The App Store does not protect consumers
lapcatsoftware.com
lapcatsoftware.com
I'm sorry what? Settings -> Apple ID & Purchases -> Subscriptions -> Choose subscription -> Cancel Subscription
Or if going into the phone settings to manage your app store subscriptions doesn't make sense to you, there's also App Store -> Account -> Subscriptions -> Choose subscription -> Cancel subscription
It even tells you both when the subscription renews and how long you can keep using the features for even if you unsubscribe. Once you unsubscribe that's it. Since the purchases go through Apple, unsubscribing means the developer can't pull a Comcast and "forget".
I even just now grabbed and app and started a "free 1 month trial" for their service. It shows up in the same subscription list and tells me when it will renew and how much it will charge me. If I tell it to cancel the free trial, it even lets me know that I can continue to access the trial services until the end of the trial period next month.
How is any of that "an obstacle course"? Yes, I agree that it would be nice if trials defaulted to not auto-renewing or you were given a choice when starting a subscription. But managing what you're subscribed to is about as simple as it gets.
Maybe the author is talking about an app that you subscribe to outside of the app store (e.g. Netflix or Spotify style). Certainly I can appreciate that you can lose track of your subscription there, but I fail to see how apple has any responsibility for "not protecting" you if you don't actually go through their processes for being protected.
No.
> I fail to see how apple has any responsibility for "not protecting" you if you don't actually go through their processes for being protected.
This seems like a strange statement to me. How is Apple protecting you if you have to look out for everything yourself and make sure you don't forget to cancel one of your possibly many trials or subscriptions on a very specific date?
People forget payment dates. This is totally common and normal. It's why many business have auto-pay, so you don't forget to pay your bill on time. In this case, though, Apple is more than happy to automatically take your payment, even if you didn't actually intend to pay.
I'm not sure whether this implementation has changed recently or not, but it used to be — and may still be the case — that if you started a trial with an app, and then you deleted the app from your devices because you weren't interested in the app, the trial was still active and not cancelled.
You don't have to cancel it on a very specific date, you just go in and cancel it whenever you want. Whatever you've paid for (or whatever time you have left on your trial) will remain and then it simply stops renewing. You don't have to remember anything other than to actually cancel in the first place.
> I'm not sure whether this implementation has changed recently or not, but it used to be — and may still be the case — that if you started a trial with an app, and then you deleted the app from your devices because you weren't interested in the app, the trial was still active and not cancelled.
Possibly a useful setting, but I think it would be a worse experience if your subscriptions were canceled every time you deleted the app from your device(s). Certainly one can't conclude that just because an app was deleted from a device that the user isn't actually using the app in general. There are any number of reasons to remove an app from a device that aren't "I don't intend to ever use this app or its services again"
This is again a strange response. You don't have to cancel on a specific date, any more than you have to pay a bill on a specific date. You have to cancel or pay by a very specific date.
> I think it would be a worse experience if your subscriptions were canceled every time you deleted the app from your device(s).
I was talking about a subscription trial, not necessarily a subscription in general.
The auto-renewing trials is where they get you.
Yes, usually when you subscribe to something, you must end your subscription before the next renewal or you will be charged again. This is sort of the definition of a paid subscription. However, we can contrast the process of doing this in the app store (cancel any time, without speaking to anyone, in an obvious and well known location, continue to use your paid for services until the end date) with other subscriptions.
For example, Adobe Cloud if you are paying monthly requires that you cancel within the last month of your subscription, or not only will you lose the year you've paid for, but you will also be charged a cancelation fee. At least they don't charge you that if you pay for the full year up front and your service continues to the end of the year.
Or we could look at the NY Times which has such an awful cancelation experience that they had to settle a class action lawsuit about it.
And surely you remember the bad old days of AOL and Comcast dial-up services where the standard recommended procedure was to call and cancel and then watch your credit card statements for the next few months to make sure you didn't get re-added?
Heck it was only a year and a half ago that the FTC released their enforcement memo telling companies they would be enforcing actions against them for "click to subscribe, call to cancel" tactics.
And let's not forget that a major selling point of financial apps is that they will help you find unwanted/forgotten subscriptions (https://www.rocketmoney.com/feature/manage-subscriptions).
But I'm confused now about what you complaint actually is. My original comment was addressing the statement that "[getting] out of the trial and [avoiding] getting charged" was some sort of complex obstacle course. To get out of a trial and avoid being charged, one simply needs to, at any time before they are charged, unsubscribe. My assertion is this is hardly an "obstacle course".
