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Comment by yarcob | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of Apple apologists who claim Apple's payment system is superior for the customer, but that just doesn't match my experience.

I don't subscribe to a lot of services, but I find that eg. subscribing and unsubscribing from Netflix is a much nicer experience than subscribing from something that uses Apple's service.

With Netflix, I know exactly where to subscribe and where to unsubscribe, and the terms are pretty clear.

Apple on the other hand makes it surprisingly hard to show your active subscriptions. On the Mac, I think you have to open the Music app and click on a bunch of links that I keep forgetting. Kinda weird when Apple is supposedly known for their ease of use.

It's also often unclear how it works. In one app I clicked "start 14 day trial", but ended up being charged for an annual subscription immediately. At first I was surprised, but then I thought maybe it was because I had apparently started the trial already a few years ago already. The buttons I tapped did not make that clear.

And some basic things are impossible with Apple's solution: Eg. charge the Apple Music subscription to a different bank account. Nope, with Apple all your subscriptions go to a single credit card.

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I have never used an iPhone, but IIRC Neflix is the example people usually put as the "perfect" subcription & unsubscription workflows, as in they will make your life easy to unsubscribe and that has earned them a bunch of customers over the years. So it's a bit unfair to put "the best in class" as the alternative and saying it's not as good, when virtually every other subscription system is worse than Netflix.

Apple payments don't even need to be the best, they just need to be good enough since they are already the default and integrated with your phone.

i recently tried on spotify and disney plus as well, works like a charm.

The worst offenders in recent history were bloomberg (where i had to open a support case to cancel) and some other news publication. FT was the best experience in news publications. More and more services seem to be getting better in this.

Cancelling direct spotify subscription is actually full of dark patterns:

You click unsubscribe and are taken to new screen that presents you pricing plans and is worded in such way that you think you already unsubscribed. I actually thought so and almost thought that I'm done. But no, decided to check and saw that I'm still subscribed.

Turned out, there are THREE consecutive screens where you need to successfully pick the correct option to really unsubscribe.

its by no means perfect, but compared to others where you have to dig deep in an faq for a support number, call up (during business hours), go through 3 people who will try to sell you something else (once whilst trying to cancel a mobile contract because of a poor signal, I've even had accusations of not doing enough on my end to improve things), to then get to someone who will probably cancel your contract, its a step in the right direction at least

The problem is that it's completely a company's decision to make it easy to cancel and the vast majority of them make it as hard as they can.

Just a few examples: Xbox Live, you can sign up online but to cancel you have to call them and justify to them why you don't want to use their service anymore. Also had to do that to cancel a credit card recently. I've heard its even worse with companies like Adobe or like you mentioned, news publications.

As a customer, because of our bad consumer protection laws it makes me very hesitant to start a subscription with a new company and I vastly prefer doing it through Apple if I can.

With Apple, it's easy to see when you have a subscription active and to stop it from auto renewing. If cancel flows are getting easier it's probably due to pressure from this existing.

I also wanted to add, I think a lot of the value that Apple adds should actually be things that are regulated by our government. For example, you should be able to cancel a service the same way you signed up. And a lot of the privacy stuff Apple does should be enshrined into law.

It's pleasant as a consumer that at least one company operates this way, but it's terrible that most people don't even consider that our government should be the one doing this, not private companies.

Uh, are you sure that Xbox sub issue is still there? I've recently unsubbed from it just through their web UI. While it was kinda annoying to get through their menus, it wasn't particularly bad either.

Considering Apple are one of the most dominant, largest, successful companies in the world ... it's not unreasonable to pit them against "the best".

The question is, if Netflix is "best in class" and makes users happy, why isn't Apple on that level. There really isn't any excuse.

What are you talking about?

Apple unsubscribe is pretty darn solid. Phone > Subscriptions > toggle to off.

Dear auto renewal app, get stuffed.

I use this feature often, and it’s excellent.

> I don't subscribe to a lot of services, but I find that eg. subscribing and unsubscribing from Netflix is a much nicer experience than subscribing from something that uses Apple's service.

Wtf. How easy does it have to be?

Come on, let’s be specific here instead of vague hand waving.

