211–220 of 583 posts
A Statement of Tim Cook for the House of Representatives claimed that "For the vast majority of apps on the App Store , developers keep 100% of the money they make." [1] How can this be even remotely true if Apple takes a 30% commission for every sale in the App Store? [1] https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG...
Payment processors generally don't refund fees on payments when the payments are refunded, this isn't new. It's remarkable mainly because (a) it's 30%, not 3% and (b) the App store doesn't position itself as a payments processor the way Stripe does, so it sounds really weird that they would act like one. If the app store took a 3% chunk and never refunded it regardless of the ongoing status of the transaction, that w…
I'd guess 10-15% is what is actually reasonable. Microsoft has settled for 15% in their store (because nobody was using it so charging 30% is ridiculous).
I'm a little stuck on the terminology here. Does "customer refunds your paid app" mean the customer requests and gets a (full) refund from Apple for a prior app purchase? (I would say "returns" not "refunds" ... Apple is the one refunding, not the customer. The customer receives the refund. But I guess this is some kind of regional/informal usage I'm not familiar with.) If so, that's BS. Apple could reasonably keep t…
As per the thread: You buy an app for $10, Apple gets $3, the developer gets $7. You refund the app (through the Apple App Store), you get your 10$ back, but that whole 10$ comes from the developer, unlike the 7/3 split when you first purchased it. So in the end, the developer has lost money due to the refund.
If I get a 30% commission for a sale when the customer is referred by me and at some point in the future the customer asks for a refund I don't give my commission back. Our transaction was done when the original sale was made.
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No stripe doesn't. They used to but not for a while now. At least not for our SAAS business where we do close to 1M ARR. Am I missing something ? https://stripe.com/docs/refunds
Same here, they used to but stopped about a year ago.
We also learned about how credit card thieves test credit cards. We saw hundreds of donation attempts. Stripe had us refund those that went threw, which costed us money in fees. Fortunately we were able to put some quick measures in place to stop them temporarily & then better measures for long term success.
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What laws would be broken in this case?
Tortious interference, also known as intentional interference with contractual relations, in the common law of torts, occurs when one person intentionally damages someone else's contractual or business relationships with a third party causing economic harm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference
likewise collecting damages, etc
So each refund costs the dev more than they took in for the sale whilst Apple always pockets the 30%.
How can a refund cost the dev $1.00 if they only took $0.70 for the sale?
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The fact that that is even a thought screams silly and childish in my mind, but then again life has taught me that 'maturity' really is a social construct and the rule of law and contracts really should be the only baseline expectation of human behavior from strangers. Also - that plotline from SV where he just buys pizza from thd pizza startup that is operating at a loss seems like the same idea as this but just sli…
It's a bit different when a company is completely voluntarily engaging in self-destructive behavior - when it comes to the app store it is voluntary that folks post their apps there but Apple has an absolute monopoly on the market.
now as far as what you sell within your own store, digital or brick store - that's not a market. in fact, the same apps on google's store have a much larger marked due to many more users. and amazon's store. and aptoide. and a whole bunch of other stores, which all sell the same app.
so not only does apple not have a monopoly, they have a small share of the app market for the apps they sell in their store.
A Statement of Tim Cook for the House of Representatives claimed that "For the vast majority of apps on the App Store , developers keep 100% of the money they make." [1] How can this be even remotely true if Apple takes a 30% commission for every sale in the App Store? [1] https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20200729/110883/HHRG...
They keep 100% of the 70% of the store price. Truthful statement, just one that is designed to mislead you.
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If you do this often Apple will ban your account. If you don't do this often it's not a problem.
Will they? In some jurisdictions they are required by law to grant refunds. In others, they still have very little incentive to control refund fraud, what with the fact that they're still making money rather than losing it. It would be one thing if they said "We're keeping the credit card processing fees so that we don't lose money," but to keep the whole 30% cut is just petty.
I think the jurisdiction you’re talking about is the EU, and it’s not quite that clear cut.
As a general rule online merchants do need to provide refunds, unless it’s a digital good, and they provided an explicit warning during the checkout flow that the sale isn’t refundable.
If you ask for refunds from Apple for apps they’ll introduce that warning into the checkout flow for future app purchases, which will disappear again after enough purchases.
So Apple do have some basic, compliant, controls that means you can’t just keep buying apps and getting refunds.
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Apple has a monopoly on designing the features of it's products and on deciding who they do business with and on what terms, that's all. What other monopoly do they have? Youre not actually answering my questions. Exactly what features should Apple, Samsung, Pinephone, etc be required to implement? How should we decide what products these new requirements should apply to? Who gets to specify those features and certif…
I'm not a legislator, but I'd like to be able to run an app store of my choosing. I'd like to be able to use my general purpose computing device as a general purpose computer, instead of Apple's business connections deciding who I get to do business with. So far as not implementing features, if the bare tech were exposed, I'm sure people would be very happy to implement it outside of Apple. Just because they perpetua…