7 ms·

Apple destroyed my 7-figure business

50 points by nmfisher 4y ago

aloneindecember 4y ago
Apple also gave him the opportunity to make seven figures making an "Offline Wiki" app.
- dchftcs 4y ago
  Seems money really was that easy to make in the early days of mobile.
  - musicale 4y ago
    ^ if you won the gold rush, yes
- pritambaral 4y ago
  The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. How despicably feudal.
tra3 4y ago
I don’t get it. His app was purchased with stolen credit cards so Apple suspended the app? How does that make any sense? Also how do you sell a mobile app without a mobile ecosystems? It’s someone else’s platform all the way down.
- aetherson 4y ago
  One suspicion is that you're laundering money to yourself. That is, you purchase stolen credit card numbers, then use them to buy your own app, thus turning the cc numbers into actual cash through Apple. But more so, they don't actually care that much about the whys. If your app draws lots of fraudulent purchases, they want it dead. You're just creating negative revenue (when the fraudulent purchases are reversed) and bad reputation for Apple.
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    Pretty convenient for Apple that they decide that's your responsibiliy instead of theirs. Doesn't Apple dictate that the payment goes through them? If it's such a crime to process these transactions that the guilty drserve to die for being involved or associated in any way, then they are even more guilty and should have killed themselves by that logic. Man these big guys sure do give themselves a great gig.
    - bg24 4y ago
      I do not understand why the above thread is downvoted. Just because Apple has a problem detecting/controlling fraudulent transactions, they want an app to be dead! Kill-x-app-as-a-service would be popular among scammers.
    - aetherson 4y ago
      Basically everyone involved in payments has sort of an informal tax on them that they pay to reduce payment fraud. But since it's all informal, there's this constant push-and-pull about whose responsibility is exactly to do what. The way that payment processors see it is that sites that accept payment's duty is to take enough precautions -- based on the nature of their business, the profile of their customers, etc. -- to keep fraud down to a relatively low level. And if your site is a magnet for fraud you've failed to be a good citizen and they're entitled to be harsh with you. They in return eat the primary liability for fraudulent payments -- that is, they may try to recover fraud from the sites, but it's anyone's guess whether they will be able to, while they themselves will always be on the hook for it. From the perspective of especially smaller sites, it can be like, "Wait, what? What were we supposed to do? How were we supposed to even know that people were using us for fraud?" There's definitely a lot of room for the payment processors to misbehave and push more liability onto the sites than is perhaps optimal.
- invalidname 4y ago
  The competitor used fake accounts and stolen credit cards to buy his app so he will get suspended. The chargeback costs are heavy so Apple killed the app receiving the purchases.
  - musicale 4y ago
    How much did the app cost?
    - invalidname 4y ago
