
IPhone In-App Purchases Already Leading To Bait And Switch - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/iphone-in-app-purchases-already-leading-to-the-dreaded-two-words-bait-and-switch/
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alex_c
Part of the "bait and switch" aspect is that in-app purchases are only allowed
for paid apps. The $0.99 price of the app in the article, coupled with the
$9.99 monthly fee, leads me to believe that the app developer would've
actually been happier to distribute a free app with a $9.99 monthly fee -
which is no longer "bait and switch", it's just a subscription.

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Periodic
This sort of thing has been going on for a long time, really. There are plenty
of software programs doing this online already. In fact, many online games are
experimenting with micro-payments now. Essentially they sell the product low
or for free, but make the majority of their profits off sale of digital goods.
The true cost of playing the game will not be apparent when you see a box on
the store shelf for cheap.

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jseifer
This is a pretty dramatic conclusion to draw from seeing one app that charges
$0.99 and a monthly fee. If you look at the screenshot in the article, it
seems to make it pretty clear that it's $9.99/month for the turn by turn
directions aspect of it.

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rufo
The article mentions that they've changed the wording, and I'd assume the new
wording is what's in the screenshot.

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jseifer
I saw that. It sort of struck me as a company learning from their mistakes. I
still think extrapolating a bait and switch doom and gloom catastrophe is a
bit much :)

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tptacek
The market may solve this problem, by punishing companies who pull egregious
bait-and-switch scams. It doesn't need to be impossible to try to scam
customers, just economically irrational.

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Periodic
In a way this will be taken care of by the review process. All apps can be
reviewed by anyone who purchases them, and the aggregate rating gets displayed
in the app store. The lower your rating gets, the lower you'll show up in
searches. It's a way of crowd sourcing the review process.

I know that at my wife's company (which makes iPhone games) they are very
paranoid about bad reviews. Getting good reviews and getting featured seem to
be the keys to success on the App Store.

Of course, some people will lose some money in this process, but that could be
considered a cost of the system which will average across the users willing to
experiment with un-reviewed apps.

