If the app was actually usable for 18 days in January, it doesn't make sense for users to ask for a full refund for the January subscription charge.

Wouldn't a fair solution be to offer a partial refund, proportional to time that subscribers paid for but are unable to use?

Yes, absolutely. But instead of Twitterific reaching out to their customers and pro-actively doing that, they're lamely asking their customers to give them free money because their assumptions about their business risk turned out to be incorrect.

They can’t issue a refund, it’s not allowed by the App Store. Only customers can request refunds.

I hope no one ever kicks you when you’re down. You might want to consider extending others the same grace.

You have to ignore an awful lot of kicked down people to start donating to recently-employed developers.

I too enjoy demanding refunds from my purchases on the App Store and then redistributing those dollars to the unhoused folks I encounter outside of Starbucks.

They aren't some poor dev struggling to eat and pay bills, they've been one of the most popular third party Twitter apps for 15 years. They are not down.

They'll be down if everyone asks for a refund and they wind up losing years worth of revenue.

If everyone asks for a refund, won't they wind up losing some fraction of one year's worth of revenue?

They'll be slightly less rich, but still considerably more rich than most of us.

You seem to know a lot about the economics of being an indie app developer and consulting firm. You should share more about how much cash they must be rolling in.

Too bad? The idea that we should treat companies that stop longer providing a product as charities deserving of free money is a bit silly.

Twitterific built their business on something that we often acknowledge here as being very shaky: the whim of a third-party platform. If the company hasn't considered and prepared for the scenario where that third-party platform completely cuts off your access, that's irresponsible as a business owner.

"Please consider"

Is just an appeal and makes the choice clear.

Likely, some customers that did purchase it have received some value; It's likely the difference between needing to claim bankruptcy protection and quietly dissolving

Either way, and I am absolutely not in a position to draw any conclusion about any customer who requests or does not request a refund.

I don't have a relationship with this company, but reading their "Please consider" line immediately gave me a bad impression of them.

They're a software business that relied on a third-party platform for their entire business model. It genuinely sucks that this business model has been yanked out from under them, but this is something they should have planned for (especially considering Twitter's past actions around their API and developer program), without a lame request to their now-former customers to give them free money for no service provided.

I'm sure some customers will, out of the excessive goodness of their hearts, riding on the good experience they had over the years with the app, honor that appeal. That's certainly their choice. But it's also reasonable for the rest of us to think that the appeal alone feels a bit dirty.

For what it’s worth, 100% agree with you. I’m sorry for what’s happened to this dev - must be gutting - but why on earth should their customers be the ones to bear the loss of not getting to use what they paid for?

I would prefer it if they would "please consider" partially refunding me for the part of the year I paid for and won't receive instead.

Unfortunately the refund amount is not under their control because Apple has 100% control over the refund process.

It was a request and not a demand, if you value the service the dev provided the community more than the money, you might not refund it, otherwise, presumably you will. Recently I had a pizza come an hour and a half late because the restaurant was swamped, and I'd already gotten hungry and eaten something else. I tipped the same amount as I would have otherwise because the tip, in my mind, isn't about rewarding great service, it's about providing a livelihood to the employees. (Were things different for restaurant workers, I might feel differently, but in the current incarnation stiffing someone a tip isn't denying them a bonus, it's denying them a wage.)

That's nice of you but objectively the tip actually is for rewarding great service. If Amazon sent you half a book would you value the half they sent you and be grateful? And here's a tip for you Jeff.

Ostensibly the tip is about service. Realistically the tip is about "doing your part" to give service workers a reasonable wage. Is it a terrible system? Sure. But let's not pretend.

The tip is for underwriting the livelihood of people who work in a terrible industry that does not pay them a livable wage. Yeah, it's not your fault that the economics of the food service industry work like this in the United States, but that doesn't mean you can ignore them.

I don't see how your pizza example really applies, though. You tipped because you (unfortunately correctly) recognize that the service industry and how payroll taxes work is incredibly broken, and that tips are an integral part of wages.

But we're talking about a company that provided a service that people were paying for, and now no longer provides that service. Any unused portion of any subscription bought should absolutely be refunded. It's actually a bit gross that the company is not pro-actively refunding subscriptions. They made a bet that Twitter's API would always remain available to them; it's not on their customers to bear any cost for the failure of that bet.

The relationship, in my mind, is that I valued their livelihood and the service they'd provided me; what I'm saying is that some people may feel the same about Twitterific. I'm not arguing that anyone should abstain from requesting a refund, I'm illustrating why they might.