Now though we're talking about how you must do this action before you get billed. So is the complaint that getting out is difficult, or that you simply have to get out in the first place?
There are 2 complaints:
1) Yes, I'm complaining about opt-out trials. These are consumer hostile.
2) The obstacle course is more knowledge than difficulty. You've described the cancelation process, starting with the implicit assumption that you already know what it is. But we can't start with that assumption. Many consumers simply don't have that knowledge. As I wrote in the article: "App Store customers sometimes contact me anyway for a refund, because Apple does not educate them about the refund process". The process itself is not particularly difficult... if you're aware of it! If you're not aware of it, then it's a major obstacle.
Don't you think it's weird that you can subscribe or start a trial inside the app, but you can't cancel the subscription inside the app?
At a certain point, you have to assume the adult person using a credit card to start a subscription knows what a subscription is and that they would have to cancel it if they don't want to be charged. Apple's dialogs make it very clear when you sign up for a trial both that it will auto-renew at the end, that it is cancelable, what the charges will be if you don't cancel and how frequently those charges will be made.
You also have to accept that some people, no matter how much you try to educate them, will be confused or will refuse to be educated. Any ex-retail employee can share stories of customers who walk up to you with something labeled with a very clear price tag and ask how much it costs. Some people are just oblivious, and you can't make your rules around them.
I don't know why you bring "adult" into this, because children generally don't have to pay bills. Yes, people know what a subscription is. But when you're talking about trials, I think you're missing the whole point of trials, which is to spend time trying the app. When you start a trial, you know how long the trial lasts, but what you don't know is (1) how long it will take for you to try and evaluate the app and (2) whether you'll end up subscribing in the end. During that period of time and uncertainty, it's easy to forget, especially if you're using multiple apps.
You skipped my question about why consumers can't cancel the trial or subscription in the same place that they started it.
The real question is this:
> you can't make your rules around them
How should Apple design the App Store? Apple has 100% control over it and makes choices that can be either consumer friendly or consumer hostile. Auto-subscribing opt-out trials are flat out consumer hostile. Many people despise them, including me, even though I don't recall ever getting accidentally charged for one. The mere possibility of that makes the entire experience more stressful for consumers.
To me, everything about the App Store screams a consumer-hostile cash grab, which is in opposition to Apple's portrayal and justification of App Store lockdown as a necessary means to protect consumers. I'm not actually arguing in favor of paternalism. Quite the opposite. I'm arguing that Apple is guilty of rank hypocrisy. The App Store doesn't do what Apple claims it does, that's my argument.
By coincidence, I just read this article, which seems relevant: https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/01/european-comm... The App Store itself is full of "dark patterns". You can say "caveat emptor", which may be good advice, but Apple can't say that to the public, or to the courts, if it wants to maintain its App Store lockdown and monopoly.
Software rental, which is a more accurate term for software subscriptions, is not something that most legitimate app developers even wanted, nor was it a model that most of them used when they chose their own, i.e., before the App Store era. Everything that happens in the App Store is based on Apple's design. In various way, Apple pushes "subscriptions" hard on both consumers and developers, because that's what Apple wants.
While you can cancel a subscription and have it keep working until the date you paid, canceling a trial early makes you immediately lose access. Or at least it does in official Apple trials (e.g. Apple Arcade and Apple TV).
The ostensible protection that Apple is providing is from subscriptions for which cancelling is difficult. If the subscription happens through the app then it's found in the same location as every other subscription that's made through any other app.
I believe OP's point with their quote ("I fail to see how apple has any responsibility ...") is that with the given examples (Netflix, Spotify) one cannot subscribe using their iOS apps. The user will need to go outside Apple's ecosystem (netflix.com, spotify.com) and subscribe in a way that Apple has no control over.
At any rate, I fail to see how this is not user error given that you are sure this is not an app which had its subscription made outside the App Store. If it was made in the App Store, the user is only required to remember to cancel at all.
I don't mean to speak against most of what you're saying but many of your arguments read as a non sequitur. It's hard to agree or disagree because it's just hard to follow along.
(edit: rephrasing)
This is all Apple's fault for demanding 30% of their revenue from IAP.
> subscribe in a way that Apple has no control over
What is the benefit of Apple's control, though? That is the main question.
