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Apple Sends Email to iTunes Users Offering Refunds for Unauthorized In-App Purchases
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I'm still not sure how i feel about in-app purchase. I don't hate it, especially when used properly like removing ads from an app you regularly use, or buying a filters package for a photography app, there are many scenarios where In-App purchase is not evil until you stumble upon games that heavily rely on it and boy is there a plenty of them, i'd rather pay full price for X game than constantly shed dollars to progress or avoid waiting.
I wasn't implying Apple did that all. Even if they tried to increase sales by through one click purchasing mechanics, it would be aimed at adults who have the authority to make such decisions for themselves. I really don't find it objectionable until you get into extremely disingenuous business practices (preying on fear, casinos encouraging people to get drunk, etc). I suspect you're right that they didn't anticipate such behavior. As I mentioned making it not the default behavior would have probably been enough. Even if they wanted to do something such as prompt the user the first time whether they would like to enable one click in app purchases on that account with that credit card, it would have provided a reasonable barrier. I tend to dislike implicit behavior surrounding things such as credit cards.
I also haven't seen the range of how these things were presented by the apps themselves. There could be quite a spectrum, and the article doesn't mention if certain apps were especially prevalent in this kind of abuse. Such a case study may not even exist, but the app store is enormous. It isn't possible to fully vet every one of them for undesirable side effects.
You got it Renzie!
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Especially when you consider that many of these games would be terribly boring if you removed the wait time (as if you had unlimited coins to buy yourself out of things).
Anyone try changing the setting lately? When I first tried changing from 15 minutes to "immediately" on one of my kids' phones, it was a total Fuster Cluck.
What would happen is that the phone would request the password over and over and over again. It was very frustrating. The pinhead who implemented it couldn't have tested the function at all. Or, more likely, they deliberately said *Fisk This* and just didn't care how it worked.
What I think was happening is, let's say the phone had 5 apps to update. When you told it to do so, you would be prompted 5 separate times for a password. Or maybe more. I was too frustrated to count exactly.
Like I said, maybe they've fixed this recently. I just gave up and set it back to 15 minutes. Perhaps that was Apple's intent after all.
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Yeah because every parent is as tech savvy as every one on MR
Guess you've never had a child and judging from your response, let's hope you never do.
LOL... yeah they didn't do this on purpose. Oh by the way, I have a very nice bridge to sell you.... going cheap!
Of course they did this on purpose. They could of changed the way things are done when the very first complaint came rolling in but they didn't because they were gambling with the fact most would not contest the charges and they could reap the benefits. They chose not to change it for one simple reason $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Well I guess you don't have kids or are the smartest person in the world and knew that, unless you changed something in the settings you would be able to charge for 15 minutes even though that was never told to the consumer. Must be awesome to be you.
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Yeah because every parent is as tech savvy as every one on MR
Guess you've never had a child and judging from your response, let's hope you never do.
You missed his blatant overblown sarcasm/mocking of those that actually believe what he wrote.
I don't like the idea of offering refunds. I look at this as a valuable lesson for parents and one where they are paying Apple for that parental guidance. The parents are the ones who screwed up in these situations, and they deserve to take the financial hit. Apple and the developers who work tirelessly deserve to get paid.
You will need to actually send your kids to Apple for physical verification. Apple will then send their fingerprints to the NSA and use those kids to assemble various Apple products. If they threaten to jump off the roof of the factory it will be ok because a big IKEA air bag will be waiting to break their fallHow is Apple going to verify the validity of some of these coming claims?
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Refund my in-app purchases? Yes please
It won't be that easy. You can be sure of that. It will likely have to be an account that never got a refund for such a purchase before. Cause they would have been warned to turn on restrictions etc. Also, it would have to likely come from a kid friendly app. Magazine subscriptions and similar would be out. And probably a few other things
How is Apple going to verify the validity of some of these coming claims? Are there going to be more than a few deceitful or 'questionable' claims, or is my faith in human beings perhaps lacking?…..
In some ways they won't be able to. I mean how would they know at first glance that it was you and not your kid that bought all those Candy Crush power ups. But they will have systems in place to lessen the chance that someone is just lying. That's why it's a request for a review. They aren't just going to approve all of them simply because you asked
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But would you give an iPad etc to a toddler with the password wide open and it loaded up with apps that use IAP and then walk away and not pay attention to what they are doing.
You sound like someone that wouldn't so you would have no issue. But many folks have basically done this. And downloaded apps that are rated for 17+ for a 5 year old without looking at what it is. And told their kids the password cause Little Jimmy wouldn't.
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It will likely just be all from Apple.
As for your 'it was apple' comment, no it isn't. The system is actually fine. Most of the stories we are hearing about are due to folks being dumb. Telling kids the password, not paying attention to what the kids are doing, not doing their due diligence before giving it to a kid to 'own'. And many of those folks have already called and gotten a refund and gotten an education. A few random really stupid ones have been turned down (like the guy in the UK that didn't bother to look at his credit card bill for six months cause he assumed the balance was zero).
This is one last sweep to make the FCC feel like they did something even though the issue is basically solved. About the only thing left that Apple could do is set the defaults to be password immediately and IAP off. Which would annoy the mature adults in the world but hey gotta think about the kids and their parents.
Truth is that a good half of the folks that could try to make a claim won't read the email or want to deal with it since they have to do the leg work of looking up the appropriate items to submit the order numbers etc
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There you have the real issue. Rather like the whole hashtag debate the issue really isn't the item but abuse of it. IAP have a lot of uses that are good. But they can be abused. And games or apps that basically don't work without them is the biggest offender.
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That's two different things. IAP isn't always pay to play. which is what you really mean, not pay to win. if it was pay to win they wouldn't make much money
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There seems to be a lot of bashing of parents on here, I can only assume by non-parents. I have two children, and my youngest has inadvertently made in-app purchases on two separate occasions. She doesn't know the password and had no idea she was making an in-app purchase. We don't sit and watch everything she does when she's on the iPad because we live in the real world where that's impossible and where it's not conducive to actually trying to be a good parent.
Both times we contacted Apple immediately and were given a refund. And we deleted the game that allowed this.
And by the way, we severely limit the times either of our children are on the internet and keep an eye on what they are doing.
Being the perfect parent is easy until you actually become a parent.
equivalent to 7 minutes of business at an Apple store
That is irrelevant. Why on earth people keep bringing this all the time? Apple wouldn't been successful business (nor any other company) if throwing money around was their common practice!
You may think so but the consumer protection authorities in the UK, Europe and the US don't, which is why they are acting.
See http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2014/05-14#.UzFUZ9yKjfg for the UK.
M.
Obviously you will be returning the phone, and obviously you know that getting a refund by making false claims is fraud, in other words, a criminal offence.
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Seriously. What did you expect? Did you expect a feature that allows "remember the password for 15 minutes, unless it's my kids doing the purchase"?
Not strictly true, this is Apple complying with a ruling to repay parents who got charged for in app purchases made without entering a password. The real problem here is simple. By default all purchases should require a password and this should be configurable to have a 15 minute password free window. Its the default setting that is wrong. Trouble is they want people to make snap decisions to buy some crap power up to make a game playable and having to type your password gives pause for folks to make a rational decision
It would be a PR disaster if they tried to recover money from developers because their system is all set up wrong so I doubt they would even try.