Apple's approach isn't as bad as this title makes it sound.
Mostly because they're aggressive communicators about subscription billing -- they send emails well in advance of any subscription renewal, telling you when you'll be billed, how much for, and giving you a link to cancel the subscription. Makes me feel this isn't them hoping you'll just forget and be billed.
In fact, I'd suspect this is intended as a user-friendly feature. It means you had to be presented with the cost up-front before you began the trial, avoiding letting shadier developers do a bait and switch when the trial expires and the user needs to sign up again. (Not saying there aren't other ways this could be done, but...)
So, forcing me to supply payment information for a free trial, then forcing the developer to make my free trial an auto subscription unless I opt-out is supposed to be user friendly?
In what way is assuming you can take my money unless I say otherwise just because I used a free trial supposed to be user-friendly?
I'm so unbelievabley tired of these anti-consumer practices being labelled as 'user friendly' or 'working as intended'. They are not user friendly and sure they're working as intended, to extract money from you. At least tell it like it is, an accountant realized they made more money this way and told the marketers to sell that shit.
There is zero benefit to me as a user by making me opt out of paying a company money.
Try to cancel your newspaper subscription - you have to call in and jump through hoops.
Try to cancel your cable or internet, you didn't realize the rate you got was a "promo" rate that required a two year contract?
I guarantee that if apple used the approaches others use, subscription revenue would be a LOT higher.
They send you an email saying, here's what will be renewing soon, click here to cancel. I end up canceling about 80% of what would auto renew.
And I hate the developers who are not upfront with the subscription price. If there is a free trial, what does it cost after. Even NY Times did this ($1/month in big print - fine print said something like $54/month after 1 month or maybe it was just in a link burried etc).
Wouldn't it be even better if companies couldn't have those nefarious business practices because they don't have the ability to auto-renew your subscriptions in the first place?
It would be even more user friendly if it just popped up a message "You're free trial period has ended, would you like to subscribe?" People here seem to be claiming Apple will send you a message except it will be passive in that if you do nothing you're money will be taken. There are so many reasons I might miss that message, not the least of which is it being buried in all the other messages and notifications I get all day. Just make it opt-in instead of opt-out and suddenly it's super user friendly. In fact the companies can pause your subscription so if you don't get around to it the first time you interact after the free trial it's one click to subscribe and pick up where you left off.
Okay, so what I’m reading is that in defense of apple not allowing a company to be user-friendly, you list companies that are even worse and use that as justification for apple to force developer to be somewhat user-unfriendly instead of fully. I honestly don’t even know what to say to that.
It's pretty easy, so long as you're either using a Mac or are on Windows and able to install iTunes. The subscription-billing-reminder email includes a "review your subscription" link, which opens up Music / iTunes to the relevant buried section.
Really, I feel it should be available through icloud.com, but I couldn't find it anywhere. That'd avoid any of these issues where you need access to a non-phone device.
...vaguely possible that you could get to it through the Apple Music app on Android. I can't easily check that from where I am now, though.
I moved to another continent, closed all my US accounts or left them empty. Apple considered me "delinquent" on my subscriptions and refused to let me switch my app store's country.
It took being on the phone for over 8 hours before someone figured it out (I didn't know that was the issue) and they ended up writing off $12 to let me make the switch.
Try to cancel your newspaper subscription - you have to call in and jump through hoops.
I can do that online with a few clicks. (I do not subscribe to the NYT or WSJ). This is the same with most newspapers that are not the NYT or WSJ.
Try to cancel your cable or internet, you didn't realize the rate you got was a "promo" rate that required a two year contract?
I can do that with a simple call. My rate was not a promo that required a two year contract. I know this because they said so in big letters on the contract, which they're legally required to do in most states...
I guarantee that if apple used the approaches others use, subscription revenue would be a LOT higher.
TIL that if Apple didn't force trial periods to become auto-billed, revenue would somehow be higher. Instead of the more obvious result, which is that revenue is higher because people are being auto-billed after they forget to cancel. That is the business model of quite a few scams, and it's disappointing but not surprising that the Cooks-era Apple has embraced this business model.
I will (and have) pay more for an in-app Apple subscription just because of how easy it is to manage. I don’t think requiring a call is ever “simple”. Some people just prefer different things.
What? I am in love with Apple's way of handling subscriptions. I know that whenever I want, I can cancel it, no strings attached.
If the app does not deliver what it claims with the subscription, I can trust Apple to dispute it. For example, there are a couple of apps that offer subscription and amazing deals out of in-app purchases, but I simply refuse to subscribe that kind of applications, because there are a lot of shady companies want to take your money.
> What? I am in love with Apple's way of handling subscriptions. I know that whenever I want, I can cancel it, no strings attached.
Sure, and that's great. But why can't subscriptions be opt-in after a free trial, instead of opt-out? They can still send an email with a "Subscribe" button instead of a "Cancel" button. I would argue that's much more user-friendly.
Opt-out is by definition not more user friendly than a default opt-in process. It is in fact quite user-hostile and is used by a number of scam companies.
Opt-out is only user hostile when it is used as a scam. Whether it is hostile depends on the implementation.
Apple’s implementation is a friendly one. Firstly there is an email confirmation with a link to cancel, and secondly there is a single screen with all of the subscriptions aggregated and cancellable.
If you are someone who generally purchases subscriptions to things you actually want, then opt-out is clearly more friendly.
If you are someone who likes to try a bunch of stuff but isn’t likely to want to keep much of it, then you would likely prefer opt-in.
Whether a given implementation of opt-out is a scam or not is orthogonal to whether it matches your personal style.
