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Comment by thomaspaulmann | Hacker News Reader

It’s easy to blame Apple here and to some degree they are responsible for scammers aren’t banned from the App Store. However, why isn’t somebody complaining who got scammed? Don’t they want $400 back? Maybe they do a simple refund and that’s enough for them but there should be some feedback loop to detect scams quickly before they climb the App Store charts.

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> why isn’t somebody complaining who got scammed? Don’t they want $400 back?

Many App Store customers literally do not know that they can request a refund, or how to request one. App Store does not even have a clear refund policy. You see a lot of reviews for scam apps that say "I want a refund!" They just don't know.

App Store customers assume, naturally but unfortunately mistakenly, that app developers have the power to grant refunds. They have no idea Apple itself is the sole source of refunds. You would think that Apple would put a refund link in the ratings/review area of the store, but nope.

As a user, it's not very clear how to complain on the App Store. I did it once and got a refund from Apple, because it was an obvious case. But recently I bought an app that was not obviously problematic: it was meant to do some things, cost a few $, and did indeed do "some" things, however the app actually felt like a tutorial code (maybe even one from Apple) implemented and pushed to the store. Just like that, almost no features, no design or quality. It's difficult to complain, but I clearly couldn't know from the store itself.

> there should be some feedback loop to detect scams quickly before they climb the App Store charts.

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? The app store (any app store) which has a review process and takes a great cut of revenue, should stand for quality and safety. Here, that's clearly not the case.

For another example, see Amazon problems with fake products.

Both Apple and Amazon are large enough and have so much money that you'd think they could spend some of those resources on handling the problem. Perhaps they do, but appears not.

I just have given up on Amazon searching for anything because it's filled with utter shit. Between the fake Chinese shit, the mixed product reviews and the "promoted" crap, Amazon's UX is completely broken and has been for years.

Fuck, if any other company would be able the provide their logistics, I wouldn't drop a dime again with them.

It’s unlikely many users got scammed by this. So most of the few that do are likely complaining and in the ocean of incoming complaints Apple will eventually see this and ban the developers.

Literal victim blaming.

I think you're misrepresenting his post. He isn't blaming the victims of being scammed, but wondering why Apple hasn't noticed or taken action after they probably (/hopefully) are getting lots of chargeback and complaints from users buying this broken app.

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