple's practices are far from ideal, your insults aside, but I'm not sure how much of that is relevant here. On this thread at least, nobody seems to have mentioned percentages but you.

This is false, at the moment I wrote this comment the "Apple tax" was mentioned a lot. IMO the fact that is 3%, 30% or 99% is irrelevant . What is important is that Apple uses it's dominance to remove choice from users.

I am sorry if fanboy will hurt someone feeling, but if for example: Google (or Apple) would have a new rule that if you want your website to be opened in Chrome(or Safari) and not marked as malware you have to include Google Pay(or Apple Pay) and remove the Visa/PayPal and all the other payment options and some person would say "this is exactly what we wanted, no more choices - force everyone to a Google(or Apple ) tax , this choices are overwhelming my poor brain then tell me the correct adjective to describe this person that thinks removing choice and forcing the big coorporation way is the best thing.

This is the reason free software is important. Imagine json beeing licensed to pay per file. I do also expect Mirosft to take the word ```open source``` down, because it will strengthen them- but cuts outliners. Gates was great.

I don't see how any of that is not relevant here.

Cut >50% and it's now a extortion with no further analysis. And extortion is illegal in any civilised state, including USA.

>Cut >50% and it's now a extortion

Extortion (or blackmail) has a legal definition and this isn't it. In California (where Apple is incorporated and headquartered), the statute states:

Extortion is the obtaining of property or other consideration from another, with his or her consent, or the obtaining of an official act of a public officer, induced by a wrongful use of force or fear, or under color of official right.

Wrongful use of fear exists in this context as there is a threat to expel the developer out of Apple ecosystem if he does not accept the cut.

> The problem is bigger then that. Apple takes a 30% cut

You have described a different objection, which is not "bigger". It's a different problem people have.

> they are forcing you not to inform the customer about alternatives

That is part of what's going on but you're missing the main issues. They are forcing an app owner to add a purchase that gives Apple revenue if Apple can find ANY other way that the owner is offering to be paid for app features. There was no advertisement or inform within the app at all. Also, you cannot inform the use about WHY the alternative exists (apple gets part of it).

That's how it's worse than even you think.

If Apple thinks people are paying for something, they force you to add something that is preferred that pays them. It's extortion (via a protection racket, "i heard you got an inheritance, be a real same if something happened to your app") or racketeering, depending on how broadly you want to define things.

In addition to the annual $100 (if it hasn't changed) developer fee, should they start charging a per install/download fee. What do you say to that?

I also don't like Apple's insistence of "only IAP or nothing at all (not even a mention)" but how do you suggest they make profit from the developer side? Or they should not do that at all?

It should be 10%? 20? 5%? What will be an acceptable %? Who decides that? What's the framework for deciding that?

I see one solution, and it's far fetched, developers/companies should fund and push for an alternative open platform, along with phone/device makers. Something that's not tightly controlled like iOS and Android. But then they will be losing on iOS. I think they will have a choice to make, consumers as well. Also, it's not an easy and short term solution.

We gleefully buy Macs, but imagine you buy a Lenovo/etc laptop and you are told you can't install Linux on this, only Windows. I won't be comfortable with that, but I am comfortable with the Mac buy where I Windows can be installed only via Mac (and Linux isn't even supported) - of course there could be work around with lots of circus and you cna live with a broken system.

Problem is not the cost. Problem is mono/duopoly of walled gardens.

I can bet $100 even if someone could raise a $100 billion they will still have no chance of breaking the current Mono/Duopoly of iOS and Android.

As much as I wish there is third option ( I cant believe Microsoft is something I considered, giving what I went though in the 90s ) the Smartphone moat make it pretty much indestructible.

I still remember thinking, we could make something better than Microsoft with tens of billions dollars, decent management and strategy in the 90s. Despite my disagreement with Apple's App Store, I am not sure I can make something better than Apple. It is so well run, with so many loyal customers, that when they were doing good ( Under Steve Jobs ) I was very happy. Now under Tim Cook, it is damn right scary.

