Apple blamed for loophole in App Store refund policy

“Apple is drawing criticism for providing ammunition to abusers who benefit from loopholes in their closed mobile application store refund policies,” Yoon Sung-won reports for The Korea Times.

“According to industry sources, Apple holds full control in paying refunds on paid for mobile content such as games. It determines whether to give refunds to consumers,” Yoon reports. “But the content developer cannot take part in the process under Apple’s refund policy. Apple does not even provide information about the users who have requested and received the refund, claiming it is to protect consumer rights. For this reason, the developers have no other choice but to manually track down the users and check if they continue to use the charged content [for which] they have already received refunds.”

“On the backdrop of this, some users have abused the loophole in Apple’s refund policy to purchase charged content multiple times, request refunds and continue to consume the content without actually paying for it,” Yoon reports. “In particular, some of the abusers have organized profitable businesses to operate the refund process on others’ behalf.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: This policy certainly sounds like something Apple would want to refine.

3 Comments

  1. Yes, Apple certainly bears blame if the refund process has such a loophole.

    But let’s place the true blame at the root of the problem – the seedy and disreputable side human nature that seeks to profit at the expense of others. This is a lesson for those who advocate getting rid of regulations, claiming that the “private sector” will take care of everything in a wonderful manner through the process of “capitalism.” Well, capitalism depends on the same negative aspects of human nature. The only thing worse than one bad person is a group of bad people. But, to be truly soulless, you need a corporation. And, recently, corporations became “people.”

    You always have to keep a sharp eye on the baser aspects of human nature. Business is not, in an of itself, a virtue.

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