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by jackson1442 1875 days ago
This is one of the few things that actually makes me happy with the closed ecosystem of the App Store on iOS. There's virtually no risk with subscriptions in there- they can all be canceled in a few clicks in the Subscriptions section of your Apple ID. And if something's straight up a scam or an accidental (but unconsumed) purchase, you can request a refund from Apple with rather little friction.

First-party trials annoy me since cancelation is instant, unlike trials from third-party apps (those cancel after the trial period if you cancel during). Fortunately, you can go to Report A Problem and just say you didn't mean to have the subscription charged and they'll refund it as long as it's a few days from the charge date.

1 comments

> This is one of the few things that actually makes me happy with the closed ecosystem of the App Store on iOS.

And yet there are scams that are costing users $5 million a year, or more, on the iOS App Store[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26794228

I'd need to see the purchase page to fully form an opinion on this. Apple has rather strict guidelines for displaying cost and that appears to be one of the most important parts of app review. I'd equate someone being surprised by a subscription cost to someone not looking at menu prices when eating out: all purchases through the app store use the same sheet to display price, renewal period, free trial, etc when requesting payment.

Of course, the app's premise is a scam, but my comment was about the ease of canceling and managing subscriptions. Dare I say that apps like this would be even more bold and prevalent if alternative app stores were available.

There are also scams costing people money without using iOS, for example where the person is tricked into thinking they have a debt and sending thousands of dollars in cash to a random address[1]. What’s your point?

1: https://youtu.be/VrKW58MS12g (it’s the Mark Rober phone scammer video)