I'd take that bet if it was the right person raising the $100B. It'd have to be an Elon Musk type with $70MM+ to develop the foundational ecosystem first to solve for many of the core problems to counter the various layers of walled garden ecosystems to capture a willingly attentive audience and fan base; I can see the path - I just don't have the starting funds and I can't really even begin to execute on it in a slower fashion due to pain I have that causes severe executive dysfunction - there is a path there and hopefully there is a platform and systems thinker out there with their own funds to put into the same system I've dreamed up over the years.

The app store ecosystem clearly has value, and I think Apple are entitled to make a profit off of it. (See, for example, comments below about how difficult it is to cancel subscriptions to other kinds of services.) The problem is that the 30% Apple charges has no relationship whatsoever to the amount of value that the app store provides - it's simply how much Apple can get away with charging. If alternate app stores were allowed, or alternate payment mechanisms were allowed, Apple would only be able to afford to charge a premium commensurate with how much "better" their experience is.

> It should be 10%? 20? 5%? What will be an acceptable %? Who decides that? What's the framework for deciding that?

The framework is called competition. If Apple's IAP billing or the whole app store in general faced any competition on iOS they wouldn't be able to charge anywhere close to 30%.

But Apple designed their platform specifically to prevent that, to retain a tight grip over app distribution and billing.

> I see one solution, and it's far fetched, developers/companies should fund and push for an alternative open platform, along with phone/device makers.

Good solution, but we won't get to it. The moat of Apple-Google mobile duopoly is way too massive to overcome naturally at this point. We need some regulation to reign this in. Mobile computing is just as essential as telephony and internet access. We can't have two companies dictating the rules of the game for the whole economy.

As other said, competition, Look at web hosting, how many choices you have with different prices, features and support.

My main point about he number x% tax is that the number itself is irrelevant, a judge should not decide that if the number is 30 then Apple is fine but if is 31 or 29 then is not fine, so people looking at the number are looking at the wrong thing.

Yes, ProtonMail's ideal is no IAP. That doesn't mean the "Mafia Extortion" isn't related to the above. It's perfectly possible for ProtonMail to be angry about more than 1 policy at a time and at varying levels accordingly.

It's also possible for 2 people to read the same thing and come to different conclusions so please don't imply others must have misread something to have disagreed with you. Not only does it not move the conversation forward any it's needlessly insulting.

It sounds like they weren't taking any payments via phone. Purchase only happened on the web, and Apple reviewers found text that led to web.

It would be one thing if they were selling phone and skipping Apple that way. But if their are no phone payments, and only non-obvious links, it should not be required (or maybe I am misinterpreting this)

Yep. I’m guessing the ProtonMail app opens a web view to display their terms of use, or some informational page, completely unrelated to subscriptions. However if any of those pages link to a purchase page, no matter how circuitously, it is taken as a pretext to require IAP.

Yep. Having gone through multiple review cycles with Apple, they'll look for any hint of a way that a user might wind up paying through a different mechanism and force you to excise that. A great example we faced was a feature that was only offered on the web (it didn't make sense on a phone), and we weren't allowed to link to it or mention it (even though you got access with an in-app subscription) because someone might go check it out on the web and subscribe via the CTA on the page.

And your reading of the situation lacks one crucial piece of information: Apple does not allow app authors to forward the “Apple tax” to the user. For example, if a newspaper subscription costs 300$ on the website, the publisher must not charge more than that in the app store event though he only gets 210$ after the “Apple tax”.

That has not been true since 2011, nine years ago!

https://venturebeat.com/2011/06/09/apple-backtracks-on-in-ap...

As your sibling comment demonstrates, Apple will try and try again to reinstate that policy. One way or the other, they’ll squeeze developers until the last ounce of profit goes to Apple. They are the supermarket chain of software now, and that’s what supermarket chains do.

I mean if you're going to hang Apple for crimes they haven't committed yet then you could at least be more creative about them.

Apple is going to force all apps that offer messaging as a feature to integrate with iMessage!

Apple is going to force companies with an iOS app to turn over 30% of their total gross revenue! And it's additive!

