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Yeah, one MAJOR issue I have with the folks complaining about apple. Many of them have HORRIBLE cancellation policies. I had to fight NY Times like crazy (it w

Yeah, one MAJOR issue I have with the folks complaining about apple. Many of them have HORRIBLE cancellation policies. I had to fight NY Times like crazy (it was sign up online, call to cancel kind of thing). Match is also in the "alliance" fighting apple with Facebook. They also have scummy practices (either tracking you or again duping you). The other thing I like with Apple, the trial periods are REALLY clear. When you sign up with comcast it's like $29/month (and then in tiny tiny print 10 pages later you find out that after 6 months it's $69/month or whatever). So until these folks clean things up where they ALREADY have full control (on the web) I'm willing to cut apple a ton of slack. Apple will remind you to cancel a subscription when you delete a related app. It reminds you if a subscription will renew and you can cancel then. I willing spend money through the app store I'd not spend ANYWHERE else. For folks willing to spend money but who don't want to f'ed around with constantly apple is the place to be. And it is super easy these days. Double tap or touch and done.

jmknoll 5y ago
Do virtualized credit card numbers address this problem? I have a free browser extension from my credit card company that generates virtual account numbers and when I pay for a service I create a new number for it. If it’s difficult to cancel the service I just delete the number instead.
- cachvico 5y ago
  It doesn't. That's for fraud protection, not just-on-the-right-side-of-the-law subscription sketchiness.
  - paulgb 5y ago
    Legally it doesn't, but for practical purposes most recurring subscriptions probably won't pursue you over a declined payment and will just suspend your account. I don't advocate this, but I've heard that it works.
  - MiddleEndian 5y ago
    This shouldn't be on-the-right-side-of-the-law. You should be able to have your credit card send a "cancel" signal and that should be it. Further charges are theft.
- onphonenow 5y ago
  In part. Apple allows you to block the company from doing tracking of you and connecting that to other info. These things are hard to block technically sometimes. I had a company threaten collections action over an unpaid subscription because they continued to provide the service (that I didn't want) and I hadn't paid. It doesn't matter that I had an email saying please cancel. You have to dial XXX. On the business side we are seeing more deals where you have to provide written notice 60 days BEFORE the end of the 5 year term but not more than 90 days (check your copier lease agreements). All these are essentially tricks to force renewals in my view (and are totally allowed).
- maccard 5y ago
  Absolutely not. That's the equivalent of just ignoring an invoice.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  It addresses the problem in the same way that shoplifting addresses the problem of not having enough money for what you want. Technically, you're in the wrong. You're failing to pay a bill you signed up to pay. And no one will go after you for $4 (unless they really want to lose money, I guess.) But if you try the same thing on tens of thousands of dollars of subscriptions (say, as a business you make a decision to do that) you'll probably get sued.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Even with virtual credit cards, companies can still charge you and anything unpaid can just go to collections.
akudha 5y ago
I understand your view, but the hilarious (or sad?) thing here is we are applauding a multi-trillion dollar company for the most basic functionality. This is like saying “this restaurant sucks, but hey, I am glad that I got at least something to eat!” The bar has been set so low, that allowing customers to cancel easily is worthy of praise! This is a shitty situation for ordinary people to be in. Another thing to think about - if Apple were a bit more nicer to developers, they can have the developer loyalty for ever and ever. But they are so big and their competition is so bad that they don’t think developers have a choice. Short term profits is apparently more important than long term goodwill. Of course, they aren’t alone in this. The saddest part is - after all their shenanigans, they are still better than other companies:(
- onphonenow 5y ago
  The issue is the policy makers / department of justices entire focus seems to be on fighting so that companies can make more money and/or scam users by getting outside of app store polices. Why this level of DOJ involvement against apple (with very little CONSUMER harm) when your grandma is LITERALLY getting scammed by fake tech support etc and they do jake crap over any of that. Millions of consumers get screwed over, in big ways and small, day in and day out. Crickets. Apple creates a small ecosystem that is completely optional for consumers to use that does a few things right (little tracking, fights all these companies on everything from tracking to trial periods to cancellations and more). And now that is a crime. The App store is the LEAST of my consumer protection worries. Most of the "alliance" of folks fighting apple run scammy business. Loot boxes for kids (Epic/Fornighte type folks) / Zynga / Facebook data exploiters / Match.com fake profile type players / NY Times impossible to cancel people.
  - akudha 5y ago
    Yes, all the players you mentioned suck, and they suck more than Apple probably. But that doesn’t mean we should not call out Apple’s bad behavior. Also - Apple has infinite resources. They can be nice to everyone if they want. They choose to be arrogant, just because they can. None of the companies you listed have a cult following, Apple does. Nobody gives Facebook or Zynga a tenth of the respect they give Apple (I think it is justified, those companies suck real bad). Is it unfair to expect Apple to behave better than others? In my opinion, no. Others might disagree.
paulgb 5y ago
Don't get me wrong, I hate all that, but it's not worth a 30% tax on every recurring purchase to me. As Apple admits in the linked emails, this is a cost passed on to the customers.
- onphonenow 5y ago
  The idea that these companies can't make 30% more per user on the app store is what is insane to me. On the app store customers have trust. My app store spend is many multiples of what I would spend otherwise. For most business if you said, hey, I'll take 30% for marketing but get you 100% more revenue they would do that right away. Are Apple app store customers really that cheap relative to android? Androids marketshare is FAR FAR bigger, but apple has just sorted out the give us money safely story. My own glance is that iOS users spend easily 4x as much as google play users AND are much less likely to steal apps. If that's not worth it to devs apple should be able to unlock and really give users freedom (including to download from anywhere online and install). I wonder if android has a bigger app piracy problem then iOS (which devs apparently don't care about).