I don't object to a customer voluntarily deciding to toss a "parting tip" to Twitterific on their way out. I object to Twitterific not, by default, offering pro-rated refunds.

(It does seem from other responses here that doing so is just not possible on Apple's payments platform. That's pretty lame of Apple, IMO, but oh well.)

Let's hope that other people see it differently and have a more empathic response. I get what you are trying to communicate but realize that this was done without their control and in a way that instantly destroyed their business as it was. If you pile on and ask for a refund then you are making things much worse for them, and you did get value out of it in the past. The 'promised value' has been delivered, your beef is with Twitter, not with the developers.

Assumptions about their bank balance and 'that's business' are the wrong way to approach this.

I wouldn't refund a one off app purchase, but this is an ongoing subscription

given this, it was certainly within their control to attempt to negotiate a contract with their only supplier and then they would have contractual guarantees about not being summarily cut off

(would musk have cut them off? probably, but then they could go after him)

without that the business model was always based on chance

they knew this, and continued to sell the product regardless

Having an app key issued counts as permission in my book. Subscription refunds should be limited to the period during which service was not provided.

And good luck negotiating anything with a billion dollar company, they'll be happy to stiff you if they want to but in the meantime you are beholden to the terms of the contract. This because they typically have legal staff and you probably don't so there is a huge asymmetry in any kind of legal tussle with them.

That’s a very good point. Why not negotiate a deal over the past 15 years, why leave their customers and company hanging on a key invalidation.

Because that's how Twitter set it up. As a developer you play by their rules, and you can just about forget negotiating an exclusive deal that would reduce the company's rights and increase yours without paying for it.

There's a difference between canceling your subscription and getting a refund. A small company the size of the Iconfactory might not have the cash on hand to even issue full to everyone who might ask for it. If my annual subscription just renewed in December, they might have already spent that money on salaries, rent, health insurance, etc. Since Twitterific has been removed from the App Store there wont be any subscription renewals, but if they have to (over the next week) issue hundreds of thousands of dollars in refunds, it really could end the company.

So you'd try to get a refund on your beach vacation if it rained?

To be ultra charitable, if I bought a subscription for the app as a brand new customer and the very next week, Twitter revoked their API keys and kills the app entirely, yea I’m probably asking for a refund.

If I had been a customer for years and years, obviously my calculation would be different.

This feels a bit more like the power & water was cut off to the beach house, but I like taking metaphors one step to far.

The basic point is that no-one pays for a Twitter client expecting it to keep working if (say) Twitter closes down or pivots into a rideshare company or decides to close down third-party access to the platform. On any reasonable viewpoint that's a risk accepted by the purchaser, not the app seller.

If you bought a 12 month subscription to Netflix and they closed down next week are you honestly saying you wouldn't be asking for a refund?

It doesn't matter that its an app for Twitter, you've paid for someone to provide something they can no longer deliver.

If I bought a Netflix subscription, I'd expect them to provide the Netflix service. If I bought a TV with a Netflix app on it, I wouldn't expect a partial refund from the people who sold me the TV. Do you honestly not see these two things are different?

One is "I paid for a service" and the other is "I paid for something to help me use a service".

You've straw-manned this. Netflix and Twitterific are the same thing: you pay a subscription and you expect to receive value in return.

Terrible analogy. If I buy a TV that has smart features or apps on it, I'm only marginally paying for the apps. It's even possible that Netflix is paying the TV manufacturer in order to be in the default install, so I'm not even paying for the apps; possibly I'm even paying slightly less for the TV than I otherwise would. (Even if that's not the case, that doesn't really change the calculus for me.)

So, no, if Netflix disappeared in this case, I would not ask for a partial refund. The TV still works as a TV, and that's what I really paid for in the first place. (If Netflix didn't disappear, but the TV app stopped working, I might be -- justifiably -- annoyed, though!)

This Twitterific thing is in no way comparable: the app only interacts with Twitter. That's its entire reason for being. If it can't do that, then it is worthless, and anyone who paid for it is perfectly in their rights to demand a refund. Hell, the Twitterific folks should be pro-actively refunding the unused portions of subscriptions; that's the only ethical thing to do here.

Did you ever own a dial-up modem? Was its only purpose for being that you logged into your ISP with it? Did you consider trying to get a refund when your ISP stopped providing dial-up service?