If you don't buy an iCloud subscription Apple is going to randomly delete some of your alarms!

You joke, but that’s what they do. Even with no rule change, the obligation to have IAPs has clearly ramped up in the last year or so, simply by getting reviewers go through each and every app-screen with a finer comb. What else will they ramp up in order to increase their profits? All developers in the appstore are effectively sharecroppers; when the landowner needs some money, he can squeeze them at will.

I don't think this is true.

Look, Apple does all kinds of terrible things, and I definitely think the government ought to take action against them.

But Apple one time, in 2011, announced that they were going to put in a rule that you couldn't charge a different amount outside the App Store than inside, and when furor erupted, they never implemented the policy. That's it. One time, never actually in practice.

They are still 100% terrible with this nonsense about not being allowed to link to or even mention alternative forms of payment, but let's focus on what they actually do that's bad, rather than what we imagine they might like to do in alternate realities.

This isn't actually the case. That policy was part of a set of changes that were meant to go into effect in July but that Apple rolled back. You're allowed to charge a different price but you can't tell the user that they can get it cheaper elsewhere or that you're paying 30% to Apple.

Man, I thought the first one was damning, but uh, this second explanation is just more plain non-competitive behavior.

It may be ProtonMail's situation but speaking as a consumer, far from being the smallest complaint; my largest complaint is that Apple intentionally require third parties to mislead me about my options.

I'd rathe like Apple to do what they are doing with "Sign In With Apple". If you have any other sing up option in your app you have to have Sing in With Apple as well. I don't mind that.

If you want to be a payment gateway, compete with other payment gateways. If the app has any other payment method integration, there should be IAP as well.

But the problem is: if IAP is available, at least I am never going to opt for custom payment methods ever unless there's a clear cost benefit. Just like the OP I've had nightmares dealing with cancellation and automatic reactivations (of course that means automatic billing as well).

But the question is will Apple allow apps to show, or does it even make sense to do this:

Pay With Apple: $13

Pay with CC: $10.03

Pay with X: $11

This doesn't look like a solution at all now.

Your question has been answered multiple times in this thread and the answer appears to clearly be no. Apple will not allow an app to even mention that they can get it at a cheaper price on another device. Personally, I think if Apple will continue to insist on this anti-competitive behavior, iOS users should just pay the 30% more for their subscriptions (so app developers end up with the same revenue) for the benefits you describe unless they're savvy enough to actively look for other payment options on desktop, Android, etc.

And honestly, I have no problem with Apple even insisting there be an Apple IAP model (like they require "Sign in with Apple" offered alongside alternatives). Because choosing to pay the Apple tax is perfectly fine, especially if you feel it provides you benefits.

The issue is Apple's requirement that you can only use IAP, cannot offer alternative, cheaper, prices, cannot direct people to your website to sign up for things, and cannot even disclose what portion of the bill goes to Apple.

Your post proves Apple could still make money with offering it as an option for informed users. But Apple is being a bully and a thug by disallowing alternatives, and actively preventing app developers from telling people about them.

What Epic did with Fortnite should be the gold standard: Buy direct or pay through Apple. The latter providing potentially better privacy/security and user experience at a price premium.

I somewhat disagree. I think the gold standard would have been for Fortnite to simply increase the prices of IAP purchases on iOS devices to pass the 30% on to consumers who choose to use iOS IAP.

I can't seem to find a rule that says pricing must be the same for IAP as elsewhere in current guidelines:

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#sub...

That seems like the best of both worlds in the sense that as a user you can choose to purchase in iOS for convenience or go to Fortnite elsewhere and purchase there for cheaper. This move just seems like Epic wanted to pick a fight, they weren't actually interested in offsetting the Apple cut.

I think there's something inherently unethical about Apple making it against the rules to let people know they're paying more to buy it on Apple though.

That’s like Apple selling their watches in a Target store and on their box advertise lower priced wrist bands on apple.com on the box. No way would Target tolerate that.

I think it's more like Target dictating what marketing materials may not appear inside the box, because this happens after you already have the app.

Lower price on apple.com ? Hahaha...good one!

