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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]

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tweets claim is false.

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.

Apple says they have that right, but I have not seen them do it.

Here's apple deducting a refund from me in 2010, and the amount is exactly what they paid me. https://imgur.com/a/KwKlMXh

First screen shot is a week with one refund (-$1.40) and ten sales ($14.00 proceeds).

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

#503

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.

See my other reply; apple does not always do this. https://imgur.com/gallery/KwKlMXh

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

#504

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.

The last time this came up, in 2009, I looked at my reports and concluded the same thing- when Apple reported a refund, they were deducting 70% of a sale from my future earnings, not 100%

This topic is generating enough heat that I went trolling through my old reports.

Apple appears to be deducting just the 70% from earnings, not the full 100%. https://imgur.com/gallery/KwKlMXh

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

#505

Wait so. I buy your app. You get $7 and Apple gets $3. I refund your app and get $10 back. Is Apple taking $10 from the developer to give to me? This smells positively rotten.

It's not true, as far as I can tell from my reports.

Apple appears to be deducting just the 70% from earnings, not the full 100%. https://imgur.com/gallery/KwKlMXh

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

#507
post #487
post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting development and marketing costs. If there is a sunk cost component that number skyrockets. Try adding a $5 customer acquisition and $1 developer time. Thats a $1 profit, you need to sell 3 apps to cover the cost of apples fees. You also need to sell another 6 to cover the sunk costs you don't get back. So 1 refund costs you 9 sales. To cover the 1/10, you'll need to charge 10.90, or more likely 11 t…

I'd argue that if 10% of your paying customers are refunding your product, you have a product problem.

Depends on your product, model, and demographic.

At work our refund rate is like 30% for Japan. Investigating this, it turns out there is a cultural behaviour where converting at a higher rate early and refunding if it's not a good fit is the normal way of doing things.

And in a past life, general 4% refund/return rate is pretty common across most ecom markets.

Not saying apps are in this boat but if you ignore refunds in business you're in for a bad time.

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

#508

Tweet is unavailable (deleted). Backup http://archive.is/wqWYK New twitter link: https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1288625617873694721?...

This wasn’t true: https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1288625617873694721?... Recanted there. People need to think more critically.

Ugh. This factoid is now stuck in a bunch of memories though, and they're swear it's true the next time it gets debated.

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

#509
post #487
post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting development and marketing costs. If there is a sunk cost component that number skyrockets. Try adding a $5 customer acquisition and $1 developer time. Thats a $1 profit, you need to sell 3 apps to cover the cost of apples fees. You also need to sell another 6 to cover the sunk costs you don't get back. So 1 refund costs you 9 sales. To cover the 1/10, you'll need to charge 10.90, or more likely 11 t…

I'd argue that if 10% of your paying customers are refunding your product, you have a product problem.

Or a userbase that for some reason dislikes and abuses you. Maybe you have made enemies because of some random political statemant. A large enough group could ruin you.

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

#510

So to update and add to their old slogan: Think different... but we still keep our 30% cut Tech in general has quite a few things about itself it needs to fix. Is it ethical for Apple to write the OS, run the store, sell its own wares AND compete with people it charges, eg 30%, to compete? Same question for other stores, eg Google? Both companies have analytics to determine which of the crop is successful and therefo…

Charging 30% to competitors that it doesn’t charge to itself isn’t really a problem because of opportunity cost. If an Apple product takes revenue from a competitor that’s paying them 30% then they still have all the costs of running their competing service and make less money from their 30% cut. The margins have to be really good for such a thing to be worthwhile.
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