Apple strips user consent for billing increase by devs [Changes opt-in to opt-out]

[wanderingfool2]

Apple is allowing developers to do a price increase of up to $5/week or $50/year without getting the consent from the user.  Prior to this rule change, user had to opt-in to the new changes and now they will have to opt-out of the price increases.

 

Apple's documentation shows that the trigger value for consent will be above 50% of the current subscription pricing or $5 for weekly subscriptions and $50 for yearly.  For anything less than this value the user gets a notification on their iPhone regarding the price increase.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/16/23078313/apple-app-store-subscription-price-increase-permission-rules

Quote

Apple has updated its App Store rules to make it so subscriptions can auto-renew without your explicit permission, even if the developer has raised the monthly or annual price. Before the rule change, users would have to manually opt-into a subscription renewal if it came with a price bump; now, that won’t necessarily be the case, though you’ll still be notified about the price change before it happens. Apple says it’s making the change to help avoid the situation where users unintentionally lose access to a subscription because they missed an opt-in message.

 

According to Apple’s Monday evening post, there are specific conditions that developers will have to follow if they want to offer what the company is calling “an auto-renewable subscription price increase.” For starters, it can only be so big — Apple’s rules say that if a developer increases a weekly or monthly subscription price by more than 50 percent, and that difference is over $5, it doesn’t qualify. For an annual subscription, devs can still raise the price by 50 percent, but can’t raise it more than $50 USD without requiring an opt-in.

 

I really disagree with this concept.  I get that it is pretty common in regards to other types of contracts (say phone/internet/cable) but switching it to an opt-out system especially after it's been in a state of an opt-in system for so long is just asking for it to be abused.

 

There are plenty of people I know who don't look at their notifications because they just receive so many...lets say you have an app that has a $1/week subscription.  They could change it to $1.49/week without consent.  For the yearly subscription as well, I could see many people missing a notification...and in this case, they can change a $100/year subscription into a $149/year subscription.

 

Apparently it's to reduce the amount of "unsubscribe" during price increases, which just to me feels like a money grab from Apple.  They are hoping that people either overlook the notification, or don't notice the price increase...it's like auto-renew services that hinge on the fact that you are too lazy to unsubscribe or you have forgotten about it (and have auto-payment setup).  With that said, it hasn't really gotten much attention, and Apple really should be called out for this sort of behavior.

 

[Fasterthannothing]

I never turn on auto renewal like seriously never I buy a month if Iike it I go back and buy a year worth and then immediately turn off auto renewal. If I like the subscription I'll renew when the email comes telling me it's ending.

[Mark Kaine]

20 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

  I get that it is pretty common in regards to other types of contracts (say phone/internet/cable)

Not in the EU. The provider needs to inform the customer of such changes and customer can then "cancel" the contract immediately without any penalties... hence this really very rarely happens,  during contract runtime.

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Apparently it's to reduce the amount of "unsubscribe" during price increases, which just to me feels like a money grab from Apple.

It's actually the developers wanting to increase prices. Apple is just allowing that to happen. 

[wanderingfool2]

19 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

It's actually the developers wanting to increase prices. Apple is just allowing that to happen. 

Given that Apple makes 15% and the fact they are allowing it to now do it without consent it's very much still an Apple thing.  Yes it's developers wanting to increase prices but it also is Apple wanting to make that happen.  If they allow the changes and developers get a lot less unsubscribes (or even if they remain subscribed for the one extra period because they didn't realize the price increase until they saw it on their charge card bill) that still is additional money towards Apple.

[TetraSky]

Will they even warn users of the price increase at least? Or is it just auto renewing without acknowledging it and leaving the user to find out their subscription went up $20 in the past month on their credit statement?

 

I feel like this sort of practice should be illegal... or is illegal is some countries.

 

Edit : Went to RTFA 

Quote

Apple says that users will be warned about upcoming automatic renewals with price changes by “email, push notifications, and in-app messaging.” It’s worth noting that you could easily turn Apple’s logic on its head: if users were missing those renewal opt-in notices, wouldn’t they also miss these new price change warnings? But it does sound like they’ll be relatively in your face.

