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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]

#311
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, they used to but stopped about a year ago.

Ditto. Helping some non-profits, we were really hurt by people typo-ing a $10,000 donation when they meant to only donate $100. We quickly learned from that mistake. We also learned about how credit card thieves test credit cards. We saw hundreds of donation attempts. Stripe had us refund those that went threw, which costed us money in fees. Fortunately we were able to put some quick measures in place to stop them te…

I am curious what measures did you put in place?

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

#312
post #77
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you have a big Twitter following and ask them to do it?

Sounds like a lawsuit in the making if the harm is great enough.

Lawsuits only really work if you know who to sue. And if they live in a country that will honor your country's court's decisions. And if they have money.

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

#313
post #10
post #5

Apple is taking a cut for providing the store itself, distribution, visibility, SDKs/frameworks, etc. Why would they refund 30%?

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?

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

#314

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...

Hmm, when I use PP to refund to my clients, PP returns the fees - it's a line item in the ledger.

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

#315
post #5

Apple is taking a cut for providing the store itself, distribution, visibility, SDKs/frameworks, etc. Why would they refund 30%?

Developers do have to pay an yearly fee to just be an iOS developer, so the argument that's because of the SDKs is incorrect

Ok, what about everything else I said? Like distribution? Millions of users?

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

#316
Apple keeps on abusing their dominant market position to make huge profits at the expense of small developers. They subject apps to huge fees, then release competing apps at the same price (such as Apple Music). They prevent companies from selling ebooks on from their apps without taking a huge cut, again, despite the fact that they have a competing app in iBooks. These are perhaps the most egregious examples, but the list is very long of other complaints.

How long will they get away with this before antitrust regulation kicks in? They are so focused on extracting rent that they keep on poking this sleeping bear, and it eventually will be a huge problem for them. If they don’t reverse course, expect to see large reductions in their profits and stock price when this happens.

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

#317
post #109

Purchase: Customer pays $10. Apple keeps $3. Developer gets $7 Refund should be: Developer has $7 deducted from current owed "royalties" Apple refunds $10 to the customer. Is Apple actually taking $10 from the developer and giving it to the customer? That would be theft. The developer is not obligated to cover refunds beyond the profit/royalty they originally made on it.

That's exactly what's happening. The developer actually loses 30% of the purchase price due to the refund (they are now 30% in the hole instead of break even).

Frankly from my point of view this is criminal. We kept payments for our product outside the app for years, and now Apple closes that ability too, by forcing any app that accepts payments of any kind to also accept Apple Pay. We've had to basically hide the ability to find it in the app so that people will go to the website first.

Apple seriously needs to be regulated.

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

#318
Of all the chatter around anti-trust, has anyone broached the app store and apple’s monopoly on iOS software?

I am using the term in a colloiquial, non-legalistic sense.

My fear is that politicians are invested in tech stocks, like the rest of us and pretty much anyone with a mutual fund, so they are unlikely to act in a pro-consumer manner.

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

#319
post #15
post #5

Apple is taking a cut for providing the store itself, distribution, visibility, SDKs/frameworks, etc. Why would they refund 30%?

Perhaps the refund is caused by the store itself? Is it inconceivable that the distribution, visibility and framework caused the customer to misjudge the product?

No, not inconceivable. But still not relevant to me.

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

#320
I guess in Europe iStuff isn't as overwhelmingly popular as in USA, so when I hear things like that I am always amazed at how could anyone (a developer) in their mind ever cooperate with Apple. Even writing and getting a new app to their store is a huge feat, they take a huge cuts when you make money, and when you don't they can charge you "30% of what you could make" anyway. This is just absolute nonsense.
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