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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]

#521

I was mistaken in my original (now deleted) tweet and have been corrected by a few people Apple does not keep the 30% commission on a refund the refund happens as you’d expect. I don’t know where I got the idea that it worked the way I thought it did This was a follow-up by the tweet's author. https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1288625617873694721?...

Misinformation really does spread like wildfire. Even with the number of naysayers on Hacker News we still seemed to have had a lapse in critical thinking. I've been wanting to get into research on the study of the spread of tweets like this. Anyone have pointers for reading material?

[deleted]

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

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To go deeper into the rabbit hole, lots of people dislike Apple, so this tweet could have been a calculated effort to further tarnish Apple's reputation. Plan: 1. Create fake news that X people see. 2. Wait until X is large. 3. Delete fake news, use "plea ignorance" apology to save face, that Y (Y Congrats you now have a large number of people who now have an even worse opinion on the subject of the news. Repeat step…

Yeah, but it's Apple. That's a drop in the ocean.

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

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To go deeper into the rabbit hole, lots of people dislike Apple, so this tweet could have been a calculated effort to further tarnish Apple's reputation. Plan: 1. Create fake news that X people see. 2. Wait until X is large. 3. Delete fake news, use "plea ignorance" apology to save face, that Y (Y Congrats you now have a large number of people who now have an even worse opinion on the subject of the news. Repeat step…

Or be like the Hey app.

Pretend to be the victim, whip up a whole lot of free PR sympathy and then make the minor change to the app and resubmit whilst no one is paying attention.

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

#524
post #519
post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's uniquely online processors that do not refund fees. It sorta makes sense, since the online processors are usually middlemen that only make money on the fees they themselves charge. I could see their perspective being "we provided the service; that service is not un-provided because the customer returned the item and you sent them a refund... in fact, you used us even more because we had to mediate the refund t…

Why do such fees (online, appstore, etc) have to be "some x% of the transaction value" and not just a flat fee?

Because, money. I can understand, on a credit transaction, there is a larger risk when a larger amount is spent. But even then I would expect some tiers. But for an online transaction, where there is no real risk to the middleman, it is about making more money.

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

#525

I was mistaken in my original (now deleted) tweet and have been corrected by a few people Apple does not keep the 30% commission on a refund the refund happens as you’d expect. I don’t know where I got the idea that it worked the way I thought it did This was a follow-up by the tweet's author. https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1288625617873694721?...

Ah good to know. Will email the mods here to see if they can delete/amend this post.

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

#526
post #313
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they refund 30%? Because they can afford it, and it's the right thing to do both ethically and morally.

Why is it the right thing to do morally and ethically? Didn't they earn that money?

If you went and bought a new car for $50,000 and then needed to return it and get a refund you wouldn't be very happy if the dealer gave you $45,000 back and said "Sorry, the salesperson gets to keep their commission. They earned that money." The dealer wouldn't be very happy if the salesperson said "No, I'm keeping my $5,000. I did my part and I earned that money." If there's a refund then everyone gives their part of the money back.

Apple were part of the transaction, so if there's a refund they should return the money they earned. They can't just ignore the customer's wishes to get the money back, and they can't just pass the loss on to the developer. Neither would be fair.

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

#527

I was mistaken in my original (now deleted) tweet and have been corrected by a few people Apple does not keep the 30% commission on a refund the refund happens as you’d expect. I don’t know where I got the idea that it worked the way I thought it did This was a follow-up by the tweet's author. https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1288625617873694721?...

Misinformation really does spread like wildfire. Even with the number of naysayers on Hacker News we still seemed to have had a lapse in critical thinking. I've been wanting to get into research on the study of the spread of tweets like this. Anyone have pointers for reading material?

I have sold apps on the App Store for a decade now, and I have to admit I did believe the original tweet. I was going to go through the financial reports during the weekend to verify, but the initial reaction was “of course they would do this, it’s Apple”.

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

#528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious what measures did you put in place?

The credit card tests had unique network patterns we could block. We lowered our online donation limit. Above a certain amount it really is more ideal for a check or some other type of transaction. Though we've had a few people offer to just pay the 3% transaction fee on top of the multiple thousand dollar donation. For those we do a bit more manual process. For a cost, Stripe also lets you put some additional rules…

Thank you. It all makes sense. Did you end up using Stripe Radar to check for fraudulent payments? It is working well?

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

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't true. They enable the return of the interchange (from the issuing bank), they do not refund the scheme fees. In fact, you will pay more on the scheme fees to process a refund, as you need to send another message into the scheme's network - often charged per message or per byte etc. Interchange is not payment scheme revenue - it is just passed through to the issuing bank.

Scheme fees generally don't apply to US credit card transactions... That is primarily an issue for cross-border credit or debit card transactions.

That clearly can't be true, as it would mean that Visa and Mastercard would be working for free for domestic transactions.

Scheme fees are much lower for domestic transactions as far as I'm aware, though.

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

#530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather stunning how you took that rhetorical question literally, and in the process missed the point spectacularly.

> It's rather stunning how you took that rhetorical question literally, and in the process missed the point spectacularly. In the past 2 weeks you've said quite a lot of mean things to people on HN. Please stop doing that.

You're right, my bad.
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