I know plenty of people who have hundreds of unread notifications because they don't care to read that stuff. I'm expecting this to not end well for some people. Especially the ones who are quick to remove notifications that takes them away from their content... Imagine if your kid has the phone when the notification is pushed. You'll never see it.

Spoiler

(in german, since that's what I found on twitter)

 

All in all, it just sounds to me like Apple really wants that auto-renewal money by any means necessary and just goes to show they they can alter the terms of their contract with you however much they want to benefit them.

[GhostRoadieBL]

I'm not sure the game Apple is playing but I hope this slaps back hard on every company slimy enough to increase pricing without consent.

It's bad enough subscriptions have taken over a lot of software which has no place being subscribed to, but now this garbage? There must be laws in place about increasing prices after agreements are made.

[hishnash]

9 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Given that Apple makes 15% and the fact they are allowing it to now do it without consent it's very much still an Apple thing.  Yes it's developers wanting to increase prices but it also is Apple wanting to make that happen.  If they allow the changes and developers get a lot less unsubscribes (or even if they remain subscribed for the one extra period because they didn't realize the price increase until they saw it on their charge card bill) that still is additional money towards Apple.

Apple has been pushing back agaist devs asking for this for years. They have upset a LOT of devs (big companies) the reason this is changing now is likly due to all of the developer/regulatory pressure on apple if they were doing this for a quick buck they would have done this years ago.  It's clear the reason apple have changed this policy now is so that companies cant go to regulators and claim apple is forcing them to make a loss by not letting them increase sub fees for existing customers. I would not at all surprised if some company even threatened apple that they were about to take such a case to court (unlike the epic case this one would have much strong legal standing). 

[wanderingfool2]

42 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Apple has been pushing back agaist devs asking for this for years. They have upset a LOT of devs (big companies) the reason this is changing now is likly due to all of the developer/regulatory pressure on apple if they were doing this for a quick buck they would have done this years ago.  It's clear the reason apple have changed this policy now is so that companies cant go to regulators and claim apple is forcing them to make a loss by not letting them increase sub fees for existing customers. I would not at all surprised if some company even threatened apple that they were about to take such a case to court (unlike the epic case this one would have much strong legal standing). 

The devs couldn't take them to court simply because they could change the subscription pricing.  It's important to not that devs could change the pricing before, just now instead of it asking to confirm you are okay with the higher subscription price it auto-accepts.  In fact as it was pointed out, some places it's still going to have to prompt because it's against the law not to (it's like simple consumer protection laws)...but alas that doesn't exist in Canada or US as far as I'm aware (the protecting against increases without direct consent).

 

There is absolutely zero regulatory pressure to have Apple implement this.  They would also have zero legal standing as well.  No court would ever find providing a dev with an opt-in instead of having an opt-out for subscription fees is anti-competitive or monopolistic or dominance of the market.

 

7 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Imagine if your kid has the phone when the notification is pushed. You'll never see it.

That's exactly what I was thinking.  Or like the people who get like a tons of notifications all at once and just clear all.

[hishnash]

24 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The devs couldn't take them to court simply because they could change the subscription pricing.  It's important to not that devs could change the pricing before, just now instead of it asking to confirm you are okay with the higher subscription price it auto-accepts.  In fact as it was pointed out, some places it's still going to have to prompt because it's against the law not to (it's like simple consumer protection laws)...but alas that doesn't exist in Canada or US as far as I'm aware (the protecting against increases without direct consent).

This type of control (over pricing) is one thing that is very regulated, apple effectively controle to such a larger amount per pricing (since if you do an increase that requires explicit opt in) would likly be seen as very monopolistic since this is controle over a companies existing customers (very different from other cases that have been about if apple controls the ability for companies for get new customers... note the one aspect of the epic trail that was agaist apple was all about companies and existing customers and apples ability to limit how companies talk to thier existing users). A court that would be looking into this would not care at all about consumers, it would be about the developers rights and if apple has is un-fairly forcing them to make the choice between loosing a customer or keeping the customer at an un-sustainable rate, would only need a developer to show that if they were to just increase prices a vast majority of existing suers would not renew (easy to show) and thus apple is putting an un-fair pressure on them to keep prices down.

