I wonder how much money it costs Apple to handle subscription payments/cancellations for Netflix and other streaming services. I prefer to handle subscription through Apple because cancelling such services is never difficult. I don’t know how it is on other countries but cancelling services in the U.S. can be a hellish experience.
Personally, I’d be willing to pay the “Apple Tax” on top of a subscription services’ cost for the peace of mind that comes from knowing that cancelling is easy. What a pain it will be when all the other subscription services stop paying the “Apple Tax”. I hope Apple comes up with a solution. Clearly their current cut is too much.
For many things I’d agree, but to their credit Netflix has always made it trivially easy to cancel. They’re one of the few modern IT companies that seem to go out of the way to make joining and leaving fair and easily comprehensible. Now if they’d just make that autoplaying a goddamned option!
I was kind of surprised when I canceled my Netflix account. I had a laundry list of complaints I was going to put in the "why are you canceling" box but they never gave me one. Making it easy and painless to cancel is one of the few things they're still doing right.
After I cancelled last time they offered me a free month, with no obligation of staying beyond the free month. They make it easy to leave and easy to come back.
A lot of small issues that added up to an overall negative experience. The web UI redesign a few years ago that made it the same as the UI in Android, smart TVs, etc, but also slower and more difficult to use. Autoplaying something if you hover over it for more than a second (a cancerous UX design that has spread beyond Netflix now). UI inconsistencies like the "resume watching" row. 50% of the time it would be at the top where you would expect it, 25% of the time it would show up if you scrolled far enough, and 25% of the time it would never show up at all. I never understood that one, it was bizarre and unexpected behavior. Removing a lot of quality content and not replacing it equally high quality content. The overall decline in quality of Netflix's original series.
There wasn't any one thing that made me decide to cancel, one day I realized I hadn't used it in several months and the UI made it a pain to use when I did, so I canceled.
I also recently canceled and was surprised they didn't ask why. My reason was that the selection of content has changed dramatically. When I first signed up, I could choose a movie that I had in mind. Now, the selection of movies on Netflix streaming is extremely bleak. It's almost entirely TV shows, and about half of it is Netflix-produced. The quality of it is fine, I just don't want TV shows. I want access to the majority of movies ever produced, and would pay much more for such a service.
This is really unfortunate; when Netflix launched streaming, they had a partnership with Start that had a lot of popular movies, but now you would need to mix and match two or three services to get similar coverage. I've been buying more and more discs lately, because I want to watch something today, and at any time in the future.
I hope, one day, we get compulsory licensing for movies and TV shows, like is available for music -- then we can really watch whatever, as long as it has been digitized.
Netflix has been very good about being easy to cancel. Few companies are as good as them but I can’t trust that Netflix will always be as good as they currently are.
Which is funny, because getting ITunes off of my machines was like purging a virus. Once that is installed it is not just a "would you like to uninstall" dialogue.
I use this option often. I basically sign up about once every 4 months and cancel almost immediately. Something I want to try watching so I sign up. Then get annoyed at the autoplay which makes it nearly impossible for me to comfortably browse for other content I might be interested in so I give up and cancel.
Now that’s too true. Everyone seems to do that now! I bought a 3lb bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans to make some holiday vodka for a party, and they will not stop whining at me about points and buying more jelly beans. Thank Christ that I have an email I use just for online orders.
I’m an Apple fan all around. (Even own a homepod). But I have to disagree with “cancelling is easy”. Cancelling a subscription on iOS is so hidden that I can’t say it’s easy. I hope they change this.
Not to mention this new(?) tactic with "free trials" that automatically turn into a subscription.
I was trying out a bunch of weather apps (why is is so hard for a simple concise app with a radar without a bunch of needless fluff/wasted space) and 1 of them automatically turned into $99/year after 3 or 7 days (I forget).
The app didn't even work and would almost _always_ have the time wrong making the weather HUD also inaccurate. I tried to tell apple about this and they refused a refund. Thankfully my credit card company allowed a chargeback
I can only blame myself for forgetting these things, but it would be nice for a prompt prior to the subscription starting next time you use the app.
Europe (maybe just the UK but I think it was EU-wide) banned claiming something is "free" if in fact you must sign up to pay money.
You can tell people what it'll cost and ask for a card, or, you can say it is free and not ask up front (you can ask later if you want but having not given you a card for the free trial if the customer has lost interest they're not going to give you one later)
Chrisan was presented with that information in the subscription confirmation page. (A free trial is a subscription with a delayed start.) However, the weather app probably misrepresented what the subscription confirmation would say. The FTC in the US has rules surrounding this but they obviously aren’t as well applied as they should be in the App Store.
Quebec has a similar law. As a result, Canadian services with a format of "free one month trial and then $x for the next twelve months" tend to be available in Quebec as "$x for the first thirteen months".