      I don't know. I just read the twitter thread. But chargeback is 25 USD typically (processing fee from credit card companies). I guess Apple gets a discount due to scale but it's still pretty high.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  Paypal does this as well; our money (a lot of money) got locked because our competitor (we found out years later because they were bragging about it) used stolen/fake cards to buy our product. They don’t side with their client; they side with the money/least risk and hassle. Google does the same with adsense; if you have a competitor which makes a good amount with Adsense, just hire a botnet and have it click ads. Happened to us as well. They should not care about this and just leave it; they know it could be a competitor more likely than it is you (if you make 7 figures for an extended period of time, why would you suddenly do this?); if they can detect suspicious behaviour, why do they care about it and not just filter it? But nope; you get axed and no one cares. It is really very important to make sure you don’t trust one platform when real real starts coming in. If you are around long enough, you will have many bad platform stories. Every moment I see money coming in via 1 source, I get nervous and start planning to diversify that dependency. At the moment Stripe stories keep popping up over here; if you make a lot of money, you should have multiple alternatives or, better, get very close to an acquirer; they will answer your calls and the fees will be lower too; sure it’s more integration work, but if you make enough money, why is that more important than securing your future?
cityzen 4y ago
Something about this whole thing seems off. It seems like a made up story to promote whatever real estate shenanigans this guy is into. I noticed he lists "YC" in his twitter bio, is he a YC founder?
- securingsincity 4y ago
  https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/founders?query=evan%20rosenfeld https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/founders?query=evan%20... Apparently he was thanks to the new founders directory. There is something fishy about this post though
wmf 4y ago
He contacted everyone except a lawyer.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tehwebguy 4y ago
  Seriously, why not spend a few bucks and get your answer?
  - joenot443 4y ago
    Apple isn’t legally obligated to send you details about why they deplatformed you, why should they be? The net is riddled with story’s like OPs and never does it end with “I threatened the trillion dollar company with my $200/h lawyer, and they caved!”
    - tehwebguy 4y ago
      Yeah but if you sue they have to at a minimum respond. It might just be a bunch of affirmative defenses but at least you'll have a human rep "at Apple" working on your case. I don't know if they are incentivized to wrap up suits via no-pay settlements. Just $10k would be 50 hours @ $200. Maybe his cashflow was such that he couldn't manage this by that time but coming up against like $1M revenue a year it seems silly to do all that other weird stuff (like crashing some kid's birthday party? hope that was an exaggeration) and not do the one thing that guarantees some type of attention & response.
- invalidname 4y ago
  A lawyer starts a letter writing process which stretches for months. You will win in the end but it will cost you a lot. With Apples ToS you can't really do much, they are very well protected and the costs would be prohibitive. From my experience, there are many cases where involving a lawyer makes a hard problem much harder.
  - 4y ago
dngray 4y ago
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1612085234648121346.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1612085234648121346.html
boesboes 4y ago
Sounds like a scam tbh
musicale 4y ago
What was the app?
ookblah 4y ago
The cynic in me. Are we supposed to buy into his real estate stuff now? This entire thing reads like a pseudo-ad, no real information, I don't even know what his 7 figure app is...

