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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]

#371

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kshacker wrote: post #351
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For that low low price they'll also reject your app for random reasons and make it impossible to find in their store. So much the same as the other stores then. But the store feature I want to see from Apple is that if you provide the customer referral to your app yourself, Microsoft only takes 5%.

Microsoft is not in the business of making money from apps, right now they need growth, it might even be a question of hey so we need to keep the store running. I say only partly in jest but see them change colors if they ever get a dominant share.

So you're saying that companies who have to compete charge less whereas companies with a dominant market position can extract monopoly rents because they lack competition? But people keep telling me that isn't the case for Apple. Shouldn't they be doing the same thing to try to get store market share from Google?

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

#372

Post by theturtletalks »

saurik wrote: post #345
gamblor956 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My experience with PayPal was that they almost always gave me my fees back when I processed a refund (there were corner cases where that didn't happen); it is possible the rules changed or that I am misremembering the extent of the cases when they don't, though (I haven't processed payments in a year and a half).

Paypal about a year ago changed their policy that they would keep the credit card processing fees for refunded orders.

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

#373

Post by pier25 »

nvahalik wrote: post #356
mywittyname wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is worse, is that Apple doesn't remove the app from the user's device. This. Is. Ridiculous. We all know this is an intentional design decision by Apple and that they would absolutely not have designed the workflow this way if they had to dogfood their own platform.

> if they had to dogfood their own platform. But Apple does sell one app through the iTunes App Store (Dark Sky, which they recently acquired). They sell several through the Mac App Store. So, they do dogfood, but obviously they are not depending on revenue to survive here. Side note: there are a bunch of apps listed under their developer that I had not seen before: Music Memos, Indoor Survey, Texas Hold'em, and Real…

> So, they do dogfood, but obviously they are not depending on revenue to survive here.

Their pro apps are almost given away for free.

You could argue that $200 for Logic is not free, but similar DAW products costs 4-5 times more.

Not only that, but competitors need to charge you for major updates every couple of years, like any developer. Since Apple released Logic Pro X in 2013 it has kept pushing updates without asking for money.

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

#374

Post by pier25 »

snazz wrote: post #283
jclardy wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

I'm glad that Apple can't remotely delete apps from my device. It would be somewhat dystopic if they had that capability.

Oh but they install apps with certificates that will expire sooner or later.

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

#375

Post by jedimind »

Tim Sweeney @TimSweeneyEpic

This is a critical consideration in these 30% store fees. They come off the top, before funding any developer costs. As a result, Apple and Google make more profit from most developers' games than the developers themselves. That is terribly unfair and exploitative.

https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/128831577560707891...

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

#376

Post by simonh »

newen wrote: post #362
simonh wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is where we get into the weeds. How do we specify what is a general purpose computer? How do we specify a legally mandated mechanism for installing software? I'm not expecting you to do so now obviously, but isn't the fact that it's so hard part of the problem? This is an incredibly tricky area to start legislating about. Theres much more to this to hitting Apple with a 'monopolist' stick.

This is why there are regulatory bodies and people's entire career devoted to this. The government can create regulatory bodies to answer these questions and then regulate companies.

I don’t think saying it’s someone else’s problem to sweat the details cuts it. It sounds too much to me like wanting to wave a magic wand to make the problem go away, but there is no magic wand. Never, in any of the debates I’ve had on this, any of the blog posts a I’ve read about it, even the EFF articles about this (and organisation I have enormous respect for), has anyone actually tackled this issue of saying how a law like this would work in any specific way and what devices it should or should not apply to, specifically.

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

#377

Post by wlesieutre »

pier25 wrote: post #373
nvahalik wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they had to dogfood their own platform. But Apple does sell one app through the iTunes App Store (Dark Sky, which they recently acquired). They sell several through the Mac App Store. So, they do dogfood, but obviously they are not depending on revenue to survive here. Side note: there are a bunch of apps listed under their developer that I had not seen before: Music Memos, Indoor Survey, Texas Hold'em, and Real…

> So, they do dogfood, but obviously they are not depending on revenue to survive here. Their pro apps are almost given away for free. You could argue that $200 for Logic is not free, but similar DAW products costs 4-5 times more. Not only that, but competitors need to charge you for major updates every couple of years, like any developer. Since Apple released Logic Pro X in 2013 it has kept pushing updates without a…

There's also Apple's continued refusal to allow devleopers to have separate pricing for updates vs new purchases. It's either a free update to the existing app, or it's an entirely new app listing with the same price for new users and people who owned the previous one.

I've seen this circumvented by creating a package deal of the old and new versions, which then gets discounted via the "you already own part of this set" mechanism, but it's a messy experience and not something that many developers have done.

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

#378

Post by seancoleman »

seancoleman wrote: post #147
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…

Stripe does refund their fees with a transaction refund. I understand this may be novel for the payment processing industry though.

I guess it's been a long time since I've been personally responsible for the financial side of Stripe accounts. I think it was 5 years ago when I used to run a lot of test transactions and refund for net $0, but times change. Sorry to lead anyone astray.

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

#379

Post by chrisjarvis »

Has anyone confirmed this is true (or is this tweet the only source...)?

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/105454 "Apple has the RIGHT TO withhold" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23989256

It seems you can only get a refund by reporting a problem, which means if your app works as described you shouldn't be able to request a refund.

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

#380

Post by t0ughcritic »

crazygringo wrote: post #206
andreasley wrote: post #195

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...

Apple doesn't take a cut of your advertising revenue, and most apps are ad-supported rather than paid. That's why it's true.

No most apps aren’t ad supported mostly games are. The ad supported apps are not real business but side hustles or one time, one hit apps that die quickly.
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