
The HEY discussion has revolved around money, but this is not about money - rydre
https://hey.com/apple/iap/
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ahmedbaracat
“ You can no longer help the customer who’s buying your product with the
following requests: Refunds, credit card changes, discounts, trial extensions,
hardship exceptions, comps, partial payments, non-profit discounts,
educational discounts, downtime credits, tax exceptions, etc. You can’t
control any of this when you charge your customers through Apple’s platform.
So now you’re forced to sell a product - with your name and reputation on it -
to your customers, yet you are helpless and unable to help them if they need a
hand with any of the above.”

~~~
soccerdave
These statements are so true. When our company had billing issues with in-app
purchases, there were plenty of times that we wanted to refund people for
their purchases and we had no way to do this on both Apple and Amazons
platforms. We had to send them to Apple and Amazon customer service and we
never knew if they got help or not. Google on the other hand actually made it
very easy for us to find someone’s purchase and issue them a refund, but even
with Google you are very removed from the customer and can’t directly contact
them or find out much about the customer.

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nchase
From the post:

 _When someone signs up for your product in the App Store, they aren’t
technically your customer anymore - they are essentially Apple’s customer.
They pay Apple, and Apple then pays you. So that customer you’ve spent years
of time, treasure, and reputation earning, is handed over to Apple. And you
have to pay Apple 30% for the privilege of doing so!_

Very true. I think people tend to associate in-app purchases with Apple unless
they're very sharp or very motivated to do otherwise.

Does anyone think Apple will address this in any form at WWDC next week?

~~~
lazyjones
What's wrong with that? I trust Apple more to cancel a subscription correctly
and stop billing me than most other companies.

~~~
nchase
I think Jason Fried does a good job of explaining what's wrong with it in the
post:

 _[...] at Basecamp we help people for all sorts of reasons. We apply credit
to accounts for all sorts of reasons. We provide hardship exceptions for all
sorts of reasons. We discount our software for teachers. We provide free
versions for first responders. We extend trials for those who need more time.
We extend payment terms occasionally for those who can’t make ends meet this
month. We make exceptions because people are exceptional. We take enormous
pride in helping people out. And we’re damn good at it._

 _If we had to push our customers through Apple’s system, we couldn’t do any
of that. Apple’s rules prevent us from servicing our customers, yet Apple
gives us no choice but to submit to those onerous rules or not be represented
on their platform. [...]_

This reflects my experience as well. If I can help customers with their
billing issues, it makes my company look really good – we get an opportunity
to provide exceptional customer service. If their subscriptions are managed
via Apple, we don't really get that opportunity; instead, we're just one of
many apps that can't make exceptions.

Apple is far less likely than the company that builds the app to care about
the sorts of individual customer reasons for needing a trial extended, account
credited, etc, that are mentioned in the article.

Yes, lots of companies are bad at customer service. But some are really good!
(you can tell by how their customers gush about them.) And with forced in-app
purchases, the good ones don't get the opportunity to do their best work.

~~~
NathanKP
As much as I believe that Basecamp will do the right thing for their customers
the harsh reality is that the vast majority of app developers suck and their
subscription system will end up looking more like: "We accidentally leak your
credit card info. We accidentally double charge you. We refuse to cancel your
subscription when you want to because you signed a hidden one year contract."

Apple's subscription restriction is optimized to prevent the bad actors in the
ecosystem from abusing Apple customers. And unfortunately there are a lot more
bad actors in the marketplaces than there are good actors who are trying to do
the right thing.

If it was a perfect system then yes it would be nice for Apple to allow third
parties to have their own subscription systems. But I'd rather be locked into
Apple subscriptions than deal with the nefarious and poorly implemented custom
subscription systems of the average shovelware app developer.

~~~
ViViDboarder
Apple has always treated their consumers with kid gloves. As a user, I would
like the choice to purchase via Apple and via the developer directly. There
are apps and people I trust and there are those I do not. Apple subscriptions
would still be valuable for developers that haven’t established trust yet.

If an app has a poor subscription system, I just wouldn’t subscribe. That
would eventually push them towards Apple or towards a better system.

As consumers we are hurt because we don’t get the experience of any
subscription services that are better than Apples because the decision is made
for us.

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Kye
All their criticisms seem sound!

There's a (good) theme in this: control. They don't want Apple to control the
relationship between Hey and its customers. Which is _super cool_. I like it.
It's bold, it's correct, it's an easy position to hold.

Which is why it's weird they don't have domain support. Why should I cede
control of the relationship between my contacts and myself to them? I get the
feeling domain support will be part of the coming business plan mentioned in
the welcome emails when you sign up. So you can spend the $99/year, or more
with the "premium" names, and still depend on Hey to control that
relationship. I was soured on it a bit by not being able to get kye@. That's
my name. I don't have almost $400/year to claim it. Someone more fortunate
will be able to. I already have a domain for the name that's easy to remember.

Everyone loved Gmail when it came out. Having a Gmail address was a point of
pride for at least as long as invites were scarce. Who thinks that now?
Controlling the domain is a hedge against the risk that Hey will go down the
same road. It should have been there at launch, and it should be available on
_all_ plans. I would have signed up the moment I got in and saw how well
everything is put together.

I like it a lot, but I can't possibly use it if I can't point it at a domain I
control at the plan level that's right for my needs.

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ksec
Initially It was the selective enforcement that got me, how Fastmail and other
mail client didn't get IAP treatment. Turns out they did [1]. Although it is
not clear how "recent" that treatment was, if it was before or after the Hey
drama.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/Fastmail/status/1273800222989324288](https://twitter.com/Fastmail/status/1273800222989324288)

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time0ut
It is about the money for Apple. That is all it is about.

What's next? Are they going to want a 30% cut of any transactions I make
through the Vanguard or E-Trade apps?

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the_gipsy
I'm q bit tired of this HEY marketing spin by now. And it's the same old
story, over and over.

If you build on a platform, be prepared to get fucked over anytime, period.
Otherwise build on a protocol, that is open, and will prevail.

~~~
satyrnein
There's no way to entirely avoid platform risk, unless you're running your app
off the grid, on a boat in international waters, using your own hardware,
getting online via multiple satellite providers, and taking payments only via
Bitcoin.

Otherwise, it's about trying to decide what risks are reasonable, and doing
what little you can to influence each platform's behavior toward you, which is
what Basecamp is doing.

~~~
dcwca
Web apps are pretty risk free in this sense. Nobody controls the web.

~~~
ryanbrunner
Sure, but the platforms can still go out of their way to make it infeasible to
build on the web - There's no way that Hey could have been a web app on iOS
since Safari refuses to support a lot of functionality that would bring web
apps to parity with native ones.

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AndrewKemendo
Something you'll notice during every WWDC is that Apple will repeatedly say
that iOS updates are "always free." I always found that odd till I realized it
both a throwback to the days when upgrades weren't free - but also as a nod to
"We don't get paid by charging for our operating system." Once you're entering
the Apple ecosystem - Apple is making itself the de-facto middleman between
the user and everyone else.

I think that's what this comes down to - you're paying Apple the premium as a
developer to access Apple's customers.

They aren't your customers. They are Apples. So this argument calls this out
but is asking them to change that? Seems like they are asking Apple to
completely change their business model.

Edit to add from the TC interview with Schiller, he even gives a way to get
around the app store process, which I have used in a previous app that we did
on iOS:

"One way that Hey could have gone, Schiller says, is to offer a free or paid
version of the app with basic email reading features on the App Store, then
separately offered an upgraded email service that worked with the Hey app on
iOS on its own website"

