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Comment by SSNLF | Hacker News Reader

Apps must not have unreasonably high prices. The price $10 is too high. Yet a Nigerian scammer continues offering an app for $300, even after an employee reports it.

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Well, there's the I Am Rich app[0], which essentially did nothing and cost US$999.99.

The crux was, however, that the developer was totally upfront about what you got for the price and apparently there still were douchebags around forking over the cash to buy "status".

Apple yanked the app due to the publicity. Which I thought was wrong. It didn't violate any App store rules and it was honest and up front in the description of the app.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich

I suspect they might actually have yanked it due to the high rate of refund requests and chargebacks. Not the developer's fault, but not something Apple want to have to deal with.

I usually go with stupid before malevolent, but is this a possible way to launder money? Just have a really hard time believing people are that stupid.

How would you launder money with this approach? The amount of downloads/purchases is verifiable as the whole flow of money from buyer to seller. If I sell it 10 times (10 downloads and 10 wire transactions that cover them) how do I put the unaccounted money into the system?

It's a way of turning "dirty" money (e.g. Apple gift cards sourced through phone scams) into "clean" money (payouts from Apple).

Buy App Store gift cards for cash.

I just buy domain names on the whim, personally I see them as monopoly cards.

Own a .org, .net and .com of the same URL and your a winner.

Yearly renewal is around €2k and I only use eight :/

Prices just have to be consistent so as long as most scams stay in that price range? But would love to see that rejection: “This scam is underachieving and will be blocked until the price exceeds $300.”

TBF. losing $300 to a Nigerian scammer is pretty cheap (when compared to other scams out there) :-P

EDIT: however, you should be allowed to set the pricing of your app however you like.

> you should be allowed to set the pricing of your app however you like.

What about being allowed to curate apps in your app store however you like?

Sure, but it doesn't seem like they are rejecting the app because of its functionality or quality, but the price point. Software that serves a niche isn't going to get the mass downloads required to fund the development a low price point per sale requires. There is a use case for apps costing more than $10. The Samsung store allows for in-app subscriptions, at 2 bucks a month the app is going to cost the user more than $10 over the span of a year, heck even over the course of 6 months.

But yeah, if Samsung doesn't like it, I say screw 'em and just put it on the Play Store instead.

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