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> Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him personally about $250,000. Does he have a claim against Reddit for that money I wonder? Why would they?

> Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him personally about $250,000. Does he have a claim against Reddit for that money I wonder? Why would they? In fact, lots of people were already frustrated with the handling of "lifetime access" while having ads being pushed. A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App for iOS. Now they cannot hold true to their offer, so they're forced to refund it. This is the price of the bargain Apollo made. I feel terrible for Christian on an individual level. He must be going through hell. However, there is a business being run by Apollo and it needs to be held to it's commitments.

robbiet480 3y ago
I don't think lifetime access is getting refunded since that was just a one time unlock. He says the $250,000 cost is to refund all "subscriptions".
- no_butterscotch 3y ago
  How does Apple's refunds work? I'm surprised more people don't do one-time purchases to avoid these subscription refund stories I keep hearing.
  - sco1 3y ago
    > How does Apple's refunds work? I don't know how monthly subscriptions work, but yearly subscription refunds are pro-rated. > I'm surprised more people don't do one-time purchases to avoid these subscription refund stories I keep hearing I'm not, at least not for apps like this that need consistent revenue to support regular maintenance and/or server costs in an era where customers balk when an app costs more than a few dollars. To achieve this you end up balancing whether or not to serve ads, hope you can just grow enough new users forever, charge for major updates, charge a subscription, or beg for tips. While there are some exceptions, you can probably tell that ads or subscriptions are generally winning this nowadays. One-time purchases are a tricky thing, since you've realisitcally now precluded ever charging for a major update. This is great for them, and might be for you if you've gotten your math right, but if you haven't (or it changes) then you're stuck. And, for better or for worse, they tend to be the loudest users. Marco Arment talks about this balance in general on an episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast a couple weeks ago when discussing how Casey (another host) should price an app he's writing. For context if folks aren't aware, Marco created Overcast, which is a popular 3rd party iOS podcast app. The discussion spans a couple episodes but I the post-show of [Episode 535](https://atp.fm/535 https://atp.fm/535) captures the gist.
nocoiner 3y ago
I generally agree with this type of analysis regarding for-profit ventures, but as a lifetime purchaser, I’m not going to try to get a refund here. I got my money’s worth out of Apollo, and Christian is handling this like a steely-eyed capitalist. He’s not asking the community to bail him out from his business decisions or Reddit taking things in a different direction, and I respect that a lot. Very different tone from when the Twitter client developers were complaining that no one could possibly have foreseen a situation where they couldn’t deliver on services they’d happily taken money for upfront.
- Silhouette 3y ago
  Did people really sell services that necessarily depended on a third party's services without some contractual safeguard in their terms in case the third party changed how they operate? There's always a risk in building your offering on top of someone else's and plenty of attempts to do that in that past didn't work out so surely any lawyer who works in this field should have seen that one coming? Edit: This was an honest question in response to the parent comment about Twitter clients. What's with the downvotes?
  - nocoiner 3y ago
    Yes, they did. And yes, like you, it should have been obvious to everyone involved. Yet for some reason, the Twitter client devs (who had happily shifted all their users to a subscription-only model) all of a sudden realized that they had sold a bunch of one year subs they had sold were going to be useless as soon as Twitter turned off the API and, more pertinent to their pocketbooks, all those customers would be entitled to request and receive a refund through the App Store for their now non-functional app. The devs started whining to their customers about being “small businesses” and having the food snatched out of their families’ mouths and why would anyone be so cruel as to seek a refund? Christian is showing a hell of a lot more integrity and toughness than the Twitter client authors.
- data-ottawa 3y ago
  The lifetime subscription doesn’t need a refund, it lasted the lifetime of the app, and it wasn’t just a bait and switch either.
actionablefiber 3y ago
> A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App for iOS. Now they cannot hold true to their offer, so they're forced to refund it. This is the price of the bargain Apollo made. Did I miss something? I downloaded and used Apollo for free for a time, then later bought Pro for like $5 a couple years back. There is/was a subscription tier, Ultra, which for a time had a lifetime option, but it was never a particularly necessary expense and I have always enjoyed Apollo without it.
- hrrsn 3y ago
  The "Pro" tier was a one-off payment at one point in time, but at some point this switched to a monthly subscription. Previous owners were grandfathered in.
kossTKR 3y ago
Reddit is stupid, and the whole situation is bad, but shouldn't the man behind the biggest app for the biggest forum in the world, in the lucrative ios ecosystem have made himself wealthy enough so that 250k is close to nothing? Or am i misunderstanding how much money there is in this space? If he isn't "10+ million"-wealthy that's extremely disappointing for all solo devs out there in my eyes.
- chihuahua 3y ago
  I think you may be overestimating how much money there is in this space. People don't want to pay for things if they can avoid it. The biggest app for the biggest forum in the world apparently had 50k paying users. The author was complaining about the cost of icons, which to me suggests that he is not terribly wealthy. But there's a lot about this story that I don't understand: * How can the Apollo guy be perceived as "threatening" Reddit? He has no leverage. * Why does he suggest that they buy his app for $10m, when they can just terminate his API access at a cost of $0 - "I have altered the deal; pray that I do not alter it any further"
  - ZephyrBlu 3y ago
    > Why does he suggest that they buy his app for $10m, when they can just terminate his API access at a cost of $0 Because according to Reddit, the problem with Apollo is the opportunity cost of Reddit not being able to monetize its users. Acquiring Apollo is user acquisition. Destroying the app does not necessarily mean that all those users will now start using Reddit's official app and become monetizable, they might just quit Reddit entirely. By acquiring Apollo Reddit could monetize those users through Apollo instead of the official Reddit app.
    - sco1 3y ago
      > By acquiring Apollo Reddit could monetize those users through Apollo instead of the official Reddit app. After what Reddit did to Alien Blue I don't know how many Apollo users would be too keen on playing that game again. I personally have no confidence that a Reddit owned Apollo would retain what makes the current app great.
paulmd 3y ago
> Why would they? > A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App for iOS. Now they cannot hold true to their offer, so they're forced to refund it. This is the price of the bargain Apollo made. That's practically the definition of tortious interference. https://www.findlaw.com/smallbusiness/liability-and-insurance/tortious-interference.html https://www.findlaw.com/smallbusiness/liability-and-insuranc... "The most common form of [tortious interference], however, occurs when an individual forces or induces someone to break a contract they have with a third party. This can happen in many ways: someone could offer below market prices to induce a breach, they could blackmail or threaten someone into violating a contract, or they could make it impossible for the other person to perform and receive the benefits of that contract - by refusing to transport goods, for instance."
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel "By way of illustration: If a landlord promises the tenant that he will not exercise his right to terminate a lease, and relying upon that promise the tenant spends money improving the premises, the doctrine of promissory estoppel may prevent the landlord from exercising a right to terminate, even though his promise might not otherwise have been legally binding as a contract. The landlord is precluded from asserting a specific right."
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  Sorry, I don't see how that's a textbook case of what you've cited.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    OK. Do you have a specific aspect of the test that you don't believe has been satisfied here, or just don't believe in the general concept? Generally speaking the law doesn't care whether or not you personally think it applies, merely that you've broken it.
    - 3y ago
internetter 3y ago
> Why would they? I do kinda wonder. IANAL, but based on these comments I imagine there could be a case? > Reddit: "So I would expect no change, certainly not in the short to medium term. And we're talking like order of years." > "There's not gonna be any change on it. There's no plans to, there's no plans to touch it right now in 2023. At least for the yearly subscriptions