> ex: NYT

NYT is a great example of this. It took me multiple attempts over a span of 2 days to cancel my NYT subscription. There have been a few times since then when I've been tempted to re-subscribe (their election results tools are great), but remembering how hard it was to unsubscribe, I don't think I'll go back.

Same experience here. I've cancelled all subscriptions that use this tactic and made myself a promise to never participate in implementing such a system.

Whenever I subscribe to any service on Apple I will immediately unsubscribe. If I find myself wanting to use the service again after it expires it's a simple tap to resubscribe. I think I actually end up with more subscriptions this way, but at least I know I'm getting use out of all of them. I wish I could a similar setup for all subscription services.

Big companies tend to be run by psychopaths who think it is ok to make it impossible to cancel a subscription.

It took me ages (more than a year I think) to unsubscribe from AWS. Luckily since we've deleted all the contents the fees were pretty nominal but still ...

Am curious: what made it so difficult to cancel / unsubscribe?

If you subscribed with a credit card, did the option of chargebacks ever come up? (Asking because these sorts of situations seem perfectly in line for disputing with your credit card provider.)

Chargebacks are way harder in real life than people think. It took me multiple calls, emailing evidence/screenshots, and months to get a $300 charge back processed. That was for a completely fraudulent charge at a bar. The way it was explained to me, banks will only process a chargeback when you have provided evidence of trying to contact the merchant and they refused to provide a refund and couldn’t show a valid contract supporting the charge. So in this case you couldn’t just charge back NYT just because their cancelation policy is slightly burdensome. And they don’t stop that business from charging you again, so even if you can charge back a charge, it doesn’t solve the issue of canceling the subscription.

I've only made a few chargebacks but each time it was really easy. I've never had to provide any sort of documentation and have gotten the money back quickly each time.

The most recent time was with a company that wouldn't honor their refund policy. They were awfully rude over email so I made sure to take screenshots of the policy on their website in case they disputed the chargeback and/or changed the wording on their site. Turns out, there wasn't even an option to upload that information when I filed with my credit card, and I won the case without doing anything further.

Where did you get your credit card? Name-and-shame is important when dealing with corporations, but so is name-and-praise for the few that actually work correctly.

USAA credit cards have been fantastic for me over a 31 year period. In that time, I can only recall 3 chargebacks and all were decided in my favor quickly and easily. Other service is also great; cash back levels are just “okay” but I’m not giving up convenience and USAA service for 50bps more cash back.

Good idea. The card is through Chase. I've had the card for years and overall I haven't had any big problems.

Maybe it depends on your bank? I’ve had to do a couple chargebacks on Chase CC’s in the $200-300 range and I just had to click a button in their web portal.

It was more difficult for me to get reimbursed when I tried depositing $300 in a Chase ATM and then it crashed halfway through. But that just involved a 2 minute phone call to resolve

U-haul charged me three times for the same thing. I spent several hours on the phone with u-haul trying to get them to reverse it. Ultimately they said the agreed I was triple charged but they couldn't reverse it and I had to contact my bank

It took EIGHT MONTHS and SEVEN phone calls with my bank to get them to charge back. And haul fought me every step of the process when they're the ones that told me to go to my bank. U-haul went as far as to straight up lie to my bank. I'm surprised they didn't forge documents with all the shit they were trying

Chargebacks only delay the inevitable. If the card is still in use they'll simply try again at the next billing cycle.

I had an Amazon subscription charge I could not track down for a year. Every month I would call Amazon, who's CSR couldn't find it, and then my bank to reverse the charge.

Found out I had Amazon Premier still signed up on Amazon IT. The card worked globally but subscriptions displayed locally.

IIRC, each chargeback charges the merchant a nonrefundable $35 fee. So even if you get your $10 back, the person who took your money is out $45. If someone were to keep charging me after a chargeback was won in my favor, I’d just keep issuing more chargebacks to spite them. They also can only lose disputes so many times before Visa or MasterCard looks closer at them.

Had similar problem with The Times in the UK, but it seems it's pretty common for newspapers.