Dial up was an on-demand pricing model, not a subscription. By your own rules that doesnt work.

Now, if you had dial up and paid a subscription for access to a free phone number and they cut you off before your subscription ended, then yes you absolutely would expect a refund.

Yes, I did own a dial-up modem. In addition to connecting to my ISP, I spent many years connecting to various local BBSes. The ISP wasn't the only reason I had the modem.

And, regardless, if my ISP stopped providing dial-up service, and I really still wanted dial-up service, I would have simply found another ISP to connect to. (After expecting my previous ISP to issue me a pro-rated refund for whatever subscription I was paying them.)

Also regardless, your analogy is bad, as the modem was a one-time cost. The issue at hand is that of recurring subscription fees Twitterific charges. If we were just talking about a one-time cost to buy the Twitterific app, I wouldn't be suggesting the refund that cost (except to customers who just bought the app right before the shutdown, perhaps; seems shitty to keep customer money when the product irreparably breaks a few days after purchase).

Lets try this another way.

You bought a display that exclusively integrates into Netflix, it can only display Netflix content, but you have to pay an annual fee to the display manufacturer for it to continue working.

It's January and you've just paid your annual subscription. But on the 15th of Jan Netflix decides to stop allowing your display manufacturer access, and your display becomes a useless brick.

Having only just paid for your annual subscription you'd want a refund - you're no longer getting access to the service you were paying for.

We can keep coming up with anologys but the fact remains that the app developer guaranteed access to a service which they can no longer provide. It doesn't matter if its an app, a display, or anything else. Your agreement is with the app developer, not Twitter. Your payments go to the app developer, not Twitter. If the app developers entire business is built around hoping Twitter never closes off their access then thats totally on them when things go south.

But Twitter did not close down or pivot into a rideshare company.

Yes, they did close down third-party access to their platform, but that is completely not the same as those other things you mention.

I doubt most Twitterific customers have any idea what a third-party API platform is, let alone Twitter's shady history with how they've treated API developers. Your average Twitterific purchaser probably just thinks it's a premium Twitter app that lets them do Twitter things, and would expect that app to continue working as long as Twitter exists. (Which it still does!)

> On any reasonable viewpoint that's a risk accepted by the purchaser, not the app seller.

If your definition for "reasonable" is actually the definition of "unreasonable", sure. Twitterific's customers should not have to take on the consequences of the risk that Twitter would shut down third-party access to their API. That is a risk that Twitterific took on themselves as a risk to their business, and they should have a plan for what to do in this case. And that plan should not be "beg our customers to pay us for not providing a service anymore". It should include them pro-actively refunding the unused portions of any subscriptions (super gross that they didn't do this, double-super gross that they're begging for "donations"), and then responsibly winding the company down (assuming they don't have any other still-viable products that could keep them going). It sucks that they'd have to do this, but that's what can happen when you bet your business on someone else's platform.

I keep reading your responses on this topic and nodding my head more and more vigorously. I really do feel for the devs, but also seems like they had a good run - really, about as long of a run as anyone can expect reasonably have in this space. Better than most, certainly.

Well, if he was promised 100% sunshine, he might.

You are minimizing the situation with your metaphor. It's more like if you arrived at the house and they told you that you can't get in at all. Would you ask for a refund?

No; my metaphor is quite precise. You're renting the beach house because it helps you enjoy the good weather while sitting on the sand. However, the beach house owner isn't responsible for providing the good weather: only the house itself. The beach house owner isn't in control of the weather, and you knew that at the time you rented.

Not to further beat the horse that is thoroughly bloodied and unrecognizable, but I’d say this is more like having the water and power shut off and the furniture repossessed on the first day of a week-long stay.

Maybe legally, ethically, morally, the renters are SOL, but for me personally, I’m not sure my sympathies would lie with the landlord in that situation.

If the terms for that vacation purchase included guarantees of good weather, definitely.

Just as if I buy an app (or a subscription to one), I expect the app's author to guarantee that it functions for its intended purpose, and return my money if it doesn't.

It simply isn’t possible for any third party client to offer that kind of guarantee. Doesn’t matter what agreements you negotiated. Any large enough platform will just do it anyway and deal with the litigation.

It was blatantly obvious to any buyer that these clients could only work so long as Twitter allowed it. This wasn’t a hidden risk, so anyone buying a subscription was implicitly accepting that risk as part of their purchase.