This comment breaks the site guidelines which asks Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
I would recommend just leaving out the first sentence. It's not clear that the comment loses anything by it. Alternatively, you could say "This issue is already addressed upthread, for example <link>". That would be the equivalent of "the article mentions that". Yes, that's not shorter, but the intention here is to make one's points without personal swipes. And linking to the other explanation also adds information.
By the way, once I read your explanation of what you meant, it seemed like a much lesser violation than it did when I read it without that. The trouble, though, is that other readers encounter such a comment without knowing what you meant either.
Ok, I’ll err on the side of not saying this kind of thing, however I note that simply ignoring the conversation so far and making an assertion that is clearly contradicted by an earlier commenter’s personal experience is at least as much of a violation of the spirit of decent conversational standards as expressing mild frustration at such behavior.
I’m also going to just say for the record: I think it is clear that I neither violated the spirit of the rule, nor the letter of it.
It’s also simply not reasonable to say I made a distinction without a difference.
We know that a lot of people engage with the comments on HN without fully reading the source material, and this is now expected behavior. This makes the guideline as written a good way to avoid a common and unproductive antipattern.
However there is a clear difference between not fully reading the source material and not reading the comments you are replying to.
If you want the rule to cover both cases, then you should update it to do so.
A rule like ‘don’t make inferences about other commenters knowledge or understanding of the post or the thread - but rather address this through commenting on the meaning of their statements’ would cover this and a host of other issues, but the one you have used simply does not.
Your suggestion - “This is addressed unthread” can be a dismissal (especially if inaccurate) that is significantly more offensive than “sounds like you aren’t reading along”.
“How can it be objectively user hostile, if someone such as csunbird loves it?”
Would fit this rubric.
In any case, something seems off about this particular moderator intervention.
Compare to the competition and historical dark patterns around subscriptions, this is very user friendly.
I’m sure you’re familiar with gym membership cancellation? That’s not limited to gyms. This may not be the absolute best, but it’s way, way better than the worst.
But it is consistent! I think some people have just drank too much koolaid sometimes. I completely agree with you that it is hostile and terribly anti consumer.
I consistently sign up for free trials with Apple and immediately cancel them. This is consistently a great user experience because on Apple’s platform I get to use the service until the trial runs out, it’s easy to cancel, and I know I’ve canceled it and don’t need to remember.
It would be consumer unfriendly not to be told up front that an app is a subscription service, you use it for three weeks, put your information in there and then be told you have to pay.
Hold up, the point of the trial is so people can try the app for free. Then, after having tried the app, users can choose to pay. Or not.
There is no issue about misleading customers here, because many apps promise features that don't work well or have other problems and the only ways for the user to figure out if an app is worth it is by (a) reading reviews and (b) trying it, and that will result in an informed decision. What's the difference between misleading users about functionality and misleading them about price? In both cases you're wasting your users' time and in both cases they'll ultimately choose not to buy.
What Apple is doing here is moving the purchase decision forward, to the point where the user knows practically nothing about the product. How can you make an informed decision if all you've seen are a couple of screenshots and some vague list of features on the App store page?
Since you can't be guaranteed to be able to bill someone forever, an expired CC being an obvious example, how does an app not break the rule of "Because Apple forbids an app to be disabled or not function".
I mean, the app surely doesn't uninstall itself or give you free access forever.
When you submit your app, you can specify a grace period that allows the app to work while the payment gets sorted out. For apps that bill at least monthly, the grace period is 16 days.
And what happens if you drop your phone, and it's being repaired so you haven't used the app for the full trial?
And what if say, a Sasquatch, steals your phone, and your wallet, and he's using the app and delighted by it, by you've never used that app but you're still going to be charged?
>What Apple is doing here is moving the purchase decision forward, to the point where the user knows practically nothing about the product. How can you make an informed decision if all you've seen are a couple of screenshots and some vague list of features on the App store page?
No, what they're doing is they turn:
"I tried this app and I want to keep it, so I click before/after trial ends to be charged with the subscription"
into:
"I tried this app and I don't want it, so I click to cancel the trial anytime before it ends, not to be charged for a subscription".
In other words, they don't forbid trials.
Actually this whole thing is not even about auto-renewal or not, it's about apps using their subscription methods/apis. Tomorrow they might chose to forbid auto-renewal across the board just as well, but they will still insist apps use their subscription method.
What they're doing is making it so people have to actively remember to cancel a trial. If you're not even using the app, it would be very easy to forget to cancel. If you regularly use it, you'd notice that the trial ended, and can pay for the subscription if you'd like.
I have forgotten to cancel subscriptions from iTunes a few times as I tend to watch my CC statement for forgotten subscriptions, not Apple Free Trial emails. The real issue is that they make it impossible to get a refund once you as a customer have been charged even when the app developer agrees to give you one. Being forced to delegate billing to a robotic corporation that treats your customers like robots is a terrible position to force developers in to.
Is this your personal experience? I’ve previously received refunds for purchases and movie rentals. It required an email but also gave me confidence that if I ever bought an app that was junk that I’d get a refund.
Ive never had a problem with app refunds, but for subscription refunds - hell yeah its terrible.
I was double subscribed to a service. Same device, same account, literally within seconds of each other (double tap maybe?). I was billed twice a quarter for 2 quarters. When I raised this their response was (quoting from the email): "We've thoroughly reviewed your case with our Support Team, and I’m afraid to say that we are unable to proceed with the actions requested."
I replied, restating the problem. They did not respond. I contacted them again 2 days later. No response. Again 5 days later. No response. Again a month later - no response.
There is no way to communicate with them once they have decided they aren't going to deal with your enquiry, so I have had to swallow the loss as they are known for blocking accounts who perform CC chargebacks :/
It has been my personal experience. I bought You Need a budget and forget to cancel before the trial ended. YNAB support was awesome but told me I needed to contact Apple as they processed the payment. It took a while to find the right contact form on Apple's site to get a hold of a representative. I was told per their terms and conditions I could not be given a refund despite having documentation of YNAB agreeing that I should get one. I finally had to speak with a "Senior Specialist" who was able to process my refund after a long period of me not taking no for an answer.