robbiet480 3y ago

I don't think lifetime access is getting refunded since that was just a one time unlock. He says the $250,000 cost is to refund all "subscriptions".

no_butterscotch 3y ago
How does Apple's refunds work? I'm surprised more people don't do one-time purchases to avoid these subscription refund stories I keep hearing.
- sco1 3y ago
  > How does Apple's refunds work? I don't know how monthly subscriptions work, but yearly subscription refunds are pro-rated. > I'm surprised more people don't do one-time purchases to avoid these subscription refund stories I keep hearing I'm not, at least not for apps like this that need consistent revenue to support regular maintenance and/or server costs in an era where customers balk when an app costs more than a few dollars. To achieve this you end up balancing whether or not to serve ads, hope you can just grow enough new users forever, charge for major updates, charge a subscription, or beg for tips. While there are some exceptions, you can probably tell that ads or subscriptions are generally winning this nowadays. One-time purchases are a tricky thing, since you've realisitcally now precluded ever charging for a major update. This is great for them, and might be for you if you've gotten your math right, but if you haven't (or it changes) then you're stuck. And, for better or for worse, they tend to be the loudest users. Marco Arment talks about this balance in general on an episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast a couple weeks ago when discussing how Casey (another host) should price an app he's writing. For context if folks aren't aware, Marco created Overcast, which is a popular 3rd party iOS podcast app. The discussion spans a couple episodes but I the post-show of [Episode 535](https://atp.fm/535 https://atp.fm/535) captures the gist.

nocoiner 3y ago

I generally agree with this type of analysis regarding for-profit ventures, but as a lifetime purchaser, I’m not going to try to get a refund here. I got my money’s worth out of Apollo, and Christian is handling this like a steely-eyed capitalist. He’s not asking the community to bail him out from his business decisions or Reddit taking things in a different direction, and I respect that a lot. Very different tone from when the Twitter client developers were complaining that no one could possibly have foreseen a situation where they couldn’t deliver on services they’d happily taken money for upfront.

