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Comment by knubie | Hacker News Reader

> By far the best part is they didn't automatically cancel his subscription. What a horrible company, if you've banned my account that's fine but cancel the subscription and refund my money.

Could this have something to do with subscribing through the App Store? Maybe there is something in Apple's ToS, or some limitation in their billing API that prevents them from doing this.

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I stopped paying for dating apps as soon as I realized tinder, Bumble, and Match constantly try to "lure" me into paying for subscriptions. It happened many times that I would get notifications about new matches/likes just moments after midnight when my subscription plan ended. I found it statistically unlikely that people only liked my profile right after my plan is finished.

Assuming it's not outright foul play, it's prob more likely that the matching services intentionally boost your profile gets better reach/impressions as that's a +EV play, and reduce your profile reach when you're subscribed long-term.

To carry this thought exercise more, someone structuring this system could also treat hot/responsive/engaged profiles as an asset of retention and intentionally matchmake the results to optimize for a system to be engaged (vs to matchmake two people who find love and unsubscribe after).

/me shrugs

Sounds like 'outright foul play' to me. Vs. what, bully for them they saved the genuine matches to the time that was most profitable, my custom most at risk? That's not foul play?

(Maybe I should disclaim I've never used any of this, so my standards are high/low/irrelevant, but ...)

Which part of this is not foul play? Man, our standards are low.

Given that the App Store doesn't let developers give users refunds, it does sound likely to me that they can't cancel user subscriptions either.

Depends how big you are. Apple has been known to give special privileges to big players like Hulu[0].

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/6/22423410/apple-hulu-subscr...

Pretty much, they also can only get a refund via Apple customer support (unless Tinder would be willing to ACH them) https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/original_...

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