What exactly is this great unsubscribe service from Netflix that is better than a three step toggle?

Settings > subscriptions > Name > alter or cancel.

I was replying to OP's assertions, so you might want to direct your post there. But you're welcome to kma also if you're so exercised.

>>> if Netflix is "best in class" and makes users happy, why isn't Apple on that level

>> Come on, let’s be specific here instead of vague hand waving.

> But you're welcome to kma

Well, that about sums up the thoughtful discussion of people saying how bad Apple pay is right there.

Out of curiosity, how would a good unsubscription flow earn Netflix a bunch of customers? It doesn't seem like people would recommend Netflix to others because it was easy for them to unsubscribe frequently enough for that to have any substantial effect or come back just because it was so easy to unsubscribe.

I stay away from services I liked when it was hard to unsubscribe and won't come back even if I have the money now.

I know it’s anecdotal but I refuse to subscribe to services that I think are going to be difficult to cancel. The Economist is an immediate example.

If you make me jump through hoops (and have interactive human contact) to unsubscribe, I'm never subscribing again.

On the other hand if I can just go "click" on website and the site goes "ok, your subscription ends at the end of this month". I'll most likely come back if there is some content I want to get to.

1. Because people who unsubscribe might come back again. If it's a hassle to unsubscribe, I'm never going to subscribe again. There are a few of companies that I had poor experience with, and I am never going to buy anything from again. While I currently don't have time for Netflix anymore doesn't mean I'm not going to subscribe again in a year or two.

2. I subscribed to Netflix because they had a reputation of being easy to subscribe / unsubscribe. I'm not going to subscribe to the New York Times because I've heard how hard they are to cancel. I have a subscription to a local newspaper, they even had ads mentioning how easy it is to start / stop their subscription.

Just signed up for a month of some service because it was non-recurring. There are services I haven't signed up for specifically because even though I'm ok to pay every month, the (hypothetical, but likely according to my priors) trouble to unsubscribe puts me off.

Beyond that, if someone's choosing between one of e.g. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+, I imagine that it could make a difference.

I put my Netflix on hold all the time. If it was hard, I’d cancel forever.

Not sure what the OP is talking about with the Apple system. There is a Subscriptions section in your Apple ID.

But I like going through Apple because it’s all in one place and the content provider has no chance to try and dark patterns on me. Even if the Apple subscriptions is a slightly worse experience, if I can get all my subscriptions in one place and have the ability to cancel at will I’m going to chose that.

I can’t imagine what kind of minor benefit I’d get from using multiple cards and different subscriptions that would make it worth more than easy management.

> I can’t imagine what kind of minor benefit I’d get from using multiple cards and different subscriptions that would make it worth more than easy management.

I have a personal bank account, a business bank account for all business expenses, and a bank account shared with my significant other for household expenses.

I want to pay our shared Netflix and Spotify accounts from the family account, apps that I buy for business use on my business account, and things I buy for myself on my personal account.

I can't be the only person who has multiple bank accounts?

Family Sharing

That puts everyones purchases on a single card and is even worse.

If it's a pain to unsubscribe you'd think about it before subscribing again.

There is also people that might be put off if the process is notorious for being unfriendly or cumbersome

How much this affects subscriber numbers is a different story altogether.

I absolutely remember the manipulative Amazon Prime workflow and it gives me pause every time I am offered a free trial because I know it's going to be a confusing pain to make sure I unsubscribe properly.

Think you'll be surprised how far the ideology of "the customer comes first" can take a company.

If it was easy for me to unsubscribe, I'm not going to worry much about re-subscribing later. If you put me through an hour of faffing about in the hopes I give up then why would I ever come back.

I don't subscribe to the NYT primarily because of the details I've heard of their unsubscribe flow (they've even built a better one to comply with california regulations, but geoblocked it outside of california)

I was fortunate to take a subscript with a throw away credit card. When it was empty my subscription ended.

Netflix makes it too easy to re-subscribe, though.

I cancelled it after one of the price hikes and a round of it suggesting nothing I wanted to watch, only to have it seemingly re-subscribe on it's own.

