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Comment by meepmorp | Hacker News Reader

Tangential to this - no small part of the reason why I like subscriptions in the iPhone App Store is because Apple doesn't let billers fuck around like this. There's one place to see everything, and you can cancel anything in a couple clicks. It's part of why I'd probably never use an alternative app store.

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Also they force subscriptions to make the actual price you pay the most prominent. Common dark pattern is to put "8.99" a month, then under it in tiny text "Billed immediately as 107.88, renews annually". To pass Apple's approval, they would have to write "107.88" in large text, as that is what you are actually going to be charged.

1Password got me with this. I was getting it for free because my work used it, but when I left, write/autofill was suspended. I had planned to move to a different service as I dislike 1P8, but I was in a hurry to just get things working again, and $2.99 a month is cheap enough to get me by for a few months. I enter my CC details. Get charged $39.47 (10% for GST). I go back and look at the site and realise the monthly price is billed annually. I don’t recall being quoted this price when I entered my CC details, perhaps it was displayed in a way that was easy to miss for people in a hurry. In any case there’s a dark pattern in their checkout flow. It’s disingenuous to to advertise $2.99 and bill $39.47. Imagine a cafe that advertises the price of their coffee as 40c then in smallprint “times 12 made in a single payment”. The advertised price should match the billed price for all products and services.

> advertises the price of their coffee as 40c then in smallprint “times 12 made in a single payment”.

lol, exactly like the mail-order CD club I signed up for back in high school.

It’s in the footnote hidden in the middle of 10 other footnotes after scroll a meter to the bottom screen in small grey text

Completely true. One way this has saved me in the past: Audible has an incredibly shady practice where the only way to get books is that their subscription service gives you tokens (1 a month) to redeem books with. However, if you cancel your subscription, your tokens are lost. But, if you subscribe to Audible through Apple, then because of Apple the tokens are retained, even if you cancel.

Wow, this is good to know, thanks.

I agree but interestingly had a conversation with my family and they all had the opposite impression. They were complaining about mysterious recurring apple charges on their bank cards that they had no idea what they were or how to find out. I pointed out that you could see all your subscriptions under your Apple ID on your phone and they were all amazed. Long winded way of saying, if anyone from apple is reading this, maybe make this more discoverable and if possible disambiguate the charges on the bill (maybe put the originating app name for the subscription in the charge?).

I wish Apple would just combine all my subscriptions into a single payment.

Cancelling subscriptions on apple devices is a dream, I love it

One of my friend maintains a fitness app that uses in-app subscription when subscribing through the app or subscription through the website with a credit card.

The apple subscription generate a lot more support requests because a lot of customers are confused on how to stop the in app subscription. Unfortunately, the company can't stop the subscription, it can only be done by the customer through the app store, so instead of just being able to cancel it for confused customers who request it, they have to guide them to cancel it on their side which is a lot of work.

Your friend should look into deep-linking to the subscriptions screen in the App Store from within their app. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15530794/link-to-app-man...

True, but it makes auditing your bank account slightly more difficult.

Charges come through as "Apple" (or some variation) without indicating what the purchase was for. They also roll charges together so they're not hitting your bank account multiple times in a short period.

It's not a lot of work to go into your apple account and compare the invoices to your bank account to see what the charge was _actually_ for, but it was a pain in the rear when our credit card was stolen and used by the thief to Nickle and Dime us for 5-10 dollars here and there over the course of 6 months.

They also send out the receipt emails a few days later than the actual charge, so when they charge you you can't immediately go check what the charge was for. I've found that spreadsheeting everything at the end of the month is the easiest way to do it.

I model it as another account in my books. Each subscription has a recurring debit and it gets credited when money actually moves from my bank. It’s a bit annoying if I buy a one-off thing since I have to enter it by hand, but it’s infrequent enough that it’s not horrible.

It's just as easy on Android

I tend to agree, with a caveat. If you have a family Apple account and one of your family members has a subscription, you do not have visibility even though it is your credit card getting billed. So for a complete picture you have to log into each of your kids' devices to see if they have an active subscription.

It seems to be done for privacy reasons, but I don't agree with how they handle it. I should be able to see all charges going to my Apple account credit card no matter which sub-account originated them.

You can actually see this information on reportaproblem.apple.com now. Has recent charges by each family member and tells you if a subscription will renew.

In my online credit card account, I can expand each purchase and "show digital receipt" to get information about what app/subscription it was for. For all App Store purchases, Apple will also email the account that made the purchase (even if it's me) to let them know the purchase details were requested. That seems reasonable to me--the payer knows what the payment was for, and the purchaser knows the info was accessed.

