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August 12 2008
Apple will not refund money on killed iTunes apps
After Nullriver's Netshare iPhone tethering app was pulled from iTunes, one customer tried to get a refund. According to Apple Support:
All iTunes purchases are final, and I am unable to refund you for the app.You will need to contact NetShare directly, as this is there [sic] product and we can do nothing with it.
So here's how it works from Apple's perspective: they approve an app from the App Store. People buy it, and Apple takes a 30% cut. Then Apple decides to pull the same app they already approved from the App Store, but disavow responsibility for issuing a refund on it: take it up with the developer. They profit on their own fuck up, while expecting developers who'd been lead to believe their App was fine to take a 30% loss.
It should be noted Nullriver didn't act particularly well here either: their website claimed that they gave full refunds for all products and the wording only changed after Netshare customers started writing in, trying to take them up on it. They should honor that wording, but it's pretty clear it's just an issue of not changing some HTML copy when they branched out onto iTunes. It's not nearly as evil as Apple's position on the matter, where they expect to profit not only from their successes, but their blunders.
As Joel notes, with behavior like this and the existence of an iPhone app kill switch, the reason to continue Jailbreaking iPhones are more and more obvious. Hopefully, as the App Store approval process becomes perfected, less issues like this will arise. But even so, Apple's position — that they will not refund you your money even when they're the ones who have FUBARed — makes a good case for not giving them your money at all.
Apple and Nullriver Ripping Off Customers [Horrid Voices]