Apple of going to do the notification in all regions of the world and I expect they would be doing this regardless of the law as for them long term its best users are comfortable subscribing to apps through the App Store. While for a given individual dev they are interested in maximising money from their one app for apple they are interested in the long game of getting money from suers over many years from many subscriptions, this is why they have been so reluctant to implement this as they fear (rightfully) it will burn the customer trust and thus long term reduce the money captured per user (for apple they do not care if you subscribe to disny+ or some other app they get 15% regardless). But if you get burnt through App Store subs your not going to subscribe to anything...
 

 

31 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

That's exactly what I was thinking.  Or like the people who get like a tons of notifications all at once and just clear all.

Assuming the child's phone is managed by parental controls its the parent's phone that will get the notification not the child's thats how store kit works with purchases and other notifications (including the current one you get asking you to opt back in).   

 

[kpluck]

Quote

 

you’ll still be notified about the price change before it happens

 

 

Seems like much ado about nothing to me. 

 

-kp

[wanderingfool2]

8 hours ago, kpluck said:

Seems like much ado about nothing to me. 

Except if you have people who don't read/clear their notifications.  For me price increases should require an opt-in.  There will be people who don't realize this change and get dinged without maybe even realizing the price increase.

[Gamer Schnitzel]

Not sure why everyone is hating on Apple here. People have become so braindead that they don't really care about unsubscribing from things because £5 a month is too little for the effort of unsubscribing so they just let it tick endlessly and every single one of you in this thread has done this in their life. This is the same for Netflix, the same for game subscriptions that you have not logged onto for months, the same for honestly everything and the best part is that most people who do this are usually poor, not millionaires, but really just poor lazy people.

 

As long humanity continues to lose braincells at this rapid speed there will be intelligent people like the guys at Apple to take your pennies away.

Had a guy on some game yesterday tell me that £22 for a pizza did not seem like a lot when in in reality the production cost of a pizza is not more than £3 but people today do not understand money, the actual value of money or anything revolving money. We are growing children who are happy to buy a little picture of a dress to put on their character in a 2D game for £5 and you guys talk about Apple.

 

This has nothing to do with Apple, this is about human psychology and the fact people think they are rich because they don't cancel their £10 World of Warcraft subscription. Anyone want me to link you forum posts of people saying they can "afford" to not cancel it even though they have not played for a year..? 

[wanderingfool2]

8 hours ago, Gamer Schnitzel said:

Not sure why everyone is hating on Apple here. People have become so braindead that they don't really care about unsubscribing from things because £5 a month is too little for the effort of unsubscribing so they just let it tick endlessly and every single one of you in this thread has done this in their life. This is the same for Netflix, the same for game subscriptions that you have not logged onto for months, the same for honestly everything and the best part is that most people who do this are usually poor, not millionaires, but really just poor lazy people.

Give people the option to easily unsubscribe and they will.

 

I know multiple people who cancelled their Netflix in the most recent price hike, and I knew a few who didn't realize until being told about it (and it's made so much publicity as well).  Had it not been so publicly known, lots of people would be subscribed for another year without realizing.

 

The reason to hate or at least bring awareness is that this move is directly to try exploiting people's behavior to make more profit.  There isn't anyway to justify this change in policy, it seems to exist to ensure people stay subscribed longer.

 

An example of something that happened here locally.  The cable company created a free promo that they randomly gave people, then when that promo expired they automatically started charging for that content.  This was all laid out on the bills sent to the customers [pre-autowithdrawal days].  It eventually went to court and was decided they needed express permission before adding the promo and then charging extra (had it been a price increase it would still have been allowed here).  There's no way about it, switching to notification only for price increases is a scummy move by a company.