I've also gotten refunds for movie purchases and rentals.
Even just a couple of days ago, my reason was "other" with an added comment "this movie was truly terrible" (R.I.P.D, don't bother... thought we'd buck the trend of bad reviews on it... but nope).
Never a hassle...
That said this is definitely a user hostile approach pretty much banking on the fact that people will forget or just not have time/energy to go cancel (and remember where/how).
My 5 cents. Regardless if this is Apple or any developer, subscription service etc., I consider giving my credit card number / paypal for testing any trial software as directly abusive.
Maybe, it is just me but from my perspective this is a try to force buying from me by whatever means possible and doing me is like rejecting me as a potential customer: I will just never do it.
I hate the need of thinking about some money will be taken from me, unless I perform some action - I consider it as a huge violation of my trust as a highly fishy tactic.
Maybe as a side effect, they are more for stopping credit card charge backs. Those who would never give a credit card are a waste of time. Best to filter those asap.
"devolved into"? Unlike reddit, the official position on HN (although a good chunk of the community disagrees with it) has always been that downvoting for disagreement is ok, back from when pg did run the site.
After watching my mother confusedly agree to $7/week billing in an app she downloaded to play with her cat, I'm not convinced Apple is in the business of helping users make optimal billing decisions with clarity.
The least the App Store could do is give notifications (not just email) for monthly billing and notifications for "You are now paying $7/week and will be charged <Date>" (Click to go to a screen that will let you cancel).
Not to mention, the hostility of having to notice it's $7/week, not $7/month. I literally have never seen weekly billing like that, and I had to look three times to notice it said "week". Just gives scummy tools to scummy people that make rebillware on the App Store, like a game for cats you can make after any Swift tutorial charging $7/week.
At least all apps go through Apple billing, so you get an itemized list of which apps are billing you. Really needs an on-device notification system to help people see that screen though. My mom isn't going to find it, yet she should see it every month she's ever getting billed.
More importantly, can you get a refund? assuming your mother was tricked and didn't understand she was being charged and for what (this voids the contract in some jurisdictions).
Well, no, the billing is opt-in at the beginning of the trial period, and Apple (in my experience and opinion) is very clear about that. You even have to do a FaceID payment authorization at the beginning of the trial.
Because Apple doesn’t want free trials to be “bait” to convince you to pay later. The idea is that you authorize payment and start your subscription at the very beginning, whether or not there is a free trial. With any subscription, you can always cancel at any time (but you won’t get any of your money back, of course). The free trial period works the exact same way.
Personally, I avoid signing up for things all the time that have auto billing after trials. I try out a ton of services and the overhead of tracking them all on a calendar is just not worth it. A simple pop up could make everybody happy if it was indeed user friendly: “would you like to begin your subscription automatically after the trial?”
Also, in terms of consent and automated systems generally, explicit opt in is really the only way to go. Humans just can’t deal with the mental overhead of the hundreds of “contracts” their “services” require now
Don’t really need to track trials, I always just instantly cancel the subscription. You still get to use the site/software until your trial expires and then you’re not billed.
I wonder which you're more likely to pay for: a subscription you intend to cancel or having something free shift to an expense?
From my experience, even with due diligence and setting up calendar event notifications, I've missed a few subscription cancelations I intended. On the other hand, whenever I use something free, I always proceed under the assumption it can shift to a pay for service/product at some point in the future of unknown cost and assess risk accordingly. I don't think I've ever been surprised by a fee or lost time investment because of this.
As far as one time purchases vs subscription charges, I think there's a better argument for this case. It should be made very clear up front during the purchase that there's a time subscription model and what services are or aren't included in that service. The model used in Google Play makes it pretty difficult to confuse what services are or aren't subscription based from my experience which seems reasonable (can't say I've looked into the details, just know I haven't been surprised by what is or isn't a monthly subscription).
Yeah, it sounds like the anti-pattern here is not being up-front about whether it's free, a one-time fee, or a subscription.
Forcing all subscriptions to auto-renew doesn't fix this.
I've seen plenty of apps/services where the selling point is the fact that they _don't_ require a card for their free trial. And people renew their subscription because they've found the product to be worthwhile; not because they used it for 30 minutes then forgot to cancel.
If the consumer likes your service, rest assured at the end of free trial, they may be slightly annoyed but will quickly renew their service to make sure they can continue to have access if they have to. A card associated with my Netflix account expired and I didn't realize, it was renewed within 10 minutes of me wanting to watch a show.
If you're forced to go through a process to renew something, you're more likely to question why you're going through the process and if the service the process exists for still maintains value to you worth continuing payment for. Businesses are aware of this and attempt to avoid those situations. Minimize friction of revenue, limit any barriers for money flowing in.
It's very intentional and I've yet to see a good argument for trial-to-subscription auto opt-in that is not a strategic money grab based on a probability of unintended customers. Many decades ago, magazine subscriptions were notorious for this exact same predatory subscription lock-in model, even making it difficult to cancel (while incredibly easy to enter).
I don't think Apple is intending to cover the "subscription you intend to cancel" case. When you start a free trial for a paid subscription in an iPhone app, you have to do a normal payment authorization which looks almost exactly the same as an instant payment authorization. If you have no intention of paying for a subscription and you don't think you can remember to cancel the subscription before the free trial ends, I think it's pretty reasonable to just not make the upfront payment authorization and thus not use the free trial.
That's not the case I was describing. By intend to cancel, I mean during the free trial period. However, how is a "subscription you intend to cancel" case different from a "free trial you decided you didn't like and forgot to cancel" case, as far as paid subscription management?