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    > Androids marketshare is FAR FAR bigger Not in the US. Apple has 60% of the mobile market compared to Google's 40%[1], and Apple's App Store is responsible for 100% more revenue than the Play Store. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-android-dominates-in-china-and-india https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-...
timeon 5y ago
> I had to fight NY Times like crazy (it was sign up online, call to cancel kind of thing). This is same with The Times. I would not expect such scammy practice from these companies.
- kshacker 5y ago
  I used to pay 7.50 then 8 bucks for the Times. But each year I had to call and threaten to cancel. One year they charged me 15-16 and I was pissed off and their phone guy not very helpful so instead of the retention route I just told him cancel no deal. Nothing. Next day or week after expiry they offered me 4 bucks. I was happily paying 8 but they made me figure 4 was possible so now that's my bar.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    You're missing the period of time. Per month?
cbozeman 5y ago
- vore 5y ago
  Please don't ad hominem the parent poster by claiming they have a "mental illness" like this.
- chasing 5y ago
  I find a lot of their content quite good and am more than happy to pay for it. And a quick googlin' indicates it wasn't a marketing department that came up with "the paper of record" but librarians. But to be Fair and Balanced, you're right to be shocked that a company would use marketing slogans to sell their product. Especially a news organization.
taurath 5y ago
> So until these folks clean things up where they ALREADY have full control (on the web) I'm willing to cut apple a ton of slack. I spent years working at a place where apple wouldn't allow us to even link to a website to manage your account if the signup wasn't sourced by apple, so I feel like any marketing they have around being customer focused is really just window dressing.
- Spivak 5y ago
  This is a "class gets punished because of a few bad students" kinda thing. Without this rule everyone would and did just play the game of using their iOS app to drive people to their website to sign up to avoid paying Apple. Apple, who charges for exposure and access to their users, I think is reasonably annoyed that people are trying to get that for free.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    So let the apps opt out of "exposure", which tends to be very minimal. And "access" doesn't belong to them, they owe their users access to apps.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      You can opt-out though. Just don't sell digital goods on your app and don't use your app as a funnel to direct people to your website where you sell them. Audible takes this approach and it seems to work fine enough for them. Boom! Apple will take 0% of your revenue.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        That's a useful workaround when Apple allows it, which they haven't done consistently. But that's not at all what I meant by opting out. I meant "If this is the price for 'exposure', just stop giving me 'exposure' and let me sell digital goods in my app." Also it's not just 'digital goods', it applies to services too. You can currently manage a netflix subscription in the app, I think, but it's been unavailable a lot and netflix seems to have a special exception that doesn't apply to video services in general.
jfim 5y ago
> I had to fight NY Times like crazy (it was sign up online, call to cancel kind of thing). I had that issue several years ago with Sonic (the broadband provider). However, if you're in California, it should be possible to cancel a subscription by the same means that one subscribed to the service in the first place. For example, if one signed up online for a newspaper, they should be able to cancel online as well. This has been in place since July of 2018 I believe. New restrictions coming into effect in July 2022 require having a link or button to cancel a subscription as part of a customer's profile page, as well as notifying customers of an impending renewal for trials that have an extended free trial period.
- kevinventullo 5y ago
  I won’t hold my breath waiting for NYT to receive a big fine.
passivate 5y ago
>So until these folks clean things up where they ALREADY have full control (on the web) I'm willing to cut apple a ton of slack. Sorry, but its easy to say that if they're not grabbing 30% of sales from YOUR small business. If you think this fight is about Facebook or Match or NY, you're missing the whole point. Those big guys can take care of themselves just fine.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > its easy to say that if they're not grabbing 30% of sales from YOUR small business. They're not grabbing 30% of the sales from ANY small business. They lowered their fees to 15% for the first million dollars (I think both per year and per app).
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    It's actually worse than that. The vast majority of IAP revenue comes from the bigger mobile game publishers. Not only do Apple take 30% of this, they screwed over all those developers by removing their (ad platforms mostly) ability to track users, thus breaking the developers monetisation model. I honestly find it hard to believe that they didn't realise that this was going to hit them hard with IAP revenue, but then I've always been surprised at the lack of joined up thinking in large companies.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Apple's motto is screwing over developers in the name of customer satisfaction and decency. Usually they're in the right, including in this situation.
      - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        Yeah, but this one actually hits their revenues. It's disguised for now because their ad platform is way up, but over the longer term this will absolutely crater their app store revenue. Therefore, I suspect that this will be substantially weakened/rolled back over the next few years (this process has already started, btw).
salamandersauce 5y ago
And yet subscription scams abound on the App Store. Apple makes it INSANELY easy to start subscribing to a $7.99 per week subscription that there is a load of scummy apps that try to trick you into starting one and people would be a lot more cautious if they had to manually enter their billing info. I think there's a better middle ground somewhere.

