Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
by forty on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @05:42PM
(#30783833)
Last time I checked (admittedly a long time on Apple, as a developer, I couldn't refund and cancel a subscription for my customers. They have to go through Apple to do that. Not a great experience.
Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
by nvahalik on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @06:31PM
(#30784396)
It’s usually fairly simple though. You (as a dev) don’t have to front the cost for support folks to handle it.
Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
by madeofpalk on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @06:55PM
(#30784627)
You still have to answer the emails and say "Sorry no I cannot refund you, go ask Apple" and have the customer not believe you.
Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
by nvahalik on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @09:01PM
(#30785395)
Actually, on the flip side Apple customers have usually gone through this before already. It's usually the Google folks we have issues with.
Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
by lxgr on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @06:36PM
(#30784450)
It's not a pleasant process for consumers at all, in my experience. I'm not a big fan of hanging around in awkward support chats or calls for things that can usually be resolved with an email.
Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
by nyuszika7h on Thursday March 24, 2022 @07:40AM
(#30788498)
In my experience as a user in the EU Apple's refund process is pretty good, I've basically never had a refund refused with the "right of withdrawal" option. But I guess it can suck if Apple randomly decides to refuse the refund even if the developer would be willing to accept it, especially for non-EU users.
Re:Spotify and Google Announce User Choice Billing
by nerdjon on Wednesday March 23, 2022 @05:11PM
(#30783437)
How much does Google communicate to the user with this?
One big benefit I didn't mention, is any yearly membership I get a communication from Apple that it is about to renew. Reminding me to cancel if I no longer want to use it.
I don't know of a single service I have subscribed too directly that does this.
Edit: I remembered one. FFXIV oddly enough reminds me every month that they are about to bill.
While subscription cancellations work similarly, Apple holds your hand (from a dev perspective) than Google does. Apple's overall approach seems to just make sense. For instance: if you stop offering a particular plan because you don't want to offer it anymore (e.g. no more yearly plans, only monthly and quarterly). With Apple, you get a notification that you need to change your plan, but if the change happens w/in 7 days of your renewal, you'll be grand-fathered in.
With Google... well... you cannot stop offering it. You have to communicate (manually) a cutoff date, (via their API) cancel people's subscriptions, and then deal with the fallout.