Silhouette 3y ago
Did people really sell services that necessarily depended on a third party's services without some contractual safeguard in their terms in case the third party changed how they operate? There's always a risk in building your offering on top of someone else's and plenty of attempts to do that in that past didn't work out so surely any lawyer who works in this field should have seen that one coming? Edit: This was an honest question in response to the parent comment about Twitter clients. What's with the downvotes?
- nocoiner 3y ago
  Yes, they did. And yes, like you, it should have been obvious to everyone involved. Yet for some reason, the Twitter client devs (who had happily shifted all their users to a subscription-only model) all of a sudden realized that they had sold a bunch of one year subs they had sold were going to be useless as soon as Twitter turned off the API and, more pertinent to their pocketbooks, all those customers would be entitled to request and receive a refund through the App Store for their now non-functional app. The devs started whining to their customers about being “small businesses” and having the food snatched out of their families’ mouths and why would anyone be so cruel as to seek a refund? Christian is showing a hell of a lot more integrity and toughness than the Twitter client authors.
data-ottawa 3y ago
The lifetime subscription doesn’t need a refund, it lasted the lifetime of the app, and it wasn’t just a bait and switch either.

actionablefiber 3y ago

> A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App for iOS. Now they cannot hold true to their offer, so they're forced to refund it. This is the price of the bargain Apollo made. Did I miss something? I downloaded and used Apollo for free for a time, then later bought Pro for like $5 a couple years back. There is/was a subscription tier, Ultra, which for a time had a lifetime option, but it was never a particularly necessary expense and I have always enjoyed Apollo without it.

hrrsn 3y ago
The "Pro" tier was a one-off payment at one point in time, but at some point this switched to a monthly subscription. Previous owners were grandfathered in.

kossTKR 3y ago

Reddit is stupid, and the whole situation is bad, but shouldn't the man behind the biggest app for the biggest forum in the world, in the lucrative ios ecosystem have made himself wealthy enough so that 250k is close to nothing? Or am i misunderstanding how much money there is in this space? If he isn't "10+ million"-wealthy that's extremely disappointing for all solo devs out there in my eyes.

chihuahua 3y ago
I think you may be overestimating how much money there is in this space. People don't want to pay for things if they can avoid it. The biggest app for the biggest forum in the world apparently had 50k paying users. The author was complaining about the cost of icons, which to me suggests that he is not terribly wealthy. But there's a lot about this story that I don't understand: * How can the Apollo guy be perceived as "threatening" Reddit? He has no leverage. * Why does he suggest that they buy his app for $10m, when they can just terminate his API access at a cost of $0 - "I have altered the deal; pray that I do not alter it any further"
- ZephyrBlu 3y ago
  > Why does he suggest that they buy his app for $10m, when they can just terminate his API access at a cost of $0 Because according to Reddit, the problem with Apollo is the opportunity cost of Reddit not being able to monetize its users. Acquiring Apollo is user acquisition. Destroying the app does not necessarily mean that all those users will now start using Reddit's official app and become monetizable, they might just quit Reddit entirely. By acquiring Apollo Reddit could monetize those users through Apollo instead of the official Reddit app.
  - sco1 3y ago
    > By acquiring Apollo Reddit could monetize those users through Apollo instead of the official Reddit app. After what Reddit did to Alien Blue I don't know how many Apollo users would be too keen on playing that game again. I personally have no confidence that a Reddit owned Apollo would retain what makes the current app great.

paulmd 3y ago

> Why would they? > A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App for iOS. Now they cannot hold true to their offer, so they're forced to refund it. This is the price of the bargain Apollo made. That's practically the definition of tortious interference. https://www.findlaw.com/smallbusiness/liability-and-insurance/tortious-interference.html https://www.findlaw.com/smallbusiness/liability-and-insuranc... "The most common form of [tortious interference], however, occurs when an individual forces or induces someone to break a contract they have with a third party. This can happen in many ways: someone could offer below market prices to induce a breach, they could blackmail or threaten someone into violating a contract, or they could make it impossible for the other person to perform and receive the benefits of that contract - by refusing to transport goods, for instance."

kstrauser 3y ago
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel "By way of illustration: If a landlord promises the tenant that he will not exercise his right to terminate a lease, and relying upon that promise the tenant spends money improving the premises, the doctrine of promissory estoppel may prevent the landlord from exercising a right to terminate, even though his promise might not otherwise have been legally binding as a contract. The landlord is precluded from asserting a specific right."
SkyPuncher 3y ago
Sorry, I don't see how that's a textbook case of what you've cited.
- paulmd 3y ago
  OK. Do you have a specific aspect of the test that you don't believe has been satisfied here, or just don't believe in the general concept? Generally speaking the law doesn't care whether or not you personally think it applies, merely that you've broken it.
  - 3y ago

internetter 3y ago

> Why would they? I do kinda wonder. IANAL, but based on these comments I imagine there could be a case? > Reddit: "So I would expect no change, certainly not in the short to medium term. And we're talking like order of years." > "There's not gonna be any change on it. There's no plans to, there's no plans to touch it right now in 2023. At least for the yearly subscriptions