The customer was accepting that risk. Just as the developer was accepting the risk that they'd be expected to provide a refund on a subscription that isn't going to work anymore.

Sure, and if those happen then the developer will eat the cost. They've only asked people politely not to, given the extraordinary circumstances, not said that people cannot.

The companies providing third party clients had already renegotiated their relationship with Twitter over the past few years, achieving a more stable baseline, API changes, defined escalation routes, etc. Musk's buying of the company and capricious shutting down of third parties without even having the option of having them do things like incorporate adverts is hardly something it was possible to plan for over the long term.

> It simply isn’t possible for any third party client to offer that kind of guarantee.

And that's exactly my point! Twitterific should have known that Twitter could pull the rug out from under them at any time, and had a plan to make their customers whole in that eventuality.

Look, I'm not saying a company in their position should have to refund a one-time purchase cost of the app itself (for companies that do that sort of thing). But if you are charging an ongoing subscription for continuing service, and then that service terminates before the end of the subscription period, I think a pro-rated refund is more than fair.

Hell, if Twitter themselves charged a subscription fee for having a Twitter account, I would expect them to give pro-rated refunds to customers if they decided to wind down their business or pivot to something else. Twitterific should be no different here.

iOS App Store developers cannot issue a pro-rated refund. Apple has not provided any mechanism for them to do that, despite requests.

This has been stated again and again but you’re choosing to ignore it in your attempt to make the app developers the bad guys in this situation.

Would you also claim your money back if Twitter closed down? If your logic became reality you could kiss goodbye to any third-party client for any type of network service. The Twitter clients are not at fault here. It's 100% on Twitter/Musk.

It doesn't matter who is at fault, ultimately. If you pay for a service, you expect that service to be provided. If you pay to use an app for 30 days, and suddenly you can only use it for 15 days, through no fault of your own, the company should refund you half of what you paid.

Regarding fault: Twitterific absolutely shares responsibility here. They built an app and service that depended on the whims of a third-party service that they could not guarantee perpetual access to. They should have had a plan for what to do if they lost API access... and not a plan that begs their paying customers for charity.

You might be right, but your comment comes across as cold blooded.

Absolutely. And this is a mere request from them, not something they can actually tell their customers. Apple is the sole judge on whether you shall receive a refund. The actual maker is not involved in that process.

It's still kinda gross, IMO. Twitterific should be pro-actively refunding customers for the unused portion of their subscriptions, without users having to request one from Apple.

Twitterific made a bet that the Twitter API would remain available to them. They should be the ones assuming the risk and taking on the consequences of losing that bet. Not their customers.

> Twitterific should be pro-actively refunding customers for the unused portion of their subscriptions...

It's my understanding that Apple doesn't offer this feature.

This is correct, they couldn't do it if they wanted to.

Sometimes Apple Dev Relations will help out and mass refund without making all the users request a refund, but they don't always (even when the developer asks).

> I'm sure their bank balance is doing just fine

Source?

I think there are two key questions here:

(1) Exactly what did the user pay for?

If it's an app that promises to provide access to Twitter, then I'd think the app developer is responsible for making the necessary arrangements with Twitter to uphold that promise.

If it's an app that promises to make a best-effort attempt to use Twitter's public APIs, then a refund doesn't sound reasonable.

(2) Should the user consider this a simple business relationship, or something more personal? I.e., even if a case could be made for a refund, should that matter?

Something more parasocial more like it.

Remember, if Musk puts you out of work, you're a refugee, but if anyone else puts you out of work, you're merely unfortunate.

Small business whose significant chunk of income just evaporated asking to be nice with them seems fair.

Fair to who? If you're going to pay for a product you aren't receiving, I'm sure you could find a better recipient. Every charity would love to sell you nothing.

Small business who built their business on the whims of a third-party API platform, without any means to guarantee they'd have perpetual access to that platform. It's on them to ensure that their business model works, not by asking their customers for charity when it doesn't.

> If I pay for something and don't get the promised value why should I be the one who eats it?

Why should the developer? It would be wrong to say "You won't get a refund" but that's not what they're doing.

Because I paid them for something and I'm not receiving it? This isn't a hard concept.

That EM likes to burn bridges does not change the nature of your transaction with Twitterific. You did not pay for access to Twitter: you paid for an app that you received. Asking for a refund is ... questionnable.

No, you're paying a continuing subscription for an app that lets you interact with Twitter. If that app stops letting you interact with Twitter, then you absolutely are entitled to a refund of the remaining portion of the subscription.