The online subscription could only be cancelled by telephone, on a phone line with small and inconvenient windows of opportunity, with long waits. When you get through, you have the normal retention/upsell attempts, and then are told that it will take at least two months to process your cancellation, and that you will continue to be charged in the meantime.

It was easier to cancel my card, at which point they somehow managed to withdraw access as soon as the first billing failed.

Usually I respond with where is that in your contract? If it isn't there with my signature I will be charging those two months back.

The process to unsubscribe should be no more onerous than the process to subscribe. The NYT falls flat on this one intentionally I'm sure.

I'm not sure if it's still the case, but...

If you change your address to an address in California you're given the option to cancel online.

Many local libraries offer NYT subscriptions through their portal. I think they only last for a year, so you have to renew them each year, but it's better than having to worry about cancellation.

This is a good tip.

In several cities where I've lived, your library card would grant you online access to dozens or hundreds of newspapers from around the world. Some you could even download to your iPad to read later.

You know, this hasn't been my experience. The ability to get CS via chat to work on subscriptions stops/cancels has worked for me, albeit with a non-blocking wait. Edit0: wanted to add that my subscriptions (personal, gift) were done via PayPal (pre-approved payments) so I could cancel via there as well but the NYT chat/cs worked fine for me.

Mine was by credit card. I called the support number, got picked up quickly, told them I didn't have enough time for it and wanted to cancel. I also made it clear that I just wanted to cancel my newspaper subscription, not my crossword subscription, and mentioned that I realized I would no longer get 1/2 off on the crossword puzzle subscription.

He cancelled the newspaper subscription, and then told me that I was mistaken about no longer getting 1/2 off on the crossword puzzle subscription. I'd only go back to full price on that if I let it expire and then re-ordered. As long as I have the subscription on auto-renew and those payments go through, it will stay at 1/2 price.

I immediately tried to cancel my subscription after discovering that they will still show ads even if you paid for the content.

I saw that coming and turned the tables on them by initiating a payment dispute and a merchant block with my CC company after I realized that the NYT is wasting my time intentionally.

It took me multiple attempts over a span of 2 days to cancel my NYT subscription

I've had to cancel the Times a couple of times over the years. Telling them that I lost my job only got one offer to extend at a discounted rate. But what really worked well was this:

NYT: "Can I ask why you want to cancel your subscription?"

Me: "No."

It's not on their script, so the operator just took care of it immediately.

On the plus side, at least you can speak to a human being at the Times pretty quickly. Good luck getting through to anyone at the Albuquerque Journal in under three days ("It looks like you're calling from a cell phone. Let's continue this conversation by text!").

Wouldn't surprise if it IS on their script. If they do too overtly scummy things bad things will start happening to them. The kind of guy who says "No." is the kind of guy who will chargeback or write a letter to his representative.

It might help to set your billing address to some random place in California. It worked for me a few days ago when I canceled my WSJ subscription, a "Cancel subscription" button magically appeared in the settings that wasn't there before.

I actually tried that with NYTimes (I cancelled during the SlateStarCodex debacle) and it didn't work. Ultimately, I had setup payment via paypal and canceled the automatic payments.

I find it absurd that subscription services don't offer a "Cancel Subscription" button somewhere. That being said, it's also absurd that I have to pay Apple a 30% premium for this "feature."

In the EU consumer protection law mandate this. You have to be able to cancel in all the same ways that you can sign up. The most common way to pay subscriptions is with SEPA direct debit, and banks have to let you revoke those authorizations even retro-actively for 90 days.

I think a biggissue in this space is how dated the US banking industry is. They trail behind in so many ways that are anti-consumer and then they're used to justify draconion mafia moves like this one from Apple.

As a consumer, I really like(d) my US bank accounts besides some technological limitations. If you can afford to pay your bill every month (worth emphasizing), credit cards have far better benefits and are more consumer-friendly than in seemingly any other country I've been to or looked into, and are even more advantageous abroad than any domestic credit card where I live.