1000% - just wish they’d drop their fees so that more companies would see the benefits versus rolling their own.

Even if Apple's fees were 5%, there would be companies that would prefer a custom subscription system because they could save one cent per transaction and track the customers better.

True, but they still have the '8 day free trial then £59.99 a year billing' for some apps. My wife installed a design app she wanted to try out, forgot to cancel and was stung last week. For such a high purchase price that feels to me like there should be addition verification step before charging.

Especially since the app was terrible and the reviews were full of people who were similarly charged and unhappy.

Apple allow you to press cancel immediately after sign up and the account will remain valid until the 8th day.

Anecdotally, I had both an Apple Arcade and an Apple TV trial a few years back. I tried cancelling prematurely to avoid surprise charges and the interface told me in no uncertain terms that if I cancelled before the trial expired, I’d lose access immediately.

I think there's also a 14 day grace period after the charge to cancel and refund the subscription. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204084

What is bonkers about that? Apple let 2 consenting parties enter into an agreement and provides a single interface to cancel that agreement whenever you want from their pocket without talking to anyone. I struggle to think of a better setup.

One in which no one is surprised when a free trial rolls over to a paid subscription - perhaps that shouldnt even be allowable, given that its mostly done to make money off of people not paying attention.

If they are surprised, then the user was not paying attention multiple times.

https://www.macrumors.com/2019/04/11/app-store-subscription-...

Let me spell it out more clearly - surprised that the transaction occurred because they forgot to cancel it.

Do you not see this as plainly duplicitous behavior? I think the intention to deceive is far more cogent than any warnings.

Let me do the same - The user went through multiple screens that told them exactly what would happen and when. That isn’t misleading so it cannot by definition be duplicitous. Do I think there is room for a more user centric design? Yes. Do I stay away from subscription based iOS apps? Yes. Do other people use them and enjoy them? also yes.

It is - free trial with automatic rollover is set up anticipating that people will forget to cancel. It is not being offered as a good faith service.

Inherently if you are relying on something to thwart or subvert the intention of the person you are dealing with you are engaging in duplicitous behavior.

I’ll ruminate on the good faith service argument. That sounds like a valid angle. I see many of these app subs are predatory and wished apple provided a way to filter them out of search results. But I don’t consider the offering of the subscription functionality to be wrong. Apples implementation errors on the side of their pocketbook by being an auto enroll, but the signup screen is easy to read. It’s not buried in some TOS. Everyone who enters the agreement did so willingly and presented the terms cleanly. I understand they have a 14day return policy on these as well. At some point, people have to be responsible for their own financial decisions.

Yeah, I find it convincing. The principle I'm operating under is that both parties should benefit from any given agreement and that intentional efforts to subvert that are automatic non-starters.

I won't make the argument that subscriptions or even auto enroll are necessarily evil if we're shifting focus to less predatory industries, I would judge a given example by how difficult it was to get a refund. I think the top level principle of mirroring ease of subscription to ease of ending such applies here too, with respect to ease of billing for an unused service.

> What is bonkers about that?

That people forget. That's part of the market of trial and subs in general. Its why gyms flourish. People subscribe but don't go.

They (iOS) have the data that you use or not use the app. They could notify you with a warning that your renewal is due. Or allow you the option to set the reminder in your calendar or bank app.

I think the Google Play store also sends you a reminder before a free trial converts to a paid plan, which is better.

That is a great idea, but I could not find any information/screenshots about Google Play doing this.

I double checked my email and confirmed I'm not hallucinating! I can upload screenshots later if you want. It seems they email me a few days before a trial ends (the longer the trial, the more advanced notice they give)

Ah, an email. I was searching for notifications or some sort in OS warning. That is a plus for Google in my book. Apple apparently does not do this.

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than "free trial" subscription-based apps on the App Store. It is, overwhelmingly, a tool used for scams.

The pattern-

-hide promised functionality behind subscription.

-offer "free trial", often with very short trial periods.

-convert that into a big dollar subscriptions.

They know that most of the people who they ensnare are probably going through a multitude of tools trying to find a solution for some problem (and the fact the tool in question often fails to do what it promised is a feature because it encourages the user to move on quicker), and some subset will fail to cancel the "trial" before it becomes a pay service.

Consenting adults, sure, and personally I have never fallen prey to this, looking at the in-app purchases and just refusing to be baited, but it's enough of a problem that it should embarrass Apple a bit.

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