jmknoll 5y ago

Do virtualized credit card numbers address this problem? I have a free browser extension from my credit card company that generates virtual account numbers and when I pay for a service I create a new number for it. If it’s difficult to cancel the service I just delete the number instead.

cachvico 5y ago
It doesn't. That's for fraud protection, not just-on-the-right-side-of-the-law subscription sketchiness.
- paulgb 5y ago
  Legally it doesn't, but for practical purposes most recurring subscriptions probably won't pursue you over a declined payment and will just suspend your account. I don't advocate this, but I've heard that it works.
- MiddleEndian 5y ago
  This shouldn't be on-the-right-side-of-the-law. You should be able to have your credit card send a "cancel" signal and that should be it. Further charges are theft.
onphonenow 5y ago
In part. Apple allows you to block the company from doing tracking of you and connecting that to other info. These things are hard to block technically sometimes. I had a company threaten collections action over an unpaid subscription because they continued to provide the service (that I didn't want) and I hadn't paid. It doesn't matter that I had an email saying please cancel. You have to dial XXX. On the business side we are seeing more deals where you have to provide written notice 60 days BEFORE the end of the 5 year term but not more than 90 days (check your copier lease agreements). All these are essentially tricks to force renewals in my view (and are totally allowed).
maccard 5y ago
Absolutely not. That's the equivalent of just ignoring an invoice.
HWR_14 5y ago
It addresses the problem in the same way that shoplifting addresses the problem of not having enough money for what you want. Technically, you're in the wrong. You're failing to pay a bill you signed up to pay. And no one will go after you for $4 (unless they really want to lose money, I guess.) But if you try the same thing on tens of thousands of dollars of subscriptions (say, as a business you make a decision to do that) you'll probably get sued.
judge2020 5y ago
Even with virtual credit cards, companies can still charge you and anything unpaid can just go to collections.

