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Apple Offering 7-Day Refund Policy on App Store Apps in Taiwan

Starship77 said:
I think they should do something like 7 days from purchase / 1 hour of usage - whichever comes first. More or less like in movie rentals that have 30 days/24hours. This way it would be harder for people to abuse. This could be the standard for all countries.
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Thats the best idea. 1 hour of actual usage or 7 days of ownership, whatever comes first. I like that idea.

I usually can decide within 15min if an application is useful for me or not (most garbage I delete within 1 minute). But I often download apps when I read a nice review, but don't start them until the evening or the next day when I have some downtime. The policy you suggest would allow me to download and test a day or two later and still had the benefit (for the developer) that you don't use it more than one hour.

Maybe the 'trial' time should be adjusted by 'price' so that more expensive pro apps can be tested more throughly ( 99c = 10min, $1.99=15min .... )
 
Hey guys, I'm from Taiwan.
This story begins with a group of stupid people who bought an app, claims it can track other people's phones...
Every normal man will find out that the app is just a toy, for entertainment only. I remember the description clearly says," This App is for entertainment only"( in Chinese). Those people don't even read the description of the app... They think it's a deception...
So they go to the government to make Apple give their money back. And there's one guy in the government who really wants to be on the news, makes Google and Apple to offer 7-Day Refund...
Sorry about my bad English...
 
I've bought about 5 different ToDo apps and within minutes discovered they didn't do what I wanted.

I would buy more if I knew I could get refund on the ones that weren't suitable.

Currently, if you're looking for specific features - the current screenshots and descriptions simply aren't adequate.
 
toy79111 said:
Hey guys, I'm from Taiwan.
This story begins with a group of stupid people who bought an app, claims it can track other people's phones...
Every normal man will find out that the app is just a toy, for entertainment only. I remember the description clearly says," This App is for entertainment only"( in Chinese). Those people don't even read the description of the app... They think it's a deception...
So they go to the government to make Apple give their money back. And there's one guy in the government who really wants to be on the news, makes Google and Apple to offer 7-Day Refund...
Sorry about my bad English...
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Thanks for creating an account to give us this update 'from the front' ...
 
An interesting idea could be to base the trial on the cost of the app. $1 apps would have a very short trial (15min) or none at all. Once you get to $5 and above there could be a more significant trial time (hours/days).
 
That's a smart idea, I think we need a similar policy in the US too.

7 days might be a stretch. Maybe make it a 2 hr window?

It should apply to eBooks, too (Amazon has a very short window for canceling when you buy directly on the kindle).

toy79111 said:
Hey guys, I'm from Taiwan.
This story begins with a group of stupid people who bought an app, claims it can track other people's phones...
Every normal man will find out that the app is just a toy, for entertainment only. I remember the description clearly says," This App is for entertainment only"( in Chinese). Those people don't even read the description of the app... They think it's a deception...
So they go to the government to make Apple give their money back. And there's one guy in the government who really wants to be on the news, makes Google and Apple to offer 7-Day Refund...
Sorry about my bad English...
Click to expand...

Your English is very good. Thanks for telling us the story!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi, I come from Taiwan, too.

Even the 7-day refund policy for the App Store are joke. I think you should know the Apple's customer support quality is not well in many place.

The Taiwan's App Store(We have no iTunes Store to purchase music and movies, book store just download free old books only) is whole English, even in Apple ID creation. This is a huge problem for non-English people. many new user have problem in create Apple ID, so they take their iPhone to some underground service to pay for JB, and these service will give install lots of piracy apps(or give they CDs which fill of piracy apps) as the reward.

If users didn't understand how to registration, they don't know how to report problem to Apple. so weeks ago, some apps made from China developer made the complaint explosion. force the government order apple and google provide a clear refund method and apply the 7-day refund policy in Taiwan(for those can't try before you paid item).

I think if Apple could provide translated app store and local customer support agent in Taiwan, the problem will not a issue. But in Taiwan, the Apple product never have a good support here, made the thing happen. If they did, the refund policy should be discussible, not force they just apply the current rule(for everything).
 
Bravo!! There was one app in particular that I purchased that absolutely did not do what it advertised and was unable to get my money back. I realized it immediately, didn't need seven days. It was pure bait and switch. My attempts to get my money back failed. A couple of bucks didn't break the bank, but being robbed is what boiled the blood. I agree with an earlier post...bring this policy to the states!!
 
igazza said:
yea so we can kill all the developers..
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I think that this would definitely lower revenues for Apple if it had wider implementation in more App. Stores.
I guess Buyer Beware is all.
Read reviews more carefully before you buy.
I know that takes the impulsiveness out of the whole thing but you will avoid Buyer's Remorse.
 
