Last time I checked (admittedly a long time on Apple, as a developer, I couldn't refund and cancel a subscription for my customers. They have to go through Apple to do that. Not a great experience.
To be fair, Apple refunded and cancelled the subscription upon request in my instance too. But first you've got to notice the problem, and then jump through the hoops.
There's no good reason I shouldn't be able to cancel an auto-recurring subscription on my own credit card from some interface.
I have forgotten to cancel subscriptions from iTunes a few times as I tend to watch my CC statement for forgotten subscriptions, not Apple Free Trial emails. The real issue is that they make it impossible to get a refund once you as a customer have been charged even when the app developer agrees to give you one. Being forced to delegate billing to a robotic corporation that treats your customers like robots is a terrible position to force developers in to.
Getting a refund from Apple is really difficult, so I don’t think this would be a problem.
I once forgot to cancel a subscription, cancelled one day after renewal, and they would NOT refund me. It was a time based pricing model, so it’s not like I could’ve used any in-app credits.
Here's an example a friend of mine ran into recently:
They sold their company and shut down their service for which they charged monthly/yearly subscriptions. They had a decent relationship with Apple, so they emailed their contact and notified them that they'd like to issue refunds to all their users. Apple said that users had to do it themselves. That wouldn't be so bad, but there's (as I understand it) some restrictions on Apple offering refunds for subscriptions, for example if you're 25 days into a 30 day subscription period, Apple won't allow users to request a refund.
This caused users to get angry at my friend and their company.
If they had been using any other payment service other than the App Store, they could have just automatically issued refunds to all their users.
In the world I inhabit, Apple is the one that intentionally makes it really hard to cancel subscriptions. You literally cannot cancel a subscription to an iOS app from an Android phone or Linux PC.
Funny because I recently tried to cancel an in-app subscription I signed up for through Apple and it was borderline impossible. I'd much rather prefer to have a cancellation option in the app itself, but Apple doesn't allow that. In fact Apple's in-app payment/subscription UX checks every single box in your list.
Apple needs to provide an API to allow developers to cancel a subscription on a user's behalf. Currently, the only way to do this is through the app store, and many customers find this very confusing, resulting in poor customer experience and a heavy support burden on developers.
Many customers forget where they even sourced their subscription to begin with, especially if you have a multi-/omni-channel presence.
Apple is pretty dark-patterny about the subscriptions too. On Android the refund/uninstall button is right next to the open button in the Play store. You buy an app, don't like it, click a button and return it.
I just bought an iPad app the other day (my first), it didn't meet my needs, but I still can't figure out where to go to refund it. And Apple's subscriptions expire immediately if you cancel during a free trial, whereas the Google ones will still let you finish the term of your trial.
Apple's not really the good guy either. They're just the powerful ones.
* Apple's payments API is very difficult to work with, especially compared to something like Stripe.
* Developers cannot disable their customers' subscriptions, or offer refunds. This has to be done through Apple. The leads to a poor customer service experience.
* If the customer uses their subscription through your website or moves to Android, they're still locked into the iOS subscription - making it impossible for them to upgrade/downgrade their plan.
* Customer's subscription is tied to their iTunes account. This leads to confusion if they sign into your app while signed into a different iTunes account.
I could go on. But having implemented Apple's subscription API, the frustration goes way beyond just the 30% fee (which is really my company's problem, not mine).
If you look at the post I was responding to, it said "how nice is the process to cancel an Apple subscription". I was pointing out that it is no easier than canceling directly through Netflix.
Yes but it was a free trial where you are told up front that you will be charged if you don’t cancel within X number of days. It is not the fault of Apple or the App Store developers if the customer waits until X+n days to cancel it. They are not owed a refund.
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