This applies to checking accounts as well. I pay no fees on my account with no minimum balance or usage restrictions and still have free unlimited ATM use worldwide (i.e. my bank doesn't charge a fee for the use or currency conversion and they actually refund me the foreign ATM's fees) and fee-free overdrafting on my account (paying a very nominal margin trading interest rate). I actually still use it even though I don't live in the US because it's cheaper to use here than my domestic bank account...

US consumer laws have been woefully inadequate for decades, and this is another instance where they’re lacking. You can issue an individual chargeback if you happened to use a credit card, but that can have adverse effects on both you and the merchant. If you used an ATM/bank card, your bank may go to bat for you, but there’s no guarantee.

I’m in the same boat re: Apple/Google subscription options. They don’t have a vested interest in keeping you attached to a single subscription, so they’ll keep the cancellation option easy in favor of keeping you in their ecosystem.

Good luck cancelling pretty much any service in Germany without literally sending them a letter in the mail, regardless of how you signed up.

Germany is very specific in many of these things and the rest of EU is different :-).

Right, but that contradicts the parent assertion that it's outright illegal. FWIW I'm not sure I buy that - there are way too many services and companies, large and small, that don't have this symmetry of subscription.

It's an EU directive.

It's a recent EU directive (2017 I think) and might not be implemented in every national law yet, I don't know. A lot of companies haven't caught up yet and enforcement might vary.

By now it’s law (unless I’m misremembering badly) that you need to be able to cancel the same way you signed up. So unless you signed up via a letter, you’ll be able to cancel without one, even in Germany.

I don't know when you last tried to cancel anything, but if you cite the court case from 2017 on this, pretty much every service is very quick to accept your cancellation via email ;)

SEPA direct debit? First time I hear that anyone is using this for subscriptions, aren't you from Germany? :-) SEPA direct debit is also used here (Slovakia) but usually to pay for internet/phone/electricity/ and other bills, you basically give them a mandate to draw up to a certain amount and you can revoke it anytime. Debit (or less common credit) cards are I think pretty common for subscriptions but I haven't heard about any shady tactics of preventing you from unsubscribing, I guess that's because all of that is regulated. And in worst case I guess I could call my bank.

Netherlands. Internet/phone etc are also subscriptions, as least in Dutch the word for a Netflix and a phone subscription is the same.

I don’t think stopping automatic payments automatically cancels the subscription. It just stops the money flow, but keeps you liable for the payments.

It means the company has to make an effort to get money flowing again, though. Many will know that’s not worth it and stop the service instead.

(Corrections welcome)

That's correct. However, it's useful for situations where you tried to unsubscribe, and have proof, and the company is still charging.

But there are some who will let you accrue your debt over the years and then send you to collections.

30% is not an amount I would consider a "small" premium.

> I'm not debating if a 30% cut is reasonable

Neither am I. I'm debating whether it is small.

> I'm actually happier to pay a small premium

The premium is actually higher than that. For $100, the developer gets $70. Which means the premium is $30 on a $70 base price, i.e. a ~42% higher price. That's a very steep price for easier payment cancellation.

It is the percentage of the market price that the customer paid, not what developer got. You're twisting this.

Think about it this way - if Apple was not in the middle, the developer would have received $100. So it is 30% less than what they would have received without Apple cut.

They meant the user pays a 42% premium. If the developer needs to earn $70 they need to charge $100 on the App Store which is a 42% increase for the user. So if you’re talking about passing along those costs it’s +42% on every purchase.

No! The supply-demand curve intersects at $100 and not $70. 70/30 split is an internal transaction and cost of doing business. No different than distributor cut if you’re selling physical products.

The customer paid $100. That is by definition the price. All costs are relative to the price. For example, sales tax or transaction fees.

>if Apple was not in the middle, the developer would have received $100.

You are never going to get 100% because of payment processing, license management, and content hosting costs. If not Apple, then somebody else. You can have a payment processor and manage the licensing and hosting yourself. Or, you could use an all-in-one vendor, but you will still be paying 10-20%.

Yes, Apple subscriptions are a reliable way to signup for HBO or Showtime to binge-watch a specific show. Signup and immediately cancel the subscription, that gives you 30 days to watch. No further payment management actions needed.