For example, CBS All Access had a free trial a few months back which had Picard on it. The monthly fee was nominal and it looked like they had a few shows I might like so I entered the free trial period. After finishing Picard, I tried a few other offerings from the service during the free trial and realized none of them were to my satisfaction. Therefore, I intended to cancel but forgot. Surprise, next monthly billing cycle I see a charge on my card.
So, if the point of the use case of a free trial period is to offer a free trial to evaluate a service and decide if you'd like to continue but prevent you from paying a fee to "test drive," then the upfront payment authorization fails at this for many people who don't instantly cancel the second they decide they don't or may not want the service (but aren't sure yet), or be sure to do so before the free trial ends.
All and all, I would argue the up front authorization free trial case often grabs a subset of the free trial accounts into a full cycle of payment. It also likely grabs those less attentive to longer periods of payment for services they're not using. So free trials are often crafted to prey on these situations, which I typically tend to avoid.
You downloaded CBS All Access, they made you free trial member, you have no idea how much it costs. You may even don't know it costs
You started watching Picard etc, 1 week later, when new episode came, you logged in, you saw your trial has ended, subscribe to continue, lets say 20$ / month.
Apple is trying to prevent this behaviour, actually in comments one developer explaining they made similar flow.
I guess the idea is that you are supposed to cancel when you decide you want to cancel, rather than trying to be clever and use your entire free trial and then cancel at the last minute.
Who says you're trying to be clever? Perhaps you're just busy and have other things to consider?
I know I got wrapped up with a few project deadlines for a few weeks and didn't even have time continue exploring shows before canceling. I'd completely forgotten I even had the service. I guess I wasn't being clever enough.
It appears more to me like opt-out recurring subscription is actually the model trying to be clever. These practices are largely business friendly, not consumer friendly.
Being too busy to cancel a subscription is a problem that would apply equally to normal subscriptions that start charging you immediately. The only alternative to that would be no recurring automatic payments at all, which is to say, no subscriptions at all.
There’s nothing unique about a free trial period in that situation.
Another alternative is to allow an opt-in subscription service with a free trial up front that doesn't automatically setup a recurring subscription you have to remove. A lot of services use this model, successfully.
Of course that is an option. I just don't think it's the only acceptable option, and I think what Apple does is perfectly acceptable and makes a lot of sense to me. Apple doesn't want its customers to play the game of agreeing to pay for something and then being surprised 7 days later when they are billed because they forgot to cancel.
> Mostly because they're aggressive communicators about subscription billing -- they send emails well in advance of any subscription renewal, telling you when you'll be billed, how much for, and giving you a link to cancel the subscription.
I don’t think this is correct. I only ever get emails coincident with the renewal letting me know what my credit card was charged. Never in advance.
They do notify me 30 days before my iCloud storage plan renews, with clear instructions on canceling it. They also offer a grace period if I forget to cancel before.
I wouldn't like renewal reminders every month for my services but I think it makes sense to do something similar to iCloud renewal notices in a few scenarios: for long-term (e.g., annual) subscriptions, for expensive subscriptions, and for the first few billings of a user's first subscription (so they get used to it).
It's also easy to "report a problem" from the receipt e-mail for the renewal, and while there's no stated policy of doing so, I think they would refund an undesired renewal. They even have an option on the form, "I did not intend to renew subscription(s)."
Perhaps you only have subscriptions directly from Apple? Apple seems to treat its own subscriptions differently. For my iCloud subscription I just get monthly receipts after each billing.
But for third-party subscriptions, I get an email with subject "Your Subscription is Expiring" a few days before each billing, then a receipt after each billing.
Risk free trials are a terrible experience. If the customer just wants to demo the app, why should they have to remember to log into their Apple account and cancel the trial?
With saas offerings, I won’t even sign up for a trial if it requires billing information from me.
> In fact, I'd suspect this is intended as a user-friendly feature. It means you had to be presented with the cost up-front before you began the trial, avoiding letting shadier developers do a bait and switch when the trial expires and the user needs to sign up again. (Not saying there aren't other ways this could be done, but...)
Doesn't Apple take a cut of app subscription revenue? So could requiring auto-renewal just be a way of increasing profits, while deflecting the negative PR for the subscription dark pattern onto individual app developers?
The emails can definitely be a good thing for reminding someone about billing, but they're not entirely effective. Most people would ignore emails such as these or they would read them and forget the information as something else is more important, or just rarely check their emails (like weekly, fortnightly, etc).
So the default behaviour matters most in this situation, as evidenced by opt-in vs opt-out for things such as organ donation. When it takes action to opt in most people don't do it (even though it's a good thing), and when it's opt out then most people don't take the actions of removing themselves from being an organ donor.
In this case with all the emails that Apple sends having the default behaviour be opt-in would actually still work. People that want to continue using the application should take the necessary steps to subscribe. If not then they either didn't want the subscription, don't use the application, or they didn't read the messages and are relieved that they're not spending money unnecessarily.
Therefore having opt-out be the default for subscriptions means that Apple is doing it explicitly because it makes them more money than the reverse situation. It is actually user hostile but with the thin veneer (typical of T&C or Privacy Policy) that they "told you so".
Right. I think Apple's intent is the opposite of what the developer is suggesting. Apple is conditioning customers to manage subscriptions, including easy cancelation, in app store.
This is the contrary of user friendly. This is not a free trial, it's a subscription with a first month (or whatever period) offered disguised as a free trial.
I guess that works if you actually check your email :/. (edit: People are downvoting this heavily, but this is 2020 so I would expect stuff like "your free trial is ending" to come in the form of organized push notifications from the App Store. I even like email, but have essentially been trained to not bother with it as no one else is using it either... we are even now exclusively on messaging apps at work ;P.)