> I fail to see how this is not user error
It was user error. It's a very common user error, forgetting to cancel a trial. You're missing the larger picture here, which is that Apple publicizes and justifies its App Store lockdown and cut in terms of consumer protection, claiming that App Store is a very safe place to find and buy apps. If Apple cared about protecting consumers, it would protect them from common errors such as forgetting to cancel a trial. After all, Apple does "protect" consumers from the common error of installing software that they shouldn't from the internet, by completely banning internet app installs on iOS.
No, the most profitable company in history doesn't get to play dumb. At Apple's scale, Hanlon's Razor does not apply, because there's no effective difference between incompetence and malice.
You called it OP.
I’m trying to understand how this is Apple’s fault or how they owe the Reddit poster a refund. Are opt-out free trials a bit of a scummy thing to do? Yes and I would never utilize one as a seller, but neither the seller nor Apple are committing fraud here. The terms of the transaction are clearly spelled out before you commit to it.
Perhaps Apple could provide a short grace period with automated refunds as long as the user cancels within 3 days of payment or so? That might be a good compromise here.
Thank you.
> I’m trying to understand how this is Apple’s fault
Apple: "it’s by design"
> neither the seller nor Apple are committing fraud here.
As the article points out, many App Store developers are in fact committing fraud, but Apple does little or nothing about that.
> The terms of the transaction are clearly spelled out before you commit to it.
Are they? From the article: "What is Apple's App Store refund policy? An as App Store developer and consumer, I honestly don't know!"
Retail stores typically have some kind of publicly posted refund policy, unlike the App Store.
Trustworthy businesses don't pull that kind of crap. And as the title of the article indicates, the raison d'être of Apple's App Store lockdown is allegedly to protect consumers. But it doesn't protect consumers.
They don't have to be forced. Scammers love this pricing model.
Notice the word buy here, not try. There's a world of difference between buying and trying. When you walk out of the retail store, you've already intentionally paid your money. With a trial, you don't necessarily have an intention to buy.
As I said in the article: "People often compare App Store to a retail store, but what physical retail store in the world allows you to walk out the door with 84% of its products without paying anything?"
Buy now, bill me later is a pretty common thing in retail. Technically I suppose you're still "buying", but you haven't paid for anything yet any more than you have when you subscribe for something with a free trial first.
Likewise, Amazon (and some other online clothing retailers) offer "try it on at home first, pay after you decide to keep it" models.
And then there's sit down restaurants which allow you to order as much as you want and pay after you've eaten. And if you go really up scale, they may not even have prices on the menu and you get surprised by the costs at the end.
I haven't seen this.
> Likewise, Amazon (and some other online clothing retailers) offer "try it on at home first, pay after you decide to keep it" models.
This is actually news to me. Anyway, it's certainly not the traditional physical store model that we've had for decades/centuries/millennia. And Amazon is problematic in its own way, but I don't want to get into that whole thing here.
> And then there's sit down restaurants which allow you to order as much as you want and pay after you've eaten.
This is not a good analogy. You don't get to walk out of the restaurant without paying. The food doesn't have a trial period. If you ordered it, you pay for it on the bill. Restaurants let you pay at the end of the meal because they want you to keep ordering as many drinks as possible.
What am I likt?
> There are so many reasons to be critical of apple but that's not it.
What are the reasons?
I am still mad they killed the old final cut... :(
Who can argue with a handshake?
Anyway, you completely misunderstand me, because I actually want to abolish the App Store. I think "protecting consumers" is just Apple's pretense for lockdown and predatory rent extraction.
Doesn't Apple permaban you if you do this?
Given that Apple Support is the ones that told them to do this, it sounds like there's more to this than a simple refund of an in app purchase. IAP charges are from Apple, so they're saying Apple Support told them to file a chargeback against Apple. That doesn't make sense.
Now, this is fine and dandy for $2.99 app. But if the app is $59, it feels predatory.
I think Apple should restrict the auto-charging aspect of trials for apps if the price being charged is above some threshold - let's say $20. For such apps, the trial should just end.
> ... they know some people will forget to cancel. That's the whole point ...
Obviously $59 is a different story.
There is no other way in the App Store to offer a free trial than to have an auto-charged amount (one time pay or subscription) at the end of it.
I'm not saying Apple doesn't deserve a slice of the pie. They make it possible to seamlessly sell our app in 193 countries with varying tax and regulatory regimes, all at the click of a button. But the app store brings in billions in revenue to them, offering functionality like giving developers the ability to refund customers or more creative ways to charge for our software seems like a no brainer at this point...