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Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

At the risk of not piling on to the Apple dislike here, if you use a non-Apple payment system, and you have an issue, you now need to go to the specific company and payment system, you can no longer demand your money back by dealing with a single company. I presume even more scam apps will take your money and ignore your complaints; imagine trying to sue a company in some foreign country to try to get your money back if they stole it. When Apple controlled the payment system, Apple could be sued in your home country. Of course this happens on the web too, but apps on your phone very different from web apps.

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> When Apple controlled the payment system, Apple could be sued in your home country.

Have any App Store consumers sued Apple? And were they successful?

Apple does refuse App Store refunds all the time. Apple also closes consumer Apple accounts all the time, for some reason or no reason, often refusing to tell the consumer the reason, alleging some kind of fraud, in which case the consumer loses everything they've ever purchased. One of the reasons, though, is consumers doing a chargeback on their credit card, which Apple hates and punishes severely.

fwiw apple has been extremely generous to be on refunds and, while I don't abuse the system, I do get a refund when I think it's deemed necessary, either due to a lack of satisfaction or accidental purchase.

Chargebacks are a huge pain in the butt to deal with and, as someone who's saw this first hand, chargebackery is correlated bad customership (two words that I just made up) to so I can understand that they'd hate consumers doing that instead of going through what's otherwise a pretty fair system.

Dealing with apple support in payments land has been, on the consumer side, one of the less infuriating things that have come out of what is now their support process. That said, the ux for getting refunds and checking on their status is antiquated, perhaps purposefully.

Do they do such a-holish immoral moves also in EU? There could be a billion or 5 fine for them in the waiting, we don't like to get fucked over by greedy corporations, no sir.

We need all the money we can get for killing some russians once they invade our borders in near future, so any contribution is highly appreciated.

Is this not what the credit card system (with chargebacks and liability shift) is supposed to counter more generally? Lots of these arguments could equally be applied to a shopping mall but we don't require all stores within a mall to use the same merchant services provider.

This is probably the best analogy, however I think what might be different is there is somewhat high of a bar for the merchant/vendor to be operating a legal and legitimate business. On the internet and in the App Store, it’s kind of a Wild West.

Edit: Maybe not globalizing App Store apps would resolve this? Or at least if you want to operate an app in a country, you need to incorporate in that country too? I think that might make it harder for overseas companies to get away with fraud.

Sticking to his first point is sufficient: This is what credit cards themselves insulate you from. You don't need Apple to also insulate you.

>Is this not what the credit card system (with chargebacks and liability shift) is supposed to counter more generally?

The credit card system is far less generous than App Store's policies. Apple offers no-questions asked refunds. Credit cards don't.

They don’t always grant refunds for App Store purchases, I’ve heard from many customers whose refund requests were denied after we referred them to Apple. As a developer I would love to be able to refund them myself, but we can’t refund IAPs at all, it’s entirely up to Apple.

If the customer requests too many refunds (say 3-4 within a few months) their Apple ID is likely to be banned from making further purchases.

I feel that this is orthogonal to my point - it's not about how generous or not a given mechanism is, more to question why the App Store is any different from other transactions we need to protect. You either have to argue that App Store transactions need more consumer friendly refunds than other credit card transactions for some reason, or otherwise that credit cards should have no-questions asked refunds.

As another commenter said, in some cases Apple's power in the relationship is detrimental to the consumer - if a user issues a chargeback then Apple can disable their entire Apple account.

I don’t need no-questions refunds. I need fair transactions.

Apple is too powerful in this relationship to provide it. If I have a problem with a merchant I can go to my credit card company about it. If I have a problem with my credit card company I might lose out on that one transaction but I can get a different credit card.

If I have a problem with Apple (or Steam or Nintendo or…) I either have to take the abuse or lose past “purchases”.

And the merchant themselves can do no questions asked refunds anyway.

Then let's allow consumers choose if that service is worth 10x higher fees.

Apple knows it's a rip-off: Apple has explicitly forbidden app developers from ever informing users how much they're paying for Apple's services.

