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Comment by madeofpalk | Hacker News Reader

I've never seen these apps before. I have no idea who this company is. But these icons, names, and type of apps I typically associate with trash behaviour I wish was removed from the app store. Like a Video Joiner Pro that lets you concat two videos, has a 1 week free trial and then $20/month subscription.

Edit: Ahh yup, that's exactly what this is

> A simple and convenient collage maker will help you make cool videos for TikTok and Instagram, Facebook.

> Subscription price $ 3.99 / week, $ 19.99 / year and $ 39.99 / forever

$3.99/week subscription is deliberately predatory. It tries to bait people in thinking "oh it's just $3.99", and then forgetting and now paying $17/month for a photo collage app.

I'm not sad this developer's had their account cancelled.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xJlbYZ...

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> $3.99/week subscription is deliberately predatory. It tries to bait people in thinking "oh it's just $3.99", and then forgetting and now paying $17/month for a photo collage app.

How is that predatory? It makes perfect sense to me and I’d probably do it myself if I ever were to sell an app this way. If someone just installs my app once, to make a single video, then immediately cancels, I still want to make some money off that.

That’s probably how 90% of these apps are used.

I agree, even the author aludes to this when refering to trials and how to cancel them. (text in parenthesis added by me)

> One day before removal, we had 1209 active trials. (money in our pockets)

> [...] established a help center with articles on canceling trials (cause we have a UI team dedicated on making it complicated)

Cancelling anything on an Apple device cannot possibly be complicated. It’s a single screen in settings, and there’s nothing app developers can do to mess with that.

I would bet that they got cancelled because of end user complaints directly to Apple and/or chargebacks from credit card companies.

I find that a little harsh. The prices are clear, and you can either pass or remember to cancel.

I think the most charitable thing you can say is this developer played with fire - engaging in scummy subscription pricing tactics - and got burnt. Neither App Store nor this developer played honourably.

Got burnt, but only after pulling the average annual Chilean income every month for an unspecified amount of time.

this is exactly what i feel about most of the apps on the app store over the years, but i was never able to actually articulate it. very eloquently put!

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