After a couple of rounds of that, I discovered that any TV still logged in could browse, pick a show, and would get a prompt to "continue membership" or something like that.

It was designed in such a way that the family was instinctively clicking through the message, not knowing what it was.

Anyway, forcing all sessions to sign out before the next cancellation did the trick.

I'm no particular Apple fan - I have issues with them and the list grows so I'm even considering moving away from their ecosystem. But a couple points strikes me as not accurate.

> On the Mac, I think you have to open the Music app and click on a bunch of links

Maybe there's a route like that, but at least today it's always under Apple ID management, and I find that quite logical.

On macOS it's under System Preferences -> Apple ID -> Media and Purchases -> Subscriptions: [Manage...] button. Don't have a phone at hand but it's very similar on iOS, somewhere under Settings -> Apple ID. I forgot the exact location but it's with some fairly obvious name, like "Purchases" or "Subscriptions", very hard to miss it.

Naturally, it requires learning where it is for the first time, but then it's fairly intuitive.

> In one app I clicked "start 14 day trial", but ended up being charged for an annual subscription immediately.

Hm. That's odd. Apps could be pretty deceptive and even outright scummy, but at least on iOS the system payment UI (the one where you have to double-tap the power button) was always very clear about how much and when exactly it would charge me.

> But a couple points strikes me as not accurate

I'm talking about my personal experience with Apple subscriptions. Maybe I am remembering something inaccurately, but that doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is that I prefer other companies payment systems, and I really don't like that Apple tries to force their service that I don't want on me.

> On macOS it's under System Preferences -> Apple ID -> Media and Purchases -> Subscriptions: [Manage...] button.

I just tried that, and it didn't work. Just showed a spinner for a minute, and then opened the App Store home screen. Everything related to Apple ID is slow and unreliable for me, I don't know why they don't just have a simple web interface like every other company. (On a second attempt it worked.)

> Hm. That's odd. Apps could be pretty deceptive and even outright scummy, but at least on iOS the system payment UI (the one where you have to double-tap the power button) was always very clear about how much and when exactly it would charge me.

The system UI was accurate. The button before was not. For some reason I thought that the system UI showed the price AFTER the trial, so I confirmed the payment, thinking I could still cancel it for two weeks.

There are a lot of individual services that handle that better than Apple e.g Netflix. There is also that are much worse e.g New York Times. The big advantage with Apple is that you can unsubscribe without any dark patterns and that you have all (At least Appstore) subscriptions in one place instead of having to figure out how to cancel each individually.

> With Netflix, I know exactly where to subscribe and where to unsubscribe

I guess what people like about Apple's IAP subscriptions is that while you might know this for Netflix, do you know it for every other subscription you might sign up for?

It's all there in your Apple ID/purshases settings... there is a big "manage subscriptions" button. Same on the iPhone. Doesn't get easier than this.

Unless you happen to have subscriptions in multiple locales. Now you're forced to:

- Change your country/region

- Be forced to add a new credit card, regardless of how many times you've done this before

- Attempt to load your subscriptions, and receive a "Cannot Connect" error no matter how many times you try

- Restart your phone because its the only thing that seems to resolve this

- Successfully manage your subscriptions now that they will load

- Repeat the entire process again to get back to your original locale

This...could be easier.

> subscriptions in multiple locales

I haven't heard of this. Is it a supported case by Apple?

As far as I understand, you need to change the app store country when you move internationally and have a bank account in another country. To keep purchases made before the move, you need to switch regions.

I believe that Apple could make this (using more than one country/locale for purchases/subscriptions) a lot better to switch between, but hasn't done so for a long time. I don't think Apple will focus on this anytime soon though.

I think the simpler workaround is to have multiple Apple ID/accounts, one for each country and linked to specific payment options. It still requires signing out and signing in, but it avoids restrictions (IIRC, something like 90 days) and the need to re-update payment information as with the other approach you mentioned. The subscriptions may not work when you're not signed in to the account associated with its country, but this is simpler than following many more steps.

I find it silly that Apple does not even consider switching between two countries as a use case that would apply for quite a number of people (it may be less in percentage terms, but surely a large enough number in absolute terms).