50 points by nmfisher 4y ago

aloneindecember 4y ago

Apple also gave him the opportunity to make seven figures making an "Offline Wiki" app.

dchftcs 4y ago
Seems money really was that easy to make in the early days of mobile.
- musicale 4y ago
  ^ if you won the gold rush, yes
pritambaral 4y ago
The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. How despicably feudal.

tra3 4y ago

I don’t get it. His app was purchased with stolen credit cards so Apple suspended the app? How does that make any sense? Also how do you sell a mobile app without a mobile ecosystems? It’s someone else’s platform all the way down.

aetherson 4y ago
One suspicion is that you're laundering money to yourself. That is, you purchase stolen credit card numbers, then use them to buy your own app, thus turning the cc numbers into actual cash through Apple. But more so, they don't actually care that much about the whys. If your app draws lots of fraudulent purchases, they want it dead. You're just creating negative revenue (when the fraudulent purchases are reversed) and bad reputation for Apple.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  Pretty convenient for Apple that they decide that's your responsibiliy instead of theirs. Doesn't Apple dictate that the payment goes through them? If it's such a crime to process these transactions that the guilty drserve to die for being involved or associated in any way, then they are even more guilty and should have killed themselves by that logic. Man these big guys sure do give themselves a great gig.
  - bg24 4y ago
    I do not understand why the above thread is downvoted. Just because Apple has a problem detecting/controlling fraudulent transactions, they want an app to be dead! Kill-x-app-as-a-service would be popular among scammers.
  - aetherson 4y ago
    Basically everyone involved in payments has sort of an informal tax on them that they pay to reduce payment fraud. But since it's all informal, there's this constant push-and-pull about whose responsibility is exactly to do what. The way that payment processors see it is that sites that accept payment's duty is to take enough precautions -- based on the nature of their business, the profile of their customers, etc. -- to keep fraud down to a relatively low level. And if your site is a magnet for fraud you've failed to be a good citizen and they're entitled to be harsh with you. They in return eat the primary liability for fraudulent payments -- that is, they may try to recover fraud from the sites, but it's anyone's guess whether they will be able to, while they themselves will always be on the hook for it. From the perspective of especially smaller sites, it can be like, "Wait, what? What were we supposed to do? How were we supposed to even know that people were using us for fraud?" There's definitely a lot of room for the payment processors to misbehave and push more liability onto the sites than is perhaps optimal.
invalidname 4y ago
The competitor used fake accounts and stolen credit cards to buy his app so he will get suspended. The chargeback costs are heavy so Apple killed the app receiving the purchases.
- musicale 4y ago
  How much did the app cost?
  - invalidname 4y ago
    I don't know. I just read the twitter thread. But chargeback is 25 USD typically (processing fee from credit card companies). I guess Apple gets a discount due to scale but it's still pretty high.
tluyben2 4y ago
Paypal does this as well; our money (a lot of money) got locked because our competitor (we found out years later because they were bragging about it) used stolen/fake cards to buy our product. They don’t side with their client; they side with the money/least risk and hassle. Google does the same with adsense; if you have a competitor which makes a good amount with Adsense, just hire a botnet and have it click ads. Happened to us as well. They should not care about this and just leave it; they know it could be a competitor more likely than it is you (if you make 7 figures for an extended period of time, why would you suddenly do this?); if they can detect suspicious behaviour, why do they care about it and not just filter it? But nope; you get axed and no one cares. It is really very important to make sure you don’t trust one platform when real real starts coming in. If you are around long enough, you will have many bad platform stories. Every moment I see money coming in via 1 source, I get nervous and start planning to diversify that dependency. At the moment Stripe stories keep popping up over here; if you make a lot of money, you should have multiple alternatives or, better, get very close to an acquirer; they will answer your calls and the fees will be lower too; sure it’s more integration work, but if you make enough money, why is that more important than securing your future?

cityzen 4y ago

Something about this whole thing seems off. It seems like a made up story to promote whatever real estate shenanigans this guy is into. I noticed he lists "YC" in his twitter bio, is he a YC founder?

securingsincity 4y ago
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/founders?query=evan%20rosenfeld https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/founders?query=evan%20... Apparently he was thanks to the new founders directory. There is something fishy about this post though

wmf 4y ago

He contacted everyone except a lawyer.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tehwebguy 4y ago
Seriously, why not spend a few bucks and get your answer?
- joenot443 4y ago
  Apple isn’t legally obligated to send you details about why they deplatformed you, why should they be? The net is riddled with story’s like OPs and never does it end with “I threatened the trillion dollar company with my $200/h lawyer, and they caved!”
  - tehwebguy 4y ago
    Yeah but if you sue they have to at a minimum respond. It might just be a bunch of affirmative defenses but at least you'll have a human rep "at Apple" working on your case. I don't know if they are incentivized to wrap up suits via no-pay settlements. Just $10k would be 50 hours @ $200. Maybe his cashflow was such that he couldn't manage this by that time but coming up against like $1M revenue a year it seems silly to do all that other weird stuff (like crashing some kid's birthday party? hope that was an exaggeration) and not do the one thing that guarantees some type of attention & response.
invalidname 4y ago
A lawyer starts a letter writing process which stretches for months. You will win in the end but it will cost you a lot. With Apples ToS you can't really do much, they are very well protected and the costs would be prohibitive. From my experience, there are many cases where involving a lawyer makes a hard problem much harder.
- 4y ago

dngray 4y ago

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1612085234648121346.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1612085234648121346.html

boesboes 4y ago

Sounds like a scam tbh

musicale 4y ago

What was the app?

ookblah 4y ago

The cynic in me. Are we supposed to buy into his real estate stuff now? This entire thing reads like a pseudo-ad, no real information, I don't even know what his 7 figure app is...