akudha 5y ago

I understand your view, but the hilarious (or sad?) thing here is we are applauding a multi-trillion dollar company for the most basic functionality. This is like saying “this restaurant sucks, but hey, I am glad that I got at least something to eat!” The bar has been set so low, that allowing customers to cancel easily is worthy of praise! This is a shitty situation for ordinary people to be in. Another thing to think about - if Apple were a bit more nicer to developers, they can have the developer loyalty for ever and ever. But they are so big and their competition is so bad that they don’t think developers have a choice. Short term profits is apparently more important than long term goodwill. Of course, they aren’t alone in this. The saddest part is - after all their shenanigans, they are still better than other companies:(

onphonenow 5y ago
The issue is the policy makers / department of justices entire focus seems to be on fighting so that companies can make more money and/or scam users by getting outside of app store polices. Why this level of DOJ involvement against apple (with very little CONSUMER harm) when your grandma is LITERALLY getting scammed by fake tech support etc and they do jake crap over any of that. Millions of consumers get screwed over, in big ways and small, day in and day out. Crickets. Apple creates a small ecosystem that is completely optional for consumers to use that does a few things right (little tracking, fights all these companies on everything from tracking to trial periods to cancellations and more). And now that is a crime. The App store is the LEAST of my consumer protection worries. Most of the "alliance" of folks fighting apple run scammy business. Loot boxes for kids (Epic/Fornighte type folks) / Zynga / Facebook data exploiters / Match.com fake profile type players / NY Times impossible to cancel people.
- akudha 5y ago
  Yes, all the players you mentioned suck, and they suck more than Apple probably. But that doesn’t mean we should not call out Apple’s bad behavior. Also - Apple has infinite resources. They can be nice to everyone if they want. They choose to be arrogant, just because they can. None of the companies you listed have a cult following, Apple does. Nobody gives Facebook or Zynga a tenth of the respect they give Apple (I think it is justified, those companies suck real bad). Is it unfair to expect Apple to behave better than others? In my opinion, no. Others might disagree.

paulgb 5y ago

Don't get me wrong, I hate all that, but it's not worth a 30% tax on every recurring purchase to me. As Apple admits in the linked emails, this is a cost passed on to the customers.

onphonenow 5y ago
The idea that these companies can't make 30% more per user on the app store is what is insane to me. On the app store customers have trust. My app store spend is many multiples of what I would spend otherwise. For most business if you said, hey, I'll take 30% for marketing but get you 100% more revenue they would do that right away. Are Apple app store customers really that cheap relative to android? Androids marketshare is FAR FAR bigger, but apple has just sorted out the give us money safely story. My own glance is that iOS users spend easily 4x as much as google play users AND are much less likely to steal apps. If that's not worth it to devs apple should be able to unlock and really give users freedom (including to download from anywhere online and install). I wonder if android has a bigger app piracy problem then iOS (which devs apparently don't care about).
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > Androids marketshare is FAR FAR bigger Not in the US. Apple has 60% of the mobile market compared to Google's 40%[1], and Apple's App Store is responsible for 100% more revenue than the Play Store. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-android-dominates-in-china-and-india https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-...

timeon 5y ago

> I had to fight NY Times like crazy (it was sign up online, call to cancel kind of thing). This is same with The Times. I would not expect such scammy practice from these companies.

kshacker 5y ago
I used to pay 7.50 then 8 bucks for the Times. But each year I had to call and threaten to cancel. One year they charged me 15-16 and I was pissed off and their phone guy not very helpful so instead of the retention route I just told him cancel no deal. Nothing. Next day or week after expiry they offered me 4 bucks. I was happily paying 8 but they made me figure 4 was possible so now that's my bar.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  You're missing the period of time. Per month?

