They're excellent at inconveniencing legitimate devs for "mistakes" like links to external payment options, but oddly bad at spotting actual scams. I think that tells you something about the actual goal of app review.

That's spot on, there's two main goals of the app review:

- Make sure that they get their cut

- Shift the blame of the privacy issues to the app developers since the duopoly is very often targeted in the media on this subject.

Anything else has a lower priority.

The way you phrase mistakes is interesting, it’s been abundantly clear that’s not allowed for a long time. It’s not a “mistake” if you link to an external payment method .

I’m an iOS user but one of the reasons I like iOS is because I know that I’ll be able to Sign in with Apple, and pay via the App Store. I recently signed up to a service which charged me for a free trial and I opened a support ticket. They refunded me, and charged me again immediately.

I trust apple and google (rightly or wrongly) to have my back in that situation, but this dev clearly didn’t.

It resolved itself fairly quickly when I got my bank involved, but it took a month from start to finish. I have never, not once, had that issue with App Store managed purchases.

One of the reasons I don't like either iOS or the Play Store is that I don't want to make an account with them (which can link all the flood of data sent by your phone to your real name, and force you to agree to their terms)

Apple does allow links to external payment options in some cases (see App Store Review Guideline 3.1.1), and sometimes rejects apps for links that it itself says should be legal, and is even legally required to allow in some jurisdictions. Which is not surprising, app reviewers spend only a few minutes looking at each app, and don't always understand the current rules.