That might not be as low minded as lure in people hoping they'll forget but this things should be "Your trial is ending soon, so, ya know you should renew otherwise it ends" . That is the customer friendly way to do it. Any other way is duplicitous and ugly minded.
My first thought was they did it from a security/quality perspective. Less fake accounts in their ecosystem trying to hawk free trials when you have to verify by providing payment info.
Worked on an app that tried the same thing - new users were immediately granted a free month of the "premium" membership on our own backend. The exec who came up with the idea literally called it the "drug dealer" approach - "the first hit is free" - and the user couldn't see the pricing until their trial expired and they tried to enable one of those premium features again, at which point they'd see the subscription purchase screen.
That functionality was live for a few versions before we got an App Store reviewer who noticed and rejected us for it. At the time I couldn't find a specific guideline that disallowed the practice, but anyone who's spent a few years releasing iOS apps knows that's not necessary for a rejection.
The guidelines now include these lines, mentioned by the OP's rejection:
> Auto-renewing subscription apps may offer a free trial period to customers by providing the relevant information set forth in App Store Connect.
> Apps that attempt to scam users will be removed from the App Store. This includes apps that attempt to trick users into purchasing a subscription under false pretenses or engage in bait-and-switch and scam practices will be removed from the App Store and you may be removed from the Apple Developer Program. Learn more about Subscription Free Trials.
Our approach did alert the user that they were on a free trial, but the pricing wasn't related in that alert, nor were the premium features easily identifiable during the trial. I think "bait-and-switch" would be a fair appraisal.
One other reason is it gives people an opportunity to pay for the product off of the app store platform. Apple wants to be the one to manage your free trials on their platform, otherwise people could implement paywalls to sign up through a site that doesn't give apple 30% of revenue.
To be honest this rule is for a reason. Onboarding people without price, then telling them about price certainly will increase your retention, but not the best case from consumer side.
From twitter they say:
“ We've experimented with auto-charging trials in the past and they lead to (1) fewer users trying the product (2) a huge number of refund requests by users who forget to cancel and (3) complete disbelief from those users when we explain that Apple won't allow us to issue refunds.”
By they are also not showing any pricing in the beginning. If they would show try for 15 days free then it is X usd / month. It would be more honest.
Apple does indeed have rules they enforce about this. Anecdotally, I see quite a bit of chatter/questions about App Store review rejections due to the wording or lack of billing copy, compared to other reasons.
Is it really that they are forcing them to implement auto-billing, or that they are forcing the trial to go through standard App Store mechanisms?
Is it anti-consumer to make all subscriptions behave the same? Suppose half of apps managed their own trial period and half of them used auto-renewing App Store trials.
Also worth noting it is really, really trivial to cancel an app subscription from within your Settings, and to see much of the trial period is remaining.
> Also worth noting it is really, really trivial to cancel an app subscription from within your Settings, and to see much of the trial period is remaining.
And yet people still miss it and send us angry emails when they're billed, and we have to tell them to ask Apple for their refund since we don't have the capability to refund them ourselves.
> Also worth noting it is really, really trivial to cancel an app subscription from within your Settings, and to see much of the trial period is remaining.
I think for most people it's pretty hard to find.
It's not actually in Settings. You have to open the App Store, click your face, and that screen has a "Subscriptions >" menu item. I don't subscribe/purchase that much stuff on iOS, so it always takes me a while to find it.
EDIT: thanks for the reply, TIL it's _also_ in Settings :)
For the sake of those who don't use iOS: When you start a trial you also receive an email, subject "Your Subscription Confirmation," which says:
> You’ve purchased the following subscription with a 1‑week free trial:
Subscription Apple TV+
Date of Purchase May 16, 2020
Introductory Offer Free for 1 week
Renewal Price $4.99/month starting May 23, 2020
Payment Method Store Credit
> No commitment. Your subscription automatically renews for $4.99/month starting May 23, 2020 until canceled. To avoid being charged, you must cancel at least a day before each renewal date.
> To learn more or cancel, [review your subscription](link to unsubscribe).
It’s also in Settings (at least in 13.5.1, not sure when this was implemented). Tap on your name where it says “Apple ID, iCloud, iTunes & App Store” at the top of the first screen.
Every release since trials were implemented seem to have made cancellations easier and subscription status review more prominent. It's now to the point of almost being annoying in how many different places take you to subscriptions. But great for casual users, so I don't complain (except here).
I support Apple all the way on this one. Having all trials work the same way is a huge plus in my book as an iOS device user. It’s not about whether this one developer would do totally free trial or not, it’s about complete confidence for the user that all apps work the same wrt trials.
If that's all you wanted, then Apple could have defaulted to a customer-friendly option across the board like requiring a 2nd opt-in to transition into the recurring billing at the end of the trial.
Maybe in some ways, but not in every way. Apple’s approach presents the subscription conditions in a standardized way at the beginning of the trial period and not at the end, i.e. before the user invests time in the app.
Apple has introduced an appeal process for these kind of rejections. They could challenge the guideline.
"Additionally, two changes are coming to the app review process and will be implemented this summer. First, developers will not only be able to appeal decisions about whether an app violates a given guideline of the App Store Review Guidelines, but will also have a mechanism to challenge the guideline itself."
One of the things I really like about the iOS subscription billing ecosystem is that there is one centralized place to see all my subscriptions.
I hate that it's hidden behind four clicks in "Settings", but, once you find it, it's very nice to be able to have one place to go "oh yeah I should unsubscribe from that crossword app I haven't opened in three months". By comparison, for other sites, I have to go find my username/password in a login manager...
Quebec's Consumer Protection Act makes it outright illegal to auto-bill after free trials for non-business individual customers based here, regardless of what legalese those consumers agree to.
