
Another $1K App on the App Store - kushsolitary
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fleas/id519800737?mt=8
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coderholic
My guess is that is to manipulate all of the app discount sites that scan the
app store and report on apps that have recently been discounted. If the
developers drop the app to $0.99 then all of those sites will report this as a
huge saving, and possibly feature it more prominently as a result (I'm
assuming those sites are all automated - and there are a lot of them!)

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LinaLauneBaer
I am the developer of one of those "discount sites". Well I do not have a site
but apps for iOS and OS X that show you the discounts. I filter those things
out on the server side in extreme cases and my Mac app allows you to specify
your own filter criteria like in iTunes where you can have smart playlists. So
for example you could ignore apps where the old price is $999 and the new
price is $0.99 or something like that.

<http://store-news-app.com/>

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andrewroycarter
I wanted to say this must be an April Fool's thing, but looking at the past
price points <http://appshopper.com/games/the-fleas-2>

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fnayr
That's fine. If they lower their price quickly back to $.99 Apple can ban them
(and has stated they will ban developers engaging in blatant price
manipulations). If they don't, no one will buy it, and if some poor schmuck
does he will get a refund on an accidental purchase.

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spinlock
Why would apple want to ban people from dropping the price of an app from $999
to $0.99? Are they just trying to make sure that people who buy at high prices
don't feel bad about their purchases?

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wahnfrieden
Why would you want your customers to feel cheated? It also leads to more
refund requests, which have a processing overhead.

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gdilla
Right, and Apple debits your account for the purchase price (not the net 70%
amount) when a user demands a refund. So a lot of this and you can actually
run negative.

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gurvinder
Its usually done to trick the top grossing apps rankings. Developer will raise
the price to $1k then buy himself some copies using different fake accounts,
thus raising the ranking. Once ranking is achieved, they will reduce the price
in hope to get more sales.

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nchuhoai
I'm no expert in App Store rankings but isn't that quite expensive way of
doing so? Assuming you pay it 10 times, you end up with burning 3000 dollars
in Apple transaction cuts.

And I doubt 10 sales, will get you into top-grossing

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bkanber
I don't understand -- why would they do this? Trying to trick someone into
dropping $1k on their app? Or is there some way you can game the app store by
messing with prices?

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fnayr
They do it so that when they lower the price to $.99 3 days later, the robots
pick up on the 10000% lower price.

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Bill_Dimm
It would only be 99.9% lower.

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c3vin
this seems like a brilliant online ordering system for heroin

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jpdoctor
... with built-in money laundering.

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vajrabum
at a cost of only 30$!

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ja27
If you have an AppAnnie account you can see the grossing ranks. Looks like
someone in India bought a copy. It's the #6 best-grossing iPhone/iPod app in
India right now. It also peaked at #21 in Malaysia on the 29th. So it looks
like 2 sales at that price.

[http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/519800737/ranking/#view=gros...](http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/519800737/ranking/#view=grossing-
ranks&date=2013-04-01)

~~~
TylerE
Almost makes me wonder if they're trying to trick people - e.g. this just see
a price starting with 99 and assume 99 cents

How does Apple handle things like this? Does it immediately auth the CC for
purchases over a certain amount?

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mattyohe
You can see the erratic pricing activity here:
<http://appshopper.com/games/the-fleas-2>

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creeo
I'm one of the developers of this app and I can say that you shouldn't expect
a price drop on this app soon. It's been 100$ for several months and now it's
1000$. It's not a special type of promotion, not a way to trick app review
sites, it's just 999$ for an app and that's it. Some people can afford buying
an app for 1k$ and you know what? We are not one of them so we just can't
afford buying our own app for promotion purposes :) Those people who don't
like our app are always able to receive their money back. Some do, but some
don't and it helps us continue the development of our new project. You can
continue discussing "how scum we are" but the truth is no one is trying to
fool anybody. It's absolutely legal to sell an app for 999$, and those who
bought it for 99$ or 999$ don't write reviews that spill dirt on us or our
game, they just play it and make some effort to entertain themselves, and
those who got it for free very often are too lazy to read 5 words in the
training mode just to understand how to play. I'm done.

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syncerr
This must be trolling.

> Those people who don't like our app are always able to receive their money
> back.

Can you explain the refund process?

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creeo
I'm not sure about the customer loses but when he requests a refund, we don't
receive a cent of it. For us it's 100% money back. People do that quite often.
And it's not trolling.

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igorgue
When price changes from say free to 1K and people have to update do you have
to pay for the update?

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fnayr
No

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ck2
Are there legit apps over $100 ?

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callmeed
I recall one that helped you study for the bar exam and was really expensive.
I assumed it was legitimate.

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UnoriginalGuy
This one I think: <https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/barmax-ca/id345722008?mt=8>

Called BarMax. They even call it "cheaper" on their official web-site. Which
just raises the question: cheaper than /what/?

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mikecarlucci
$999 is cheap for a bar review. Prices do vary from state to state, but
BarMax, Barbri, and Kaplan all offer programs for the CA bar.

Barbri for California: $4,135
[http://www.barbri.com/courseInfo/barReviewCourse/pricing.htm...](http://www.barbri.com/courseInfo/barReviewCourse/pricing.html)

Kaplan for California $2,190 [http://www.kaptest.com/Bar-Exam/Bar-Review-
Courses/General-B...](http://www.kaptest.com/Bar-Exam/Bar-Review-
Courses/General-Bar-Review/complete-california-bar-review-course.html)

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RougeFemme
I ignored this initially, thinking it had be an April Fools' joke. Then I saw
the comments piling up and thought I should check it out. I will continue to
treat it as an April Fools' joke.

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chrisjack
It seem to be a good way to have free marketing. They will probably drop it
back tomorow to free or 0.99$

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weakwire
free marketing? I'll take it!