It is funny that if you sign up for a 7 day free trial of Apple TV+ that if you cancel immediately before the end of the 7 days your trial is up immediately as well.

Rules for thee...

But that's a free trial. If you sign up for an Apple TV+ subscription and immediately cancel, it does the same thing as any other subscription.

Free trial is a bit different then what the parent was describing though. Which is paying for a month and turning off auto-renew effectively.

Also applies to 1-year Apple TV trial.

You may be interested in https://privacy.com/. I use it for all online subscriptions. It allows me to block all transactions, which brings me back control of what I am paying for.

Users who don't like Apple policies are often told to 'switch to Android'. But how one does that when the subscription cannot be managed without an Apple device/account and there's no way to 'pass' your subscription directly to the merchant?

That's pretty much the definition of lock-in - there's no way to cut Apple out. Apple on the other hand could remove the user out by banning all its subscriptions - which is far more damaging than any one merchant deciding to do so. The power imbalance is utterly on Apple's side.

Hmm interesting dilemma I hadn't considered. I've been pretty okay with blaming low information consumers for buying any Apple product, but this is totally different.

How can users escape Apple? You are not the first person to complain about getting locked in because they used an Apple account.

I don't have a good solution, but maybe this will be a good lesson you can carry on for the rest of your life.

You're right. The "just switch to Android" excuse is so disingenuous, as the problem here is not just the switching cost for users, but the cost for businesses who might only employ iOS developers.

Saying that a company "just" has to fire most of its staff if Apple ever detrimentally change their App Store rules is more obviously unreasonable than telling a user to buy a new phone.

While I don't have any data on it. I think that retention tactics that drag out the process might be more harmful in the future. Especially in terms of brand image. I might be cancelling the service for a short while or I might be switching companies/priorities. If the cancellation process is tedious, I won't feel like returning to that service.

In terms of the argument here, it feels like Proton Mail is trying to mirror Spotify's argument. The only problem is that, Spotify was a direct competitor to Apple Music. This is entirely different. Apple is providing a marketplace for apps, and many companies like Proton Mail are actually exploiting the system.

The only fault here is Apple's approach to the issue. But in this specific case, I don't think there's any mafia action going on unlike the whole Spotify drama.

> I think that retention tactics that drag out the process might be more harmful in the future.

I agree, but the case I directly observed was when the only focus was on the current period. What happened in the current month or quarter was the only concern. Long term effects were "too complex to worry about". This form of business myopia is all too common.

It's awful that in today's world, a feature of a platform is that they don't partake in a particular scummy business practice. It's a shame that we even have this issue.

Blame the "no regulation" crowd for that. Well functioning regulation and consumer protection is what promotes good things by forcing bad actors to get in line.

In theory, a competitive market could achieve the same goals, but in practice, it seems like marketplaces often need some regulatory nudging to get over the humps.

Every time we say "in theory a competitive market could achieve the same goals," we find that the entrepeneurs don't have the same goals. The problem isn't the mechanism of capitalism, it's the naive belief that consumer goals and seller goals are aligned.

Actually the problem is more that the theoretical concept of a competitive market bears about as much resemblance to any real consumer goods market as a homogenous sphere of bone, meat and skin in a frictionless vacuum bears to a cow.

Agreed.

Completely unregulated free markets lead to extremes like slavery and leaded toys.

Regulatory practices can be abused or coopted (leading to regulatory capture) but that shouldn't mean we shouldn't keep pushing.

Would you frequent a completely unmoderated online forum? We all know how chatroulette turned out...

There's no guarantee that regulation is good regulation.

Very true, which is why a smart merchant won't push their luck by abusing their customers.

Turns out a lot of them, such as the NYT, aren't that smart.

And there is no guarantee that bad regulation is worse than no regulation.

I feel it's the contrary. We are generally happy to refund customers that are not happy with our service, but the app store is the only payment system where we cannot refund them (I don't really know what the UX looks like on the customer side, but I think they have to contact Apple to ask for the refund and it's not always as easy as it should to get the refund)

Note that things might have changed since I worked on this stuff.

