Apple Now Letting Developers Automatically Charge for Some Subscription Price Increases (macrumors.com) 24
Apple today informed developers that it is implementing a new subscription feature that will allow customers to be charged automatically when an app's subscription price goes up, which is not the way that subscriptions work at the current time. MacRumors reports: Right now, customers must explicitly agree to a pricing change when the cost of a subscription increases through an "Agree to New Price" interface. If a customer does not tap on agree when the warning comes up, their subscription is automatically canceled, but that's changing. Going forward, developers will be able to increase the price of a subscription and have it auto renew, with customers simply being informed rather than needing to outright agree. Apple says that "under specific conditions and with advance user notice" developers can offer an auto-renewable subscription price increase without the user needing to take action and without their subscription being impacted.
There are specific limits that Apple is placing on developers to make sure this functionality is not abused. A pricing increase cannot occur more than once per year, and it cannot exceed $5 and 50 percent of the subscription price, or $50 and 50 percent for an annual subscription price. Apple says that it will always notify users of the pricing increase in advance, via email, push notification, and a message within the app. Apple will also provide instructions on how to view, manage, and cancel subscriptions. [...] In situations where prices increase more often than once a year or exceed Apple's thresholds, subscribers will need to opt in as usual before the pricing increase is applied. Apple says that this will also happen in territories where the law requires it.
There are specific limits that Apple is placing on developers to make sure this functionality is not abused. A pricing increase cannot occur more than once per year, and it cannot exceed $5 and 50 percent of the subscription price, or $50 and 50 percent for an annual subscription price. Apple says that it will always notify users of the pricing increase in advance, via email, push notification, and a message within the app. Apple will also provide instructions on how to view, manage, and cancel subscriptions. [...] In situations where prices increase more often than once a year or exceed Apple's thresholds, subscribers will need to opt in as usual before the pricing increase is applied. Apple says that this will also happen in territories where the law requires it.
Month to month (Score:2)
That went faster than I expected (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember the days when this was the kind of thing the phone companies pulled. You'd get signed up for some useless feature or service, and then it would be a recurring charge on your bill until the heat death of the universe (or you changed carriers).
Now Apple's getting into it. Meet the new boss, same as the old, I suppose.
Re: (Score:2)
I remember the days when this was the kind of thing the phone companies pulled. You'd get signed up for some useless feature or service, and then it would be a recurring charge on your bill until the heat death of the universe (or you changed carriers).
Now Apple's getting into it. Meet the new boss, same as the old, I suppose.
Except that the phone companies would bury the "Notice" is 16 tons of legalese. This is quite more informative to the User.
I do think it should be an Opt-In, though.
Re:That went faster than I expected (Score:4, Insightful)
Like a lot of crap Apple pulls (extended warranty being one), this is illegal in most of Europe.
If someone is not informed of an increase in price, and is not given the options to cancel the agreement, then that's a nono.
They got hammered in court with their 'extended warranty' bamboozle that gave less warranty than was already mandatory by law. Made me chuckle.
Dell tried something similar. Seems it's 'a thing'.
Re:That went faster than I expected (Score:4, Interesting)
Like a lot of crap Apple pulls (extended warranty being one), this is illegal in most of Europe.
If someone is not informed of an increase in price, and is not given the options to cancel the agreement, then that's a nono.
They got hammered in court with their 'extended warranty' bamboozle that gave less warranty than was already mandatory by law. Made me chuckle.
Dell tried something similar. Seems it's 'a thing'.
But here they are informed and given the chance to cancel... the difference is that the information is "our subscription is increasing from 9.99 Euro a month to 10.99 Euro a month, click here to cancel" vs "Our subscription is increasing from 9.99 Euro a month to 10.99 Euro a month. Click here to accept, or your subscription will be cancelled".
The first is how subscriptions have worked for ages, e.g. with newspapers and the like. The latter increases friction, and loses customers - both of those who miss the message, and those who, being forced to consider it somewhat, realise that they'd rather have the money than the service, for whatever reason. Thus, making it less likely to lose customers this way I'm sure more services will raise their prices.
