[aferreira]

What's that old saying? You get what you pay for. What did you expect for $800?

"Oh but it's a simple app" - Well, so is the electrical grid! I delivers power to your house, simple right? Oh wait. NOPE.

Additionally, I do agree that once you've accepted to pay the final fees once development ends, you should pay them then and not when the app is 'accepted onto app store and 10 days have passed so users can report bugs'. What on earth were you thinking? That's not the developer's problem. That's YOUR problem.

I find it nice that he even offered to fix any bugs found on the review process or after the store's release, most developers could charge you extra for this.

Please get this right once and for all: You pay consultants / freelancers a combination of time spent + expertise. Never for a finished product.

[EpicEng]

I agree with you, but this is a bit much:

"Oh but it's a simple app" - Well, so is the electrical grid! I delivers power to your house, simple right? Oh wait. NOPE.

Really? Comparing a trivial iOS app to the electrical infrastructure, a huge engineering task (sorry, Santa's List iOS isn't engineering). Please.

[aferreira]

Hey I can blow things out of proportion and create unreasonable expectations just like the author does :)

[EpicEng]

...fair enough.

[avalaunch]

Actually you pay them for whatever you agree to pay them for.

As a freelancer, I'm able to accept or reject any proposal as I see fit. If someone wants me to shoulder the risk of an app being approved by Apple, that's fine with me. Much like an insurance policy, I'll calculate in the risk and charge them accordingly.