How does Apple's policy allow for that? They can't claim they can ignore Quebec law, as they have both an Apple Store and a corporate office in Montreal and already acknowledge another provision of the same Quebec law on their Canadian online store website.
(Quebec has no problem with requiring payment information at the time of sign-up, per se, whether as an anti-fraud measure or to make it easy for the customer to subsequently opt in for paid service.)
I don't know about the App Store in particular, but the approach of most companies in Quebec is to simply not have free trials. (e.g. and to have the fist 13 months of service cost the same as the first 12 months of service in other locales.)
What companies based in Quebec do the "add an extra month to the first subscription cycle" approach? I haven't experienced that from any local company. I've only seen foreign companies use that as an attempt to hand-wave past Quebec public policy here without having to program anything different, by simply rephrasing the fine print.
For example, even though Amazon's systems have plenty of information that my ISP and my main shipping and billing addresses are in Quebec, Amazon markets 30-day Prime free trials to me and then notes in the fine print that Quebec residents get a 13-month first yearly cycle or 2-month first monthly cycle instead. But they also don't charge Quebec consumers for the 13-month or 2-month subscription until the end of the first month, and they don't charge us at all if we cancel during the first month. Smells just like a rebranded free trial with auto-billing.
I'm not convinced Quebec courts would uphold that as legitimately different from a free trial with auto-billing if challenged. The law isn't in place just to force a change in language, it's to force a change in billing or pricing behaviour. This isn't that. Do you know if the compliance of this approach has already been ruled on?
Additionally, the same law covers cancellation penalties and Amazon is noncompliant. Even after the free trial, Amazon is not supposed to charge a cancellation penalty more than the lesser of C$50 or 10% of the pro-rata remainder contract amount.
So, with the annual plan here still costing C$79/year, cancelling right after the first charge should cost Quebec residents at most C$7.90, possibly less since part of the first charge is officially allocated by the fine print to the initial month for Quebec residents. In practice Amazon keeps 100% of the cost in this scenario.
Sorry, can't answer your questions - I don't live in Quebec, so my exposure is purely from reading the fine print notes for Quebec and seeing how they differ.
They may very well not actually be compliant with the laws. I'm a bit surprised that Amazon hasn't even bothered to adjust the billing for their 13-month cycle, that can't be the case for every company offering 13-month first yearly cycles, can it?
Most recently I was looking at credit cards (HSBC, is particular) - it seems they can't waive the fist year's annual fee in Quebec, so they instead offer Quebec customers an additional welcome bonus of points equivalent to the annual fee.
Meanwhile... I’m fairly certain I’ve read that the EU and both Visa and MasterCard are looking at ways to prevent auto-billing without secondary confirmation.
My experience was rather different. I purchased a constellation app (full price no subscription) and after owning it for a year the developer decided to go to a subscription model. I was never told about this until I noticed a monthly charge from apple. Super slimy behavior, I was pretty frustrated. I sent a request to have my charge refunded which apple obliged. In general I really dislike this type of auto-charging and it seems like it preys on customers who are not watching their statements very closely. But Apple is not incentivized as they get a cut of this money.
That sounds extremely unlikely – apps don’t have the ability to do that.
The only way an app can charge an in-app subscription is by asking iOS to prompt the user. This shows a system-controlled prompt telling you the price and that it is a recurring subscription. The prompt only allows you to purchase if you authenticate via Touch ID / Face ID / password, or if you have recently authenticated and have enabled the setting that skips this. Additionally, the App Store rules require that the screen that triggers the subscription also includes details on the subscription. Apple can and do reject submissions to the App Store if apps don’t comply with this.
There simply isn’t an API that lets apps set up an in-app subscription without going through the system-controlled prompt. There isn’t an API that lets apps "convert" a one-off payment to a recurring payment. Apps have no access to set up payments themselves, everything has to go through Apple-controlled, user-visible prompts. If somebody is being charged unexpectedly for a subscription, there’s something else happening, e.g. a partner who knows your password set it up, or you just forgot.
As far as Apple’s motives are concerned, they put a lot of effort into enforcing the rules around in-app purchases, reject a lot of apps on that basis, and err on the side of caution. I’v seen a lot of incorrect and overly strict rejections for apps that follow the rules. If Apple were in any way keen on accidental subscriptions, this would not be the case. They go out of their way in the opposite direction.
At this point Apple is like Walter White at the end of Breaking Bad. It's absurdly wealthy, but doesn't seem to have any purpose left apart from shoveling out more meth or iPhones to get more useless cash.
Uh - you realize they charge a PREMIUM and have some of the highest margins because they are FAR FAR more trusted than most android and other phone mfgs? You realize samsung is pumping ads directly to your handset - and these other folks never update their old devices.
So interesting to read the HN folks trashing apple relative to their competitors even though they are almost certainly a leader on almost every trust based metric that matters to the average user.
I think comments saying "Apple is doing this to provide a better experience" completely misses the point. If I'm creating an app (like a business) I should be incharge of deciding when I would like to charge my customers because I understand my target audience better than Apple at least.
Apple is not just dictating how customers will pay but when they should be charged which is ridiculous.
Most apps I use that have free trials implement it as a one time, in app purchase for $0. This doesn't have the subscription implication or the auto-charge, and has been entirely acceptable under the rules.
So you promised a 1 month free trial, and after one month you either disable the app, or not charge and let them continue their free trial. Either is allowed or makes sense.
The developers can't choose to not charge or to cancel a subscription. The user must cancel. The devs cannot refund a subscription that a user forgot to cancel.
Trialware is broken by design anyway. While auto-billing is plain fraud (and is outlawed in some countries like Germany AFAIK), letting people to use a product for free during a single month is pointless - 90% times I install a trial version, forget about it, come back some months later when I have time just to find out I'm not allowed to try it any more because the trial has expired as a month since the installation has passed.