You are free to only use apps that use apple payments if you are concerned about this.

Yes but will it be clear to users when they are using one vs the other?

Presumably Apple could have had more control over communicating this if they opened up external payment options voluntarily.

There's plenty of ways to ensure that. Don't let Apple's bad UI fool you into accepting Apple's bad business practices.

Apple could have created an API for other payment providers to integrate with, so that you could sign up for IAP with whoever you want (imagine your IAP and subscriptions run by PayPal if you enter a PayPal account instead of a credit card).

Banks and payment processors already have tons of policies requiring payments to be presented in a clear way, refunds and cancellations processed properly, etc. There are also plenty of trademark and consumer protection laws that forbid misrepresentation. It's a solved problem that Apple pretends to be unsolvable and spreads FUD about to keep their cash cow.

But then there are apps you were able to use previously that you will no longer be able to trust. That's the problem -- it's taking away trust.

You're not free to continue using Apple's payment system as a consumer.

What do you mean? The app can use Apple's system and its own. If the developers don't want your money on terms fair to you, you don't buy.

Some things are relatively easy to refund via Apple, but not all of them. It's nearly impossible to get a refund for in-app purchases, gift cards, balance top-ups, auto-renewing subscriptions, redeemed digital goods, and so on. Coming from the EU, if I paid for these things directly with a credit card, I'd be able to get a refund in line with our consumer protection laws (if the item was sold deceptively, if it has a fault, if I am not satisfied for any reason within 14 days) that cover more or less all digital purchases - no problem.

To borrow your words, Apple's system is taking away trust. I like the refunds my European bank offers me because it operates under consumer-friendly laws. I don't trust Apple's refunds.

Anyway, opening any system to more choices for the consumer cannot decrease trust. If the consumer trusts the original payment option, they can use that. If that is not provided, but the customers don't trust other payment methods, the app won't make money. The market will soon negotiate so that the payment methods that customers and sellers find acceptable prevail. Apple fears it won't be their extortion (I mean payment system), and rightfully so. Aside from the Stockholm syndrome, there's very little reason to use it.

This is a good point. If an app does me wrong with a non Apple payment processor I can do a chargeback as a last resort. That's not really an option for Apple payment processing because I think it can get your whole Apple account banned.

That is also true. There is a very significant disincentive to charge back against sellers protected by Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, PayPal, Stripe, and other similar payment gateways. The consumer protections are, therefore, eroded.

You're missing the part where app developers take away the Apple payment option because that way they can make it much harder to do refunds, cancel subscriptions, etc.

That decreases trust. Period.

You're claiming this is about adding choices, but it's not. App developers will be removing the choice for consumers to pay via Apple.

Saying it's my choice to then not use the app is disingenuous. When a good option is replaced with multiple worse options, there's no benefit to "more choices".

Please re-read the final paragraph of my comment.

I don't need to, that's what I was already responding to. Please re-read my comment.

I really didn't think it necessary to reply to your sentence that "If that is not provided, but the customers don't trust other payment methods, the app won't make money" -- because it's so clearly relying on a false premise.

But since you need it further explained: trust in payment methods isn't binary. I prefer Apple payments but still use my credit card for everything else where it isn't available. If people can't use a better payment option, they'll fall back to a worse one. They usually won't just forego using the app entirely. Just look at the success of Adobe Creative Cloud despite its horrendous billing practices.

Again, that's what's wrong with your argument around choice. More choice leads to worse outcomes when you allow the best choice to be removed.

> You're not free to continue using Apple's payment system as a consumer.

Previously, apps could still require you to not use the apple payment option.

For example, Spotify only let you subscribe on the web because apple's 30% cut is larger than their margin, so they'd lose money if you subscribed in-app.

The "Buy" page in the app was just text saying "You cannot buy a subscription in the app". It couldn't link to the webpage since apple's rule banned that. It couldn't say "You can buy a subscription on our webpage" because apple's rules banned that.

