Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 583 posts

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

#401

Post by ben509 »

thoraway1010 wrote: post #194
seancoleman wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's awesome! However, it WILL result in stripe attracting a LOT of the crappy billers (ie, folks who mislead / make customer unhappy etc). If your business is Other business obviously have MUCH higher refund rates (sneaky autobill businesses etc). For these loosing 5% on the refunds matters if they have a lot of refunds, so they'll be very tempted by no costs if you autobill and get caught. They'll just autorenew…

Having a disincentive for merchants to have many refunds makes a lot of sense.

The reasonable thing to do is to ramp up the fees based on the number of refunds. You want to push away the crappy billers, but not hammer developers that have the occasional bad release.

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

#402

Post by sercand »

marcinzm wrote: post #398
valuearb wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope.

This is Apple's US terms for developers of paid apps: > You shall reimburse, or grant Apple a credit for, an amount equal to the price for that subscription. Apple will have the right to retain its commission on the sale of that subscription, notwithstanding the refund of the price to the End-User. If you disagree, please cite a source.

I just looked at our app store connect Sales and Trends page and for a $100 item: Apple proceeds $70 to developer and takes back $70 again from the developer on a refund.

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

#403

Post by tomduncalf »

chrisjarvis wrote: post #379

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.

One developer has said (below) this didn’t seem to be the case for him, so it’s possible the original tweet poster was confused.

I have heard this rumour before and it does sound like Apple deserve the right to do this, so perhaps it varies on a case by case or region by region basis? But seems to be hard to find concrete information either way strangely!

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

#404

Post by sercand »

sbarre wrote: post #199
jmull wrote: post #189

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.

This is wrong.

I just looked at our app store connect Sales and Trends page and for a $10 item: Apple proceeds $7 to developer and takes back $7 again from the developer on a refund.

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

#405

Post by annoyingnoob »

From the perspective of an iPhone user, Apple does a reasonable job of keeping nefarious apps out of the app store (not prefect, maybe not even great, but reasonable). Most apps that have a set price and not a subscription are reasonably priced and one does not feel/notice that Apple takes a 30% cut. The end user experience is reasonable.

I feel like getting rid of the app store, or even just allowing side loading, would open users up to a lot of nefarious software.

If we assume that consumers like the App store and that its not going away, how do we satisfy developers but allow consumers the comfort of the walled garden?

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

#406

Post by tomduncalf »

Looks like the original tweet may be incorrect according to replies on there, or at least this doesn’t apply to every app, for example: https://mobile.twitter.com/LittleFinLLC/status/1288570444417...

Would be great if others could chime in with their experience if they have records to check!

My apologies for posting this if it proves to be incorrect, hard one to fact check weirdly.

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

#407

Post by lucisferre »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #218
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...

Its wily political speak. The devs keep 100% of what they make. What do they make? 70% of the price on app store. They keep 100% of the 70% of the store price. Truthful statement, just one that is designed to mislead you.

The idea that they could make less than 100% of the money that they "make" under these terms reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Bill Gates "buys out" Homer's fake business Hyperglobalmeganet.

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

#408

Post by baldajan »

jclardy wrote: post #278
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 n…

That’s the problem with paid apps... but I also believe now it’s a problem with devs not validating the app receipt to check for refunds and prevent access.

For in-app purchases, up until a few years ago, users would always have access to them (even after a refund) then it followed the same rules as paid apps - access always maintain but one couldn’t restore.

Subscriptions however are unique as a server would constantly check the receipt from Apple, which would show a refund flag, so you could block access. Now they even send you a push notification to your server to indicate a refund.

With iOS 14, in-app purchases will get a “notification” when a user receives a refund on device (with IAP encompassing subscriptions).

So it’s getting better. Not perfect. But better.

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

#409

Post by TAForObvReasons »

wrsh07 wrote: post #382
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.

Notably, it's a somewhat recent change for Stripe. They had refunded fees but iirc it meant they were paying a small fee per refunded transaction (which in a sense subsidizes apps that incur frequent refunds) which they wanted to stop doing. A quick search showed they started refunding fees in 2012 and stopped in 2017. Here's a discussion from the past couple years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22371330

They stopped doing it for new customers in 2017. Grandfathered customers saw the policies change in March of this year. My company's account saw the change in late March, while we were all staying at home, so that felt like a gut punch. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22371330 was contemporaneous

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

#410

Post by smarnach »

hn_check wrote: post #396
tomduncalf wrote: post #160

Had a look and it seems that Google do refund the transaction fee, which I think adds weight to the argument that is unfair behaviour by Apple: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... "Google will return the transaction fee to you. You'll see the returned transaction fee on your next earnings report."

"which I think adds weight to the argument that is unfair behaviour by Apple" Apple takes back from the developer exactly what they gave the developer. This has been verified by a number of people, and this submission is just farcically wrong. How is this nonsense front page on HN? Is this community this clueless?

Do you have any sources for your claim? The original claim - i.e. developers lost money for each refund - is backed not only by the original post, but also by several other sources linked in the comments.
Post reply on HN