cbozeman 5y ago

vore 5y ago
Please don't ad hominem the parent poster by claiming they have a "mental illness" like this.
chasing 5y ago
I find a lot of their content quite good and am more than happy to pay for it. And a quick googlin' indicates it wasn't a marketing department that came up with "the paper of record" but librarians. But to be Fair and Balanced, you're right to be shocked that a company would use marketing slogans to sell their product. Especially a news organization.

taurath 5y ago

> So until these folks clean things up where they ALREADY have full control (on the web) I'm willing to cut apple a ton of slack. I spent years working at a place where apple wouldn't allow us to even link to a website to manage your account if the signup wasn't sourced by apple, so I feel like any marketing they have around being customer focused is really just window dressing.

Spivak 5y ago
This is a "class gets punished because of a few bad students" kinda thing. Without this rule everyone would and did just play the game of using their iOS app to drive people to their website to sign up to avoid paying Apple. Apple, who charges for exposure and access to their users, I think is reasonably annoyed that people are trying to get that for free.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  So let the apps opt out of "exposure", which tends to be very minimal. And "access" doesn't belong to them, they owe their users access to apps.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    You can opt-out though. Just don't sell digital goods on your app and don't use your app as a funnel to direct people to your website where you sell them. Audible takes this approach and it seems to work fine enough for them. Boom! Apple will take 0% of your revenue.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      That's a useful workaround when Apple allows it, which they haven't done consistently. But that's not at all what I meant by opting out. I meant "If this is the price for 'exposure', just stop giving me 'exposure' and let me sell digital goods in my app." Also it's not just 'digital goods', it applies to services too. You can currently manage a netflix subscription in the app, I think, but it's been unavailable a lot and netflix seems to have a special exception that doesn't apply to video services in general.

jfim 5y ago

> I had to fight NY Times like crazy (it was sign up online, call to cancel kind of thing). I had that issue several years ago with Sonic (the broadband provider). However, if you're in California, it should be possible to cancel a subscription by the same means that one subscribed to the service in the first place. For example, if one signed up online for a newspaper, they should be able to cancel online as well. This has been in place since July of 2018 I believe. New restrictions coming into effect in July 2022 require having a link or button to cancel a subscription as part of a customer's profile page, as well as notifying customers of an impending renewal for trials that have an extended free trial period.

kevinventullo 5y ago
I won’t hold my breath waiting for NYT to receive a big fine.

passivate 5y ago

>So until these folks clean things up where they ALREADY have full control (on the web) I'm willing to cut apple a ton of slack. Sorry, but its easy to say that if they're not grabbing 30% of sales from YOUR small business. If you think this fight is about Facebook or Match or NY, you're missing the whole point. Those big guys can take care of themselves just fine.

HWR_14 5y ago
> its easy to say that if they're not grabbing 30% of sales from YOUR small business. They're not grabbing 30% of the sales from ANY small business. They lowered their fees to 15% for the first million dollars (I think both per year and per app).
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  It's actually worse than that. The vast majority of IAP revenue comes from the bigger mobile game publishers. Not only do Apple take 30% of this, they screwed over all those developers by removing their (ad platforms mostly) ability to track users, thus breaking the developers monetisation model. I honestly find it hard to believe that they didn't realise that this was going to hit them hard with IAP revenue, but then I've always been surprised at the lack of joined up thinking in large companies.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Apple's motto is screwing over developers in the name of customer satisfaction and decency. Usually they're in the right, including in this situation.
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      Yeah, but this one actually hits their revenues. It's disguised for now because their ad platform is way up, but over the longer term this will absolutely crater their app store revenue. Therefore, I suspect that this will be substantially weakened/rolled back over the next few years (this process has already started, btw).

salamandersauce 5y ago

And yet subscription scams abound on the App Store. Apple makes it INSANELY easy to start subscribing to a $7.99 per week subscription that there is a load of scummy apps that try to trick you into starting one and people would be a lot more cautious if they had to manually enter their billing info. I think there's a better middle ground somewhere.