It's the same for Android too

No, I believe we can refund ourselves payments on the play store (or at least I'm pretty sure we at least used to)

I meant the calling up an Appstore rep and asking for the refund part. I know you definitely have to have a human to human interaction to get a Playstore refund.

I can confirm it's not straightforward to get a refund from Apple for an App Store purchase, it was for me at least.

In the most recent case I tried to request a refund immediately after buying an app, only to get a vague and unhelpful error message. After a little Googling I learned that you have to wait a period of a few hours before requesting a refund. Of course I forgot to go back and request the refund later so I ended up paying for an app that didn't do what I expected it to.

I think HN discussions have always been focusing on developer/business side of things but people don't realize that users - they don't care what happens in the backend. They care about the experience and Apple delivers, and then some.

I think Apple's 30% can be debated but a vanishingly small slice of users know this and care about it, millions of users just want to do their thing with beautiful ease and experience.

I find it so weird because retail seems to be a huge race towards the lowest quality due to demand for the lowest prices. If you put 2 identical products in the retail world and charged +42% for one of them no one would buy it. My impression is that it’s tough to sell a much better product at higher prices.

The only way I can make it work in my mind is that from the users’ perspective there are no alternatives. IE: They don’t know it’s 30% off at the store down the road.

No reason to think that this UX can't be duplicated in non-Apple app stores. It only artificially looks like that because Apple forces users and devs to only use their store. If users don't trust other App stores, they can simply avoid using them. Millions of people trust non-apple online stores with their money. Apple doesn't have a monopoly on good customer service either.

Why not just use temporary card numbers, a la Privacy.com (I am not affiliated with them, just a user)?

I've taken to using Privacy/temp card numbers for all subscriptions. They have strict spending limits set and if needed, I'll deactivate the number.

Sure, someone probably could send your "debt" to collections, but will they?

I wonder if there's a startup in that. Imagine a site where you pay a small premium and they manage your subscriptions - handling payment, cancellation and so on for you. You can see all of your subs, maybe even compare deals and stuff

Regarding the NYT: either use paypal, so you can cancel their ability to charge, or a CC with virtual CC numbers (e.g. Citi). That way, you can't be charged unless you want it.

There’s a lot of drama associated with this stuff. 100% of nothing is less than 70% of something.

When I was in college I interned at a company that negotiated retail placements for stuff like software. The 30% slice is a much better model than the terms our customers were stuck with.

In some cases, software people lose more in the channel for commercial software as well — companies like SHI skim the cream for doing almost nothing. I can say as someone running a big enterprise org that there is no chance in hell that I’m wasting time negotiating terms with little companies, but Apple’s App Store model makes it possible to buy stuff.

Agreed. Channel margin can exceed 30% commissions for enterprise SaaS.

I see more of an issue with Apple telling Telegram how to moderate their platform than with the high fees for distribution on the platform.

That's great. Apple's great app store should compete in a free market for all stores, and you can enjoy shopping there.

Great point, that has had a huge impact on the quality and pricing of applications on the Android platform.

> When I was in college I interned at a company that negotiated retail placements for stuff like software. The 30% slice is a much better model than the terms our customers were stuck with.

When I was in middle school a computer costed as much as a small car. Times change. Physical distribution of most software is dead and the associated costs are completely different now.

Only for the tiny sliver of direct sales. There’s a whole industry of middlemen that exists for various reasons.

I believe that in many countries it is now illegal practice to make cancellation difficult.

Being able to easily click 'cancel' is worth every penny

If you are happy then many others will be happy as well and Apple should be able to compete on merit.

I'm all for mandating an IAP option. But forcing apps to keep customers in the dark about other, cheaper options borders on deception.

The main problem there is you are not able to pay a premium for IAP subscriptions. Apple mandates that functionally equal options cost the same inside the app as outside, despite Apple taking the 30% cut for IAP.

> Apple mandates that functionally equal options cost the same inside the app as outside

Do they? I heard it before, but when I tried to search the developer guidelines, I couldn’t spot anything specific about this.

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