No one does this... Well I guess not "no one" because I guess you do it. But I can say with 100% certainty that 99% of people don't do it.

Banking applications are typically localized to the country. Dual citizens, or people with multiple residencies, typically have banking facilities in multiple countries.

This is obviously not the mainline use case, but to suggest that "no one" does this simply because you do not is obviously naive.

Ok so you don’t actually remember the UI but are certainly quick to criticise it. I don’t often subscribe/unsubscribe from apps either but I just then decided to try it myself to see if the UI is truly as dark as your post suggests. So on iOS the steps I took was:

“Let’s try the settings app” “Ok at the top I’ve got my name and it says, ‘Apple ID, iCloud, Media & Purchases’ “Hmm purchases, let’s click that” “Ok a list of options, fourth says ‘Subscriptions’ let’s try it” “Oh hey here’s my apple one subscription, not so bad!”

Overall that seemed pretty sensible. Perhaps if they added ‘and subscriptions’ to your card at the top it’d be a bit clearer but it’s certainly not some horrible experience.

I’d also add to this that usually if you delete an app that has an active subscription Apple asks you what you want to do with said subscription.

I find that to be a great user experience personally.

> There are a lot of Apple apologists who claim Apple's payment system is superior for the customer

I'm really rooting for Epic here, but people can like a thing without being apologists. That word isn't helping the debate.

I don't think Apple's payment system has a much better user experience then many other providers, however the major pro-consumer benefit it has imo is that everything is in one place. I've reached the stage where I'm happy to pay a 30% tax to not have to sign up for another bloody payment provider/subscription service and then have to remember how to cancel it or which card it's going through months later

> I've reached the stage where I'm happy to pay a 30% tax

It's a 43% tax.

Why 43%? I would say 30% of the full price, or 50% of the base price?

The multiplicative inverse of 0.7 is approximately 1.429.

You will need a 42.9% markup to counteract the 30% cut.

10 seconds confort is not worth a 30% cut for 95% of customers

That's fair, but for me it has reached the stage where I will avoid apps that try to tie me into yet another payment ecosystem that doesn't integrate with anything else. Apple's definitely has it's negatives but is also so far the most convenient/integrated one I've used so far

Apples system also allows customers who don’t have credit cards to pay by buying iTunes cards for cash at the store. In the Netherlands the cards are even often marked down.

Are the cards still marked down? That used to be a thing in the U.S. until Apple merged iTunes cards with Apple Store cards a few years ago so that these could be used in an Apple retail/online store to buy Apple hardware as well as used for buying software or content from the online stores. I haven't seen these cards marked down after the change. Before this, major holidays would bring about many sellers offering discounts on the iTunes cards.

Yes, there’s almost always some 15% extra credit thing going on somewhere. I don’t known who pays for it.

Yeah sure because you don't have a choice LMAO. If a company advertised a price 30% lower than the price on the Apple store many, many people would take it convenience be damned.

And Apple knows it which is why they're fighting it tooth and nail.

Yeah exactly. If it’s such a great payment experience they don’t need to ban others.

> If it’s such a great payment experience they don’t need to ban others

It’s great for consumers. It isn’t great for companies developing apps.

What's lost from requiring that Apple's system is an option without banning others? If needed, add some language about how you can't make it difficult for someone to cancel, and cancelling service effective immediately (as opposed to at the end of the billing cycle) requires a pro-rated refund. I'm generally pretty critical of what I would call Apple's paternalistic attitude, but I'm perfectly fine with something along those lines. And we'll see how many people are willing to pay how much of a premium for the Apple experience and guarantees.

> What's lost from requiring that Apple's system is an option without banning others?

Not much. While I defend the App Store monopoly, I see no reason for Apple to have a monopoly on in-app payments. I think it's atrocious that they aim to take a cut out of every subscription payment (versus, e.g., an up-front commission).

Was just pushing back on the claim that what's best for consumers would win in a payments free-for-all where app-developing companies (note: not necessarily developers) choose the payment provider.

Nobody in my country uses creditcards because they're expensive and there are free alternatives.

Competition does bring prices down we have much proof.