My experience is that it is easy once you find the right screen. A Google search always leads me to the right screen. Apple could be better at making the location more transparent but they couldn’t make the act of canceling, once you get to the right location, easier.
Sure but the fact you have to google it every time is not exactly what I’d expect from Apple. I’m sure they will improve this. They must get a ton of support calls over this.
As a dev who works on a fairly large app with an in-app subscription, we are the ones that get a ton of support requests, even having the unsubscribe link in our own settings.
The problem is a huge percentage of users assume deleting the app will also stop their subscription, but it does not.
Sounds like something Apple should fix. They know you have a subscription for the App you're deleting. They should ask
"You have a subscription for this app's services through Apple Pay. Do you want to unsubscribe?"
They could even say something like
"You have a subscription for this app's services through Apple Pay. Do you want to unsubscribe? Note that this app is still installed on your iPad" (assuming you deleted it from your iphone)
As a tangent I notice that while Apple's hardware and OS are best in class their support infrastructure is arguably close to worst in class. Every time I have to deal with their support and order systems (apple.com) I run into issues that make it almost seem like they're still doing everything on paper and that none of their systems are connected.
You go to the App Store (logical place to look), tap your profile pic (a standard way of communicating "my account"), and tap your name in the menu. You'll arrive at the Account Settings page which has an obviously labeled Subscriptions button. Once there, subscriptions are neatly sorted into active and expired. Clicking on a subscription instantly shows you all options, you can change among them and get a full prorated refund for time on the old plan. You can cancel with ONE tap (and a confirmation)--cancelling does not interfere with what you've already paid for, and it tells you exactly what date you've paid through. All auth is by Touch/Face ID.
I've never seen a simpler and more straightforward billing UX as Apple's.
That's the same as going to iTunes Store -> Sroll Down to Apple ID -> Tap Apple ID -> View Apple ID -> Subscriptions on iOS... there is two ways to get to the same thing.
You can also like the parent poster said, use App Store -> Profile Picture -> Tap Apple ID -> Subscriptions.
I didn’t know there was a profile pic in the App Store app until I checked again after reading your comment. I don’t have a profile pic setup so that’s probably why I never noticed the icon on the right hand side of the page. I never thought that could be clicked. It’s not obvious or intuitive to me.
> I've never seen a simpler and more straightforward billing UX as Apple's.
I don't like how it doesn't show the purchase method on the TouchID screen - it's fine if you are using it a lot, but if you only use it infrequently, it's annoying to not know which payment method it is using.
From what I heard from ios developers, the cost is a resounding "nothing"; any cancelled or fraudulent orders are simply taken out of Apple's monthly remittance to you. Details are usually wittheld for privacy reasons.
It may be great for consumers but it's been a constant headache for devs and publishers since the beginning of the App Store because it's very hard to work out the source of any shrinkage. Netflix is probably better positioned to pursue these cases but for a lot of indie devs the cost of investigation far outweights any benefit so they have to accept it as a part of the business cost on top of the 30% already charged by AAPL.
While I sympathise with people trying to run a business, as a user I'm incredibly grateful not to be harassed by current and former services. I have a bunch of Netflix emails saying, "Please come back!" and "Try Netflix again for free!" as well as half a dozen that all say "Netflix tonight?" Too many bad actors ruin it for everyone and I don't think people fully appreciate what Apple does to protect their attention.
I loathe the constant spam (from reputable merchants) and junk snail mail I get every day. Every few months I spend 20 min unsubscribing and refiltering email. Most people I know just let it clog up their mail app. I probably spend at least the same amount of time with junk mail.
I realize it's difficult for an advertiser to reach me for actually useful things. But when I travel and see TV adverts, I'm glad I'm not constantly reminded that I should give luxury cars as Christmas gifts or how awesome shower gel is. I'm not interested in refinancing my mortgage every month or consolidation of debt I don't have. I don't care that my cellphone provider is broadcasting a NYE live show or the last car dealership I bought a car from wants me to switch insurance companies.
I could not disagree more. It requires 5+ taps and just as many obscure screens to cancel a subscription to an iOS app. If Apple were really serious, they would have an app called Subscriptions.
A couple other advantages is it is likely more secure than having your credit card stored across many sites (although Stripe solves that too), and if your card expires, you only have to update one thing.
Tell me about it. To cancel my NYT subscription, I had to swap my payment method to paypal, then literally block them from my Paypal. After which, they sent me no less than 10 emails, almost one per day for over a week.
I am in the same boat. For most things I will happily subscribe through iTunes and pay extra because I know that I can go to one place to manage all my subscriptions.
Personally, I’d be willing to pay the “Apple Tax” on top of a subscription services’ cost for the peace of mind that comes from knowing that cancelling is easy. What a pain it will be when all the other subscription services stop paying the “Apple Tax”. I hope Apple comes up with a solution. Clearly their current cut is too much.