Before, an app could simply not have any payment option in the app, and tell you "You cannot pay here". Now, an app can still choose to have no in-app payment and instead tell you "You can pay on the web", or embed that web payment option in-app.

You are still welcome to refuse to use any apps that don't support apple pay, as you could before.

I’m pretty sure this ruling just lets developers add an external payment option (and charge less for it). Apple’s IAP is still a requirement, so you’ll still have that option if it’s worth the 30% premium to you (it definitely is not for me).

Nope.

Developers are free to include no payment mechanism in the app that would involve an iAP, and tell people to click to go to the website (which can open an in app browser window).

Well in that case, there must be a single endpoint, a common interface, to initiate a payment, track chargeback and view payment histories. Customers should have the option if they want to trust Apple with their payment details or 3rd-party.

You're free to pay the extra 30% yourself.

I already don't trust Apple's payment systems.

This is unambiguously a win.

This is sorta what customers expect. When they want a refund or have a problem, they ask the developer. They don't understand the payments are all going through apple AND that apple is responsible for all billing support. There is no way to even look up a customer or get a list of your customers with IAP, aside from using something like RevenueCat that tries to link your user accounts with the device receipts to figure out who is subscribed. Customers find it ridiculous that you can't help them with any billing questions at all.

Not 100% true, if it's digital you always have your Credit Card company. This is many times easier dealing with Apple or anyone else.

In fact, with apple providing this service, it's objectively worse — if apple declines to refund you and you charge back via card, apple (and Google etc) will just ban your account.

Removing apple and google from the payment chain mitigates this risk.

Canceling a purchase via Apple is generally much easier than dealing with your credit card. I don't know what experience you've had that has been the opposite?

> if you use a non-Apple payment system, and you have an issue, you now need to go to the specific company and payment system, you can no longer demand your money back by dealing with a single company

Just use a virtual payment processor (PayPal, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, etc) or any credit card directlyh. I mean, you often can't on an iPhone, and that's the whole problem.

If you have a genuine issue with what you bought via Apple's payment gateway and your bank files a credit card chargeback for you, Apple would even indiscriminately ban you. They are hardly the good guy.

They've installed themselves as an arbiter of what can be refunded and what cannot. But by law, the arbiter is the government, not Apple. So there are many, many problems with Apple's approach. The consumer rights are one, but acting above the law itself is a problem.

> you now need to go to the specific company and payment system,

My credit card company. In fact, this is better because as a consumer, if I get scammed, I only need to deal with my CC company, and when I get my money back, I don't have to worry about Apple closing my account in retaliation.

> When Apple controlled the payment system,

I was beholden to Apple's whims and limitations. If I didn't like Apple's outcome, going to my credit card company was still an option. However, initiating a charge back could result in something happening to my account.

> imagine trying to sue a company in some foreign country to try to get your money back if they stole it

One phone call with my CC company (I don't even know if you still need to do the phone call anymore).

Oh, but... to be fair, I can't go to Apple's subscription page and cancel it there. So, there is that one thing.

If I charge back some random store because I didn't get what I ordered no problem. If I charge back Apple they can effectively shut my phone down and not allow me to install another App.

This hasn't happened to the Android ecosystem, so why should it happen to the Apple ecosystem now?

That's literally the biggest selling point of credit cards too, you don't need to argue with every business you paid, just charge back your credit card. Apple didn't remotely invent "single point of dispute."

People are still able to use Apple payments. They just have other choices now. At least that is my understanding. Wanting choices does not seem like "Apple dislike". To me, at least.

On the other hand, Apple does not let you as the developer do refunds on your own. You can't do full or partial refunds.

That's a fair benefit to apple payment, and if the app vendor could offer apple pay (with the extra fee for this benefit) and their own payment system at a different price I think that would be ideal for consumers, yes?

This is how everything pretty much works outside of the app store ecosystem.

It's possible to file a complaint with your credit card company and if need be do a chargeback.

Well shit dealing with multiple companies sounds like a drag! We should merge all US companies into one entity!

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