> Was just pushing back on the claim that what's best for consumers would win in a payments free-for-all where app-developing companies (note: not necessarily developers) choose the payment provider.

That's fair, and FWIW I agree.

I'd be willing to bet that most consumers would appreciate lower prices more than the convenience of Apple's in-app purchases.

> I don't subscribe to a lot of services, but I find that eg. subscribing and unsubscribing from Netflix is a much nicer experience than subscribing from something that uses Apple's service.

Yea too bad most companies don't work like Netflix. Using dark patterns is extremely common in subscription services. Apple makes dark patterns impossible.

I don't think it is no longer true that apple has a good UI. There is no option to view contacts in Mac OS Facetime app.The window management in Mac is subpar without downloading a third party app. The keyboard shortcuts do not work uniformly across all the apps...and more.

On the other hand I've had a 100% of my refund requests accepted by Apple without any issues.

Happened just last week when I rented a movie via Apple TV. The description was in my native language and I just clicked. Gathered the family around and saw that there was no audio or subtitles in my language.

I'm not so sure if I can do the same with Honest Bob's Movie Rental App, which has their own payment system.

Will they respect my Parental Control settings about no purchases too? Will they integrate with the "ask to buy" -setting built in to iOS?

> Will they respect my Parental Control settings about no purchases too? Will they integrate with the "ask to buy" -setting built in to iOS?

If they didn't, that would presumably be noted in user reviews and media comparisons, so they'd get lower ratings and people would know to avoid them. Or take that downside, if they see some other upside to the particular service that they feel compensates for the downside.

You know, like a market-based economy -- "capitalism" -- is supposed to work.

I am surprised to see Netflix being given as “ideal” subscription and payment method. I landed up canceling Netflix because of dark patterns they used.

I couldn’t cancel subscription from App, Netflix asks me to go to a URL to cancel.

When Netflix increased the price, the pop up in App forced you to select one of the increased priced plan, there was no button where you could just back out of pop up to decide later or wait till end of billing month. The two buttons were also confusing, I don’t recall exact words those button used now, but I was shocked when I selected one I thought let’s me wait, I received email confirming my acceptance to price increase. Being ex PM, I am pretty confident it had to do with KPI around price increase for executives and street.

I will take Apple subscription and payment system over Netflix’s any day and 100 times over. All subscription are tied to your Apple ID and display under your Apple ID.

Apple has the luxury of making these decisions for everyone. Their gobs of money come from elsewhere.

Netflix only has subscriptions. They think about them a lot.

The hubris of Apple is such that they think they can change the businesses of everyone around them. They want all businesses to wear turtlenecks, pay their 30%, and stop complaining about individual business needs.

Imagine how hostile it must be to also have the giant telling you how to do your subscriptions turn around and launch their own movie and tv streaming service!

> Apple on the other hand makes it surprisingly hard to show your active subscriptions.

Bruh. Are you actually serious?

Settings → Apple ID / iCloud → Subscriptions

App Store → Your Account → Subscriptions

Such sUrPrIsInG, much hArD. In any case, if you feel that’s difficult now imagine how insurmountably Herculean it will become for you if you had to navigate the UX of multiple payment providers.

> There are a lot of Apple apologists who claim Apple's payment system is superior for the customer, but that just doesn't match my experience.

Apple has always immediately refunded me for shitty apps and scummy services, without question.

Meanwhile apps that provide their own payment systems, like Couchsurfing (who bait-and-switched users even after charging them a $100 “forever fee”), have yet to even reply to my requests for a refund.

Apple also lets me see all my recurring subscriptions from one place, warns me before renewals, and amazingly, lets me keep access to services for a few days even if I can’t make a payment on the renewal date.

So yeah. If you think predators like Epic and Match/Tinder and the countless microtransaction games (with their placebo IAPs and gambling boxes that do literally nothing at all sometimes) will be as accommodating, oh boy.

But of course user-hostile devs would root for nothing more than to tear down the walls protecting users.

why "settings" ? a subscription is not a "setting".

Really? Talk about straws. “Settings” is the unified app for configuring all the shit on iOS, including Apple ID and payments etc.

The same option is also available in the App Store app as well. Where else exactly would you prefer it to be?

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