Hacker News Reader

Comment by smileybarry | Hacker News Reader

If you haven't already, you can ask Google for a refund on that (the second, recent) in-app purchase:

https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/15574897?hl=en

The policies are "up to 48 hrs after purchase" but I'm sure "purchase does not work at all" is an exception. (It is on iOS)

View on HN

I've never succeeded on getting a refund with Google. There were a few apps that tricked me into buying a subscription (namely Musescore and Yazio), I immediately asked Google for a refund because I didn't actually get what I thought I was getting, and they denied me both times.

Now I just don't buy anything on the Play store that I can't afford to just be outright scammed on.

Was you able to eventually unsunbcribe from Musescore?

Yes, I could unsubscribe from both easily, but I wanted a refund because I couldn't use the subscriptions.

Two that I lost on play store:

1. World of Goo. Bought by Netflix, sunsetted, can't install old versions anymore

2. Monopoly. Bought by EA. Sunsetted/renamed to zzzMonopoly. Can't install old versions anymore.

FDroid has my attention since these happened.

This is how I find out that I can't install World of Goo anymore. Man.

The Musescore app is just a minefield of subscription farming, it was somehow miserable even with an existing subscription the number of times it tried to get me to also get their weird AI learning platform. Now I've left it entirely.

Strange and not normal. I've never not gotten a refund within the allotted terms.

> I'm sure "purchase does not work at all" is an exception

Nope, a Play store "support specialist" just told me: "I tried to create a refund request but its not allowing to create one since the date of the transaction is out of our refund policy as we can only process refunds for up to 120 days only after the transaction was charged."

Your credit card company will reverse it for you. A non-working product with unanswered emails will allow you to easily get your money back while also giving the middle finger to Google.

I believe that will result in Google locking you out of your Google account, including Gmail, YouTube, any Google Cloud projects, etc.

This is exactly what will happen, you have no recourse. Technofeudalism is real.

I've done it in the past (~2015). Honestly if Google locked me out of all of those other purchases it'd be great grounds to sue them. If everyone started doing this it would prevent them from doing this in the first place and may be additional fodder for (hopefully) continued anti-trust losses in court. If your life is tied to Google in that way then it's a risk no matter what you do and you should probably think about how to reduce that risk. I don't have anything other than purchases tied to my Google accounts anymore.

Peanuts to an elephant.

It's likely down in the ToS somewhere that they are free to close your account if you do a chargeback, otherwise they wouldn't be so eager to do it.

I hadn't gotten around to it yet, but just requested it and it got instantly approved. At least that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com