How I Got Two iPhone Apps Refunded.

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7 Comments

Comment by kpslover007 on June 30, 2009 at 3:08pm

they actually say no refunds but they do make exeptions. The same thing happened to me when I downloaded a TV show that wouldn't play. They refunded me the cost of the video as iTunes credit.

Comment by Dean on June 30, 2009 at 11:50am

I initially asked for a refund on some applications that accessed the camera and worked prior to the 3.0 update. I got a reply email linking me to a site about troubleshooting iphone app problems even though I had already indicated in my reports that I had done all of the things listed on the page. The guy who wrote me also told me the name of the company that develops one of the apps, that "I was to contact them" as well as the developers of the other apps. He didn't give me an actual link to the first companies website or give me even the names of the developers of the other apps, so I had to find all of this with google.

I had stated in my complaint that I felt a week would be adequate time to wait for the applications to be updated to the new firmware before it would be necessary to refund my money, and that if it was not convenient to handle it like that then I wanted a refund at that time. I was not rude whatsoever.

A week later I received an email from the same person at Apple, not asking if things had been updated, nor if I wanted a refund, but if I had felt his customer support had been adequate.
I explained that it wasn't adequate to ask me as a customer who had bought from their store, to do their leg work for them and chase down developers of applications Apple sold me. I also informed him of what I had learned while contacting the developers, in all cases except for one... that despite Apple still having the applications for sale in their store, and despite those applications not being compatible with the 3.0 upgrade, I didn't have to actually contact any of these people because once I had found their websites they had statements usually right up front of the relevant project page stating that they have updated for the 3.0 firmware and Apple has rejected their updates. A couple of these authors also included that they did not feel they had violated whatever procedural implementation that Apple was claiming they had.

After a bit more additional research, and taking into account that there are a large number of unwarranted Apple beat up stories out there, I sort of came to the conclusion that within this category of application, Apple is intentionally pushing out some softwares. This is my conclusion based on my speculations after seeing a trend in this specific category. I don't know why, perhaps its an area they would like to market their own applications more in future updates or perhaps the new firmware had changes that made these apps, although not violating guidlines for store inclusion, potentially more expensive in the way of a few hardware failures in phones under warranty... I don't know why.

I'm personally at the moment in a good financial position and feel that if I demand money back, and knowing that the developers lose out on refunding something that they presumably shouldn't have to be responsible for as they've actually held up their end in maintaining their softwares, and that the money developers live and eat off of might already be long since spent and used to provide for their families, that I no longer wanted a refund.
I explained all of this in my reply email. I haven't gotten any comment back.
Additionaly, I'd stated in the email that I'd also read that developers get a 30 percent split, an 30/70 split, of the money made on their applications from the store, but that when it came to refunds they were responsible in an inverse 70/30 split, but that I was skeptical that this was accurate information and not just someone out there complaining about something they were confused about. As I said, no one ever responded to my email. I would really like a clarification of that issue from the horses mouth, because as someone who was a long time Linux user but recently switched to an Apple as a primary desktop, I feel more and more dissapointed as I learn more and more about just how unfriendly some of the things I learn about the corporation seem. This incident with the way they've treated the developers of the applications I was investigating, and that I was forced to investigate it on my own turned out to be a good thing actually, is a very minor gripe but when put on top of various other things, the initial annoyance involved with it feels quite amplified.

OS X vs. Windows... what a joke. The metaphor is countries going to war over which one of their governments has a better pimped out castle for their dictator to live in

Comment by franklin on June 30, 2009 at 10:16am

There is a reason why they hide the refund
they dont want people using it too much
they want you to suck up a sucky app

Comment by dede on June 30, 2009 at 7:09am

i had this happen to me when grand torino didn't download correctly, it took about 5 days to get my money back but hey- i got a refund :D

Comment by Max on June 29, 2009 at 9:42pm

Hey man, I did the same thing with a couple of movies. I had a PC (a shitbox now) that when I tried to watch a rented movie on iTunes just crashed and doesn't play the movie. I tried reinstalling iTunes multiple times and I even completely reinstalled Windows XP from the boot disks completely wiping the drive. No Luck. iTunes still crashed. So I sent a little email to the iTunes support and they gave a refund to the credit card without hassle. You just have to know where to go.

There's another way to get email support I've found.
go to apple.com/feedback
choose iTunes
in the feedback type, click "recent iTunes store purchase issue"
The feedback window will disappear and give you a link: http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/download/
At the bottom, click "Contact Us"--link: http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/store/browser/
That's the support form and you get the same reply. It seems a little more drastic but the link is right there and if you don't want to use itunes, it's web browser based.

Comment by Mona N. on June 29, 2009 at 4:56pm

LOL DARWIN!! A Microsoft refund would be horrible --who'll keep track of all the driver CDs? ;)

Thanks dude! It's all about being nice and clear :)

Comment by Darwin Anderson on June 29, 2009 at 4:19pm

Now if only microsoft could adopt this kind of policy, the world would be a better place entirely. :P

Congrats on your refund and swift service!