I personally see no problem with their being a time limit on trying an application to see if it does what it says it will do. There have been several apps that I have purchased and they were nothing but a waste of my time and money. If this would totally destroy the business of developers (and I think that idea is simply rubbish) then why is it that Apple and Microsoft can manage to let people download and try out apps such as office and iWork? Some of the apps on the app store are purely trash. Others are worth more than they cost. Just my 2 cents.
 
Before I buy I try to find reviews on other sites, including youtube reviews. Sometimes I just don't have enough info and usually just don't buy. I imagine a lot of people are like me and would buy more apps if I could better see what they can do. Maybe developers should think of that?

That said, seven days is too long.
 
I wish I could return "Hype" that I bought from the Mac App Store. I bought it because it had positive reviews and all the hype around it (no pun intended). It turned out to be crap and it was quite expensive. Back to Flash.
 
I wish we had this here. I bought the Golf World Monday app for the iPad and the thing has never worked, it crashes everytime I load it. Tried reinstalling it a few times and rebooting my iPad, no luck. The app simply doesn't work. I should have listened to the reviews which all said it was bad but, I love golf and want to give it a shot and thought it couldn't really be as bad as the reviews. That's 9.99 I wish I could get back.
 
Hey Devs.

Boycott Taiwan. Go into iTunes Connect, Rights and Pricing, deselect Taiwan. Let's retroactively return their apps for them.
 
RollTide1017 said:
I wish we had this here. I bought the Golf World Monday app for the iPad and the thing has never worked, it crashes everytime I load it. Tried reinstalling it a few times and rebooting my iPad, no luck. The app simply doesn't work. I should have listened to the reviews which all said it was bad but, I love golf and want to give it a shot and thought it couldn't really be as bad as the reviews. That's 9.99 I wish I could get back.
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That's one of the worst stories I've ever heard about app. purchasing. :eek:
 
Surely said:
Agreed. So much abuse. I don't blame Google for withdrawing paid apps.

I wonder if people in Taiwan are able to go to a brick and mortar store, buy some DVDs or software, watch, rip, or install them, and then return them for a full refund. If they're able to return downloaded applications, I would guess they'd be able to do the same with CD-ROMs/DVDs.

A better solution would be for Apple to make free trial versions of apps mandatory.
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People in Taiwan are wealthy and honest.

Perhaps people in Canada would do what you are speculating.
 
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chrono1081 said:
lilcosco08 said:
This is what the store over in the states needs

Bring it over here!
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Only if you want to see developers begin to quickly abandon the platform.
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To anyone who says developers will abandon the platform if Apple introduces a 1 hour trial, only the developers who release crappy apps will look elsewhere to make a quick buck. I've wasted probably around $10 in "app regret" in the past 2 years. That may not sound like too much, but keep in mind because of that, I've been a lot more cautious when selecting an app for purchase. In other words, if you're a developer with a good app, you have nothing to worry about.
 
dampfnudel said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)



To anyone who says developers will abandon the platform if Apple introduces a 1 hour trial, only the developers who release crappy apps will look elsewhere to make a quick buck. I've wasted probably around $10 in "app regret" in the past 2 years. That may not sound like too much, but keep in mind because of that, I've been a lot more cautious when selecting an app for purchase. In other words, if you're a developer with a good app, you have nothing to worry about.
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$10 in 2 years really is nothing. That's good that it has made you more cautious when buying an app. You became a good consumer at the modest cost of $10.

This is a spoiled age. In the 90s you could easily blow $80 on a really bad Super NES game. What people expect for $0.99 really is ridiculous.
 
cwedl said:
All joking aside.. the amount of times i have bought and app and it's turned out to be rubbish.. I would love this policy..
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You are WRONG! I heard Steve say the "Apple App Store" only had curated, high quality apps... :rolleyes:
 
Vegasman said:
You are WRONG! I heard Steve say the "Apple App Store" only had curated, high quality apps... :rolleyes:
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Seriously - I don't remember the last time I bought a bad app. I'm not sure I EVER have. Read reviews in the App Store and on the web, learn to differentiate the shills from real reviews. Look at screen shots and judge the production values. Look at other works the developer has done.

Don't buy apps that you know aren't going to be good. It's really not that hard.
 
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