Re: (Score:2)
That's exactly what these laws try to address. Canceling a subscription should be as easy as getting it, and should always default to "Cancel".
There are currently a lot of lawsuits in a fair amount of European countries regarding "Online subscriptions" and how hard some are to cancel.
If Apple implements it as one click, then that's very commendable of them.
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You missed the part where the user is explicitly notified of the price increase (right in the summary). So, no, they aren't raising the price without notice - which would be pretty sleazy, and as you indicated, probably illegal in most countries.
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It might still be illegal. A lot of companies like to do this - send you a notification of a price increase, with a convoluted and time consuming way to cancel your subscription if you disagree. Some countries are legislating against that.
To be fair to Apple they do make it reasonably easy to cancel subscriptions, but rather than playing whack-a-mole with all the BS that companies can dream up, European laws tend to just require affirmative consent.
Re: (Score:2)
California took the lead in making those difficult-to-cancel schemes illegal over here, and the practice generally stopped in the US after that. I remember online services that required you to actually call someone on the phone to cancel. Their sole job was to badger you into not cancelling. It was pretty ridiculous.
I don't expect Apple has gone that far, and I'd guess they at least ran this past their legal dept to make sure they didn't fall foul of EU laws (though you never know).
Re: That went faster than I expected (Score:2)
Not abused? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are specific limits that Apple is placing on developers to make sure this functionality is not abused.
Considering that the only possible reason to want to increase the price without getting consent from your customers is abuse, that's obviously not true. They're putting limits to make sure that this functionality is not abused more than they think they can handle without too much of a backlash.
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Re: (Score:3)
Not necessarily. Some people don't read the messages and ignore everything, while later being surprised when stuff stops working. Other (especially seniors) get choice paralysis, where they are afraid to push anything "non standard" and need assistance from their family. Both of those cases will be to some extent solved here and can be considered non-abusive.
Re: (Score:3)
So there are elderly people who have cognitive difficulty making financial decisions or filling out forms on their own. And you believe, by cutting their family/caretakers out of the decision-making process, that that makes it "non-abusive".
Wow.
Re: (Score:2)
Likely the caretakers will see the notifications anyway. On the other side they will keep their entertainment and avoid anxiety. As a family of such person I would be perfectly fine with it.
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Considering that the only possible reason to want to increase the price without getting consent from your customers is abuse, that's obviously not true. They're putting limits to make sure that this functionality is not abused more than they think they can handle without too much of a backlash.
And I have to wonder how many checks are going to be set up to prevent stupid data entry mistakes, where a company raises the cost of an annual subscription from, say, $90.00 to $100.00, and all of the notices get sent out appropriately, but whoever is responsible for putting the new subscription rate into the system assumes that the system automatically takes the last two digits as pennies and enters '10000', but the system reads it as $10,000 rather than $100. Sure, it will get reversed, but only after pe
Subscription drop-offs and 30% (Score:2)
I would imagine this is because whenever a developer changed the price, they would see a decent number of subscriptions get cancelled because people simply forgot they had them, and once reminded, would not renew it. Apple makes 30% on each one of those subscriptions.
This new policy is designed explicitly to stop those cancelations and keep the money flowing to Apple. It is a customer-hostile action.
Inflation (Score:2)
Re:Inflation (Score:4, Insightful)
What Apple is doing here is counting on the fact that a notification with no choices for the user will simply be ignored by majority of users, resulting in higher revenue for Apple. It's like if I was to send you an email, telling you you I will take $50 from your bank account unless you go to your bank and block my debit transaction. If you don't do that, your bank will treat it as your permission for me to take your $50 every year. Sound reasonable to you? Not my problem if the email went into spam folder, or you happen to get it together with tens of other spam messages you quickly deleted, or you read it and forgot about it or just didn't get time to hit the bank website before the 7 day deadline I gave you. Still sound reasonable?
Apple embracing negative markeing (Score:2)
protect consumers (Score:1)