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When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited]

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Re: When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited]

#271

Post by gamblor956 »

abc126589 wrote: post #167
chadlavi wrote: post #102

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…

PayPal also keeps the fees when a refund is issued https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/20/20876570/paypal-refund-fe...

Important difference: with Paypal, the seller decides to issue the refund, not Paypal unilaterally (except in cases of alleged fraud), and the seller can determine how much of a refund to provide.

Re: When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited]

#273

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

ryanlol wrote: post #69
solarkraft wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, really? Which competitors to Apple are there on iOS?

Which competitors to $car_manufacturer engines are there for $car_manufacturer cars? This is a stupid question. Whether or not there is competition on iOS doesn’t matter as long as there exists viable competition on any viable platform.

> "Which competitors to $car_manufacturer engines are there for $car_manufacturer cars?"

Interesting and rather unfortunate that you should use that example, since the landmark Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act famously invalidated automakers attempts to revoke their products' warranty if aftermarket parts were installed. It's a clear example of a consumer-hostile practice that was deemed to be unfair and regulated, even though no monopoly was involved.

Re: When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited]

#274

Post by genidoi »

LanceH wrote: post #233
Spivak wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just sales commission rules though. 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.

Apple doesn't refer a sale. Apple makes the sale. They are the store, something they have set up and enforced. The developer has no capacity to deny a customer, yet has the responsibility for the bad customers shopping someone else's store.

Devils advocate argument: A refund (probably) reduces the LTV of customers, and Apple has no control of the cause of those refunds, whether it be a buggy app or misrepresenting features.

The ethics of this scheme are debatable but it should be assumed that some refunds are legitimate and Apple loses tangible customer $LTV from some refunds.

Re: When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited]

#275

Post by stu2b50 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #268
chadlavi wrote: post #102

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…

Credit card companies (i.e., Visa, Mastercard) absolutely do refund fees on payments when the retailer processes a refund. This is why retailers generally require you to use the same method of payment to get your refund. It's uniquely online processors that do not refund fees.

That's because they're not the same class of processor. The chain is like

Your bank account -> visa/mastercard/discover -> PayPal's merchant bank account -> the person you're paying bank account

PayPal only replaces the ccs when you pay with their wallet. Otherwise they're just orchestrating the money flow (because integrating with the CC companies is a gigantic PITA)

Re: When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited]

#276

Post by hboon »

kemayo wrote: post #197
chadlavi wrote: post #102

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…

The normal structure for credit card processing is a few cents flat payment plus a percentage of the transaction[1]. Something like 5 cents + 1.5% would be a great deal on payment processing, generally. (Apple is a juggernaut and may have been able to negotiate something else, of course.) That does mean that for a $0.99 app, keeping the fees would still be more than that 3%, at ~$0.07... but not wildly divergent from…

Apple doesn’t charge the user immediately. Instead it consolidates over a few days. So, often, the card processing fees are lower for Apple.

Re: When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited]

#277

Post by christefano »

davidwhodge wrote: post #250

This does not match my experience with my App, Nikola. I've been able to match up the transactions and refunds as 1 to 1, price-wise.

Thank you for weighing in. Hearing from more devs is what this thread needs, IMO, not rumor mongering.

Great website, by the way!

https://www.nikolaapp.com/

Out of curiosity, can you say whether Tesla has approached you for acquisition?

Re: When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited]

#278

Post by jclardy »

wlesieutre wrote: post #7

Does this mean if there's a developer I don't like, I can buy their stuff and refund it to arbitrarily cost them money at no cost to myself and there's nothing they can do about it? That seems ... not great, especially these days. What happens when mobs of internet morons decide review bombing isn't sufficient and realize Apple will help them cause direct financial harm instead?

I think this is part of what is holding back iPad software. You can't charge $100 for Sketch and lose $30 when someone asks for a refund. Apple designed this around $1-$10 apps where losing $2 at volume is fine.

What is worse, is that Apple doesn't remove the app from the user's device. When you get a refund of a paid app it is on the honor system for them to delete it. It is removed from their account, so they can no longer download/update, but the installed binary is not affected.

Re: When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited]

#279

Post by VRay »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #240
jandrese wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The family plan settings on an account are certainly not an example of getting it right. You can share a library, have multiple linked accounts, but the instant any one of those accounts fires up a game all other accounts are locked out of the entire library. Not just the game that is currently running, but the everything. Valve missed the entire point of having a family account setup and every time I mention this I…

> The family plan settings on an account are certainly not an example of getting it right. What other stores have a family plan at all?

Basically every internet game/app store does this differently. Google's, Apple's, Xbox, PlayStation

I think even the Nintendo Switch is more fair about it, but I haven't checked it directly

This has burned me really badly. I had an account with hundreds of Steam games, and then my dad got hooked on some of the VR games I'd bought and set up on a Vive machine in the living room upstairs. I had to make a new account to be able to play new games. Then my nephew got hooked on one of the games on the new account, so I ended up giving it to him and making a third account for myself. That one only has a couple of games on it, since I've mostly just transitioned to playing stuff on GoG and the Nintendo Switch

Re: When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited]

#280

Post by 8note »

indymike wrote: post #267
Sargos wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case the economic conditions are a monopoly so competition is impossible. That's why regulations exist, they fix market failures.

Breaking the monopoly is the solution. Pouring regulatory cement on just makes the monopoly legitimate and sanctioned forever.

Breaking monopolies is a form of regulation
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