I don’t see why this is even a complaint...
Apple sends users notifications before the trial ends and you can easily just cancel.
I guess apps I’ve used already have this auto-billing implemented because I don’t think I’ve confirmed my subscription after the free trial ended and billing began.
Nah, I don’t want an app nagging me to subscribe after I’ve already subscribed. That’s not a very “Apple” experience, goes against their philosophy of simple, clean design. Make it easy to cancel (which they’ve done). Perfect.
I think I can give Apple the benefit of the doubt on this one -- it kind of seems like they just didn't even think of this particular use case (not auto billing at the end of a trial period), since almost all companies would prefer to auto bill at the end of a trial.
That said, they should definitely allow this, especially if (as claimed in the twitter thread[1]) they don't allow apps to refund accidental subscriptions.
>they just didn't even think this particular use case (not auto billing at the end of a trial period)
I don't think Apple's auto-billing practices are predatory, like many other companies are, but I'm not sure I can agree that they didn't even think of this possibility.
I think there are valid technical and usability reasons for demanding that all products within a store all conform to the same billing policies. For Apple, providing a consistent user experience is absolutely paramount. They want all apps to act the same and bill the same. If the baseline/standard experience is sub-optimal, then they would say let us fix or improve the baseline experience for everyone, not deal with it piecemeal and leave the user guessing how an app will end up billing them.
In this case I think some users are looking for a double opt-in in the case of a free trial, or at least a native reminder in the iOS user interface that a trial is ending and the first subscription charge is about to be run.
For example, if the day before a trial expired, you could receive a push notification from Apple notifying you that the trial period is about to expire, and how much you will be billed if you do not cancel before the end of the day. Alternatively, the push notification could require active user consent before allowing the trial to convert to a paid subscription.
The first option could be done by Apple with zero required action by developers, but since it's definitely going to increase the cancellation rate, probably developers aren't going to be very happy. It is customer-focused which Apple claims to be, but it's also messy/cluttered to be getting billing notifications
The problem with the second option is that it opens up a new state in the state machine, and three new transition functions. Going from trial -> pending approval is a mid-state which would require some sort of shutting off functionality in the app or even preventing the app from opening, or reverting back to the unpaid / non-trial state. Now the user is in a new limbo 'pending approval' state. Then from there somehow the user has to either approve the charge or indicate that they do in fact want to cancel, so going from pending -> unsubscribed or pending -> subscribed are new transitions that would have to be coded for every app.
The current solution is to simply provide a centralized place to see all your subscriptions and when they will renew and how much they cost, and making it single-tap simply to cancel them. I'm not sure a better way they can surface the Subscriptions UI other than within the App Store settings. That top option within 'Settings' always seemed misplaced to me, it looks more like a header than a button, and especially as it is encompassing "Apple ID, iCloud, iTunes & App Store" it's kind of a jumble. They added it into the App Store app as well on the top-right profile-picture button which leads to 'Account' and then 'Subscriptions'.
Subscriptions mean I purchase far less software. This is an empirical observation - my personal software spending is down something like 80% over the last couple years, and it is due to the friction of subscriptions.
The main thing is I do not like assigning myself future decisions, especially about money, and I don't like ongoing financial obligations.
I'm not saying this is strictly rational; I'm sure there are times I've paid way more for software than a sub for the duration of my use would have been.
But it is true - the friction of the ongoing obligation means software has to cross a much higher bar before I don't go find a different way to solve my problem.
I realize the switch makes software companies more stable, etc. All true, and it has zero to do to my decision making.
I think the tricky part is how many applications these days are relatively “dumb” clients that rely on a back-end server at least for data storage and potentially even for compute. You can’t really offer something like that as a one-time purchase because the backend requires continuous operation and maintenance for the software to work.
These days a lot of consumers don’t want to deal with file management or having to think about their data, so it’s increasingly the case that “the app magically works via the cloud” is table stakes.
I agree, though, I don’t like it and I buy less software as a result. This especially frustrates me with things like the Adobe creative suite and Creative tools in that category. I used to keep a fairly robust collection of image editors, sound editors, etc. but so many of those things have gone subscription that I just don’t bother anymore.
What is unique to some Apple fans, that it's not enough for to merely deny bugs and criticism, they also often personally attack the messenger. Other companies have bugs which they promise to fix someday; Apple doesn't have any bugs or problematic behaviour and it's your fault if you have any issues.
There isn't a thread on HN about Apple without this behaviour. Either this is an unofficial Apple PR guideline or a symptom of cult membership...
Nobody is saying that openly, but every actual report or complaint is met by derision, which amounts to the same thing. Apple denied it slowed down old phones (it did), it denied butterfly keyboard problem, "you're holding it wrong". Even this comment thread has an example:
What I really don't understand is why Some Random Hacker feels the need to jump into a thread and defend Apple, one of the wealthiest companies in the world.
It’s because without the voice of reason to help balance things out, there would be a strong misleading conception that everything about being a developer on Apple’s platforms is 100 percent negative, but this is certainly far from the truth. There are pros and cons, I don’t think it’s necessarily better or worse than developing on other platforms. The advantages outweigh the negatives much of the time.
That explains one or two comments countering an attack on Apple with arguments. I see those too.
But it does not explain all the anecdotal (I've never had o cancel. For me X is not an issue. I don't know anyone ever coplaining about Y) arguments. Or personal attacks. And so on.
It really reeks like a tribal war. The scorched smell of flamewars.
Actually it feels to me like calming the conversation down. Most “news” on the internet is just outrage these days with very little regard for the context and details of a situation. I appreciate that when things are discussed on HN a lot of people take the time to comment “this doesn’t seem like a big deal to me,” as it helps put in context that this isn’t the end of the universe.
