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Comment by offtop5 | Hacker News Reader

They way to do this is to run the subscription though something like Google Play. Then you cancel it on Google's side.

Be wary if a company avoids Google. For example Tinder started forcing users to subscribe directly instead of using Google. This is because most people cancel almost immediately since once you subscribe you find all your matches are bots.

The entire purpose is to make it just hard enough so you think ohh it's only 10$ a month. Another trick is to offer a month free. Hulu does this. If you cancel on their website you get several pages which try to convince you to stay.

Google also makes it easy to manage all your subscriptions in one place. What is all this crap I'm paying for, I can quickly see what and delete it. Also I'm much more likely to try a service ( I'm studying Chinese right now and have used various apps) if I can do it via Google Play .

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This is one of the few things that actually makes me happy with the closed ecosystem of the App Store on iOS. There's virtually no risk with subscriptions in there- they can all be canceled in a few clicks in the Subscriptions section of your Apple ID. And if something's straight up a scam or an accidental (but unconsumed) purchase, you can request a refund from Apple with rather little friction.

First-party trials annoy me since cancelation is instant, unlike trials from third-party apps (those cancel after the trial period if you cancel during). Fortunately, you can go to Report A Problem and just say you didn't mean to have the subscription charged and they'll refund it as long as it's a few days from the charge date.

> This is one of the few things that actually makes me happy with the closed ecosystem of the App Store on iOS.

And yet there are scams that are costing users $5 million a year, or more, on the iOS App Store[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26794228

I'd need to see the purchase page to fully form an opinion on this. Apple has rather strict guidelines for displaying cost and that appears to be one of the most important parts of app review. I'd equate someone being surprised by a subscription cost to someone not looking at menu prices when eating out: all purchases through the app store use the same sheet to display price, renewal period, free trial, etc when requesting payment.

Of course, the app's premise is a scam, but my comment was about the ease of canceling and managing subscriptions. Dare I say that apps like this would be even more bold and prevalent if alternative app stores were available.

There are also scams costing people money without using iOS, for example where the person is tricked into thinking they have a debt and sending thousands of dollars in cash to a random address[1]. What’s your point?

1: https://youtu.be/VrKW58MS12g (it’s the Mark Rober phone scammer video)

> Tinder started forcing users to subscribe directly instead of using Google. This is because most people cancel almost immediately since once you subscribe you find all your matches are bots.

More likely it's because Google takes a 30% cut. Adyen takes a ~4% cut. I still maintain that if Apple and Google took a 5% cut from their app stores, no one would have complained.

This. PayPal works too, probably others.

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