If Twitterific was a one-time purchase and not a subscription service, I would absolutely agree that refunds are probably not warranted. (Though someone who bought the app yesterday might feel differently.)

It's flat-out gross that the Twitterific developer isn't pro-actively giving pro-rated refunds to their customers, and is instead asking for charity.

> It's flat-out gross that the Twitterific developer isn't pro-actively giving pro-rated refunds to their customers, and is instead asking for charity.

Please explain the mechanism by which an App Store app developer can provide pro-rated refunds. You seem so confident about your claim that the company could be and should be doing this, that I’m sure this is something you’ve already checked and verified.

But: you did receive it. You received it immediately when you paid for it. And you've used it in the meantime and presumably derived value from it otherwise you would have asked for a refund immediately upon delivery.

Precisely.

I wouldn't judge anyone who bought it a month ago for asking for a refund, but if you've been using the app since 2019 or something, you got what you paid for, for years.

Does Apple give refunds for four-year old app downloads?

Good question. Anything over 90 days I would see as unreasonable.

So anyone getting a refund is probably a recent purchaser.

I don't know because I don't know the App store rules for these refunds. But if they do allow longer refunds it should have massive repercussions for any App store developers that want to stay in business in the longer term if they are basing their App on someone else's API, even with permission.

It's a $9.99 annual subscription. The fact they are not automatically refunding the part of the year that wasn't provided is offensive.

They can’t. The App Store head never had any mechanism for developers to initiate refunds in any way, let alone partial refunds.

You’re raging against these guys for not doing something that they have no ability to do. Hardly fair.

I think people are talking about refunds of (pro-rated unused portions of) ongoing subscriptions, not refunds for paying a one-time app store fee.

That functionality would have to be created for this particular situation, which I highly doubt Apple can even do at this point (and google likely can't either).

For an industry that makes as much money as it does some people appear to be extremely petty about this, if you could afford the app to begin with you can afford to be gracious about it. If you have any beef it is with Elon Musk, not with Twitterific.

> That functionality would have to be created for this particular situation, which I highly doubt Apple can even do at this point (and google likely can't either).

Wow, really? "Refund remainder of 1-year subscription that started on X date and ended prematurely on Y date" seems like a pretty basic feature of a payments system. The inability to do that says more about Apple (or Google) than it does anyone else.

> If you have any beef it is with Elon Musk, not with Twitterific.

I don't have a beef with either, as I don't use my Twitter account, and didn't purchase Twitterific.

People who bought Twitterific and pay for a subscription don't have an ongoing business relationship with Twitter/Musk, they have one with Twitterific. When the company you pay for a subscription service stops providing that service -- for whatever reason, even reasons outside their control -- the right thing to do is for the company to refund the rest of the subscription.

> Because I paid them for something and I'm not receiving it?

But that's not a response to my comment. I'm asking why the developer, who has expenses of his own, should cover for the actions of Twitter. In the absence of an explicit promise related to this, the customer was taking a risk that Twitter would do something like this. There is no good argument that either party should have to cover for Twitter's actions.

Erm, that isn't how the real world works. I'm not entering into an agreement with Twitter when I pay for a Twitterific subscription, I'm entering into an agreement with Twitterific. They are responsible for fulfilling the subscription for which I am paying, not Twitter. If they are unable to then it doesn't matter why, they have still broken the agreement. This is simple business.

The developer should cover for the actions of Twitter because they decided to build their business on top of Twitter, fully reliant on Twitter's goodwill around API access. They are the one who took on that risk, and it's irresponsible and unethical to push the consequences of that risk onto their own customers.

Their average customer doesn't know or care about API platforms. They just want to access Twitter via a nice, premium app they paid for. If they can no longer do that, they deserve a refund of the remaining unused value of their subscription.

The developer gets the upside of building a successful business and takes the downside of making business decisions that turn out to be misguided, no?

To put it another way - if the shareholders had had a nine-figure exit, would they have planned on sharing that with their customers?

It's a fair als nothing more.

Get over your ego

Yeah, it was hard to believe what I was reading there. Building something that can't stand alone as a product without a 3rd party API is always a big risk for a developer. When it blows up, should not be made the customers problem.

Especially when Twitter has been mostly assholes around API access for almost a decade now. I was shocked they didn't turn it off well before Elon bought 'em. Having said that, it is pretty crappy to just shut it off without any definitive guidance - Elon or not.