It might just be that a lot of devs here make their entire living on App Store subscriptions. The numbers Apple trumpets mean that there are thousands upon thousands of devs in this position and probably more than a few of them are HN posters.
Whenever you see a company "forcing" someone to do something, it's almost always an exaggeration. Apple has never forced me to do anything, nor are they forcing developers to do things. Their employees aren't holding a gun to anyone's head. A better description would be "As a condition of developing an app with a free trial, Apple requires developers to implement auto-billing." But, that wording doesn't cause enough drama and outrage, so we have "forcing" instead.
When google uses AMP which allows you to read news sites without loading gigabytes of ads, they're "breaking the free internet". When Apple try to become the arbiters of how businesses should bill their customers (or, how they should let users sign up, or dozens of other things), they're just being user-centric. I find this terribly incosistent too.
(Note: I'm not saying I can't see the issues with AMP, too.)
Wealth does not dictate right or wrong nor the need to defend it. Why would someone's income matter anymore then race or religion when it comes to choosing a side in a billing related conversation?
I mentioned "wealthiest" as indication for how powerful the company is. It can very well defend itself. Wealthy people can too.
As opposed to minorities (race religion) or people without any means (poor, non-wealthy).
But why do you bring race or religion in here? I was talking about a company. A company has no race. It has no religion. Well, maybe, seeing people in HN threads defending apple, it does have similarities with religions.
Apple is the highest valued company in the world because it leads its industry in customer satisfaction.
There are things to criticize Apple and the App Store over but trying to reduce subscription scams by making subscription terms consistent doesn’t seem like one of them.
Why are you taking the word of a butthurt yogi instead of hearing Apple's side of the story?
But can you not see that auto-billing without reconfirming that the user actually wants to continue the subscription is also scammy? Why are you taking the side of a trillion dollar company that clearly knows how to extract money from users.
Not the way Apple does it, pricing and cancellation instructions up front.
Some would argue tricking users into a free trial without telling them the subscription price is a scam. Once they start to depend on the app, it’s much harder to not subscribe.
I don't care if they're up front with the info, they should display the price when i start the trial but ask if i want to pay AFTER i evaluated the app not before.
> shill: A person paid to endorse a product favourably, while pretending to be impartial.
> insinuation: That which is insinuated; a hint; a suggestion, innuendo or intimation by distant allusion
"Brand affiliation tribalism" is not an 'insinuation of shilling' as I understand those terms. It's a plainly stated description of 'fanboyism.'
Per the golden rule and principle of charitable assumptions, should I assume it wasn't your intent to mischaracterize my above comment? Should I expect an apology for this presumed misunderstanding? Try as I might, I can't bring myself to believe I'll get one.
My apologies. It was definitely not my intention of mischaracterizing your above comment.
I didn't think a shill necessarily had to be paid. My working definition was more along the lines of;
"an accomplice of a hawker, gambler, or swindler [e.g. Apple] who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others."
Brand affiliation tribalism seems to me closely aligned with that definition. An accomplice acting as an enthusiastic customer. Therefore I read your comment as demeaning the honest support of Apple's policy here as insincere, i.e. shilling. It sounds like you believe that those supportive of Apple's policy are merely disillusioned [fanboys], but not insincere.
But let's not make it about us personally, and again I apologize for taking the first misstep in that direction.
I don't think it's fair to characterize support of Apple's policy here as shilling, or brand affiliation tribalism, or fanboyism.
I think there are valid technical and usability reasons for demanding that all products within a store all conform to the same billing policies. For Apple, providing a consistent user experience is absolutely paramount. They want all apps to act the same and bill the same. If the baseline/standard experience is sub-optimal, then they would say let us fix or improve the baseline experience for everyone, not deal with it piecemeal and leave the user guessing how an app will end up billing them.
However I still believe that if any other corporation were forcing developers wanting to offer free trials to use the "billing details up front, autobilling" scheme, far fewer people here would defend it. I see those sort of schemes as incredibly scummy, similar to the sort of tactics gyms or used car salesmen might use. It's a form of 'dark pattern.'
If this is truly about a consistent user experience, Apple has gone about it in the worst possible way. They should instead forbid collection of payment details when signing up for free trials and require auto-renewals to be opt-in. That would make for a consistently positive user experience, rather than a consistently hostile one.
I think it's Apple that doesn't understand UX anymore. Their insane focus on subscriptions as the go-to model for software sales is going to drive me off the platform eventually.
The title is extremely misleading here. Apple isn't forcing the developer to "implement auto-billing", they're forcing them to use the system API for trials and in-app purchases (a feature of which is auto-billing).
I won't argue auto-billing is user-friendly, but users being able to manage their subscriptions in a single place, not to mention having the subscriptions explained with a consistent language, and presented with consistent UI across every app, is definitely user-friendly.
Is it just me or does this seem like it might be a blow back at Hey? They got their app into the app store by creating temporary trial accounts[0], but they still don't bill through Apple or accept signups through the app. This seems like a way to force them to do so.
It feels to me more like a publicity grab by the app developer. “Hey” got an enormous amount of attention and 10 times the number of sign-ups they were expecting because they picked a fight with Apple and screamed about it really loud. Not surprising to see more developers try this approach.
Mostly because they're aggressive communicators about subscription billing -- they send emails well in advance of any subscription renewal, telling you when you'll be billed, how much for, and giving you a link to cancel the subscription. Makes me feel this isn't them hoping you'll just forget and be billed.
In fact, I'd suspect this is intended as a user-friendly feature. It means you had to be presented with the cost up-front before you began the trial, avoiding letting shadier developers do a bait and switch when the trial expires and the user needs to sign up again. (Not saying there aren't other ways this could be done, but...)