Apple holds updated its App Store rules to create it so subscriptions can auto-renew without your explicit permission, even if the creator has raised the monthly or annual cost.
Before the rule modification, users would have to manually opt into a subscription renewal if it arrived with an expense bump; now, that wont necessarily be the issue, though youll still be informed about the price change before it happens.
Apple says its pushing the transition to help avoid users unintentionally losing access to a subscription because they skipped an opt-in message.
According to Apples Monday evening post, there are specific prerequisites that developers will have to follow if they want to deliver what the company is calling an auto-renewable subscription price boost. First, it can only be so big Apples rules say that if a developer expands a weekly or monthly subscription price by more than 50 percent, and that disparity is over $5, it doesnt qualify. For an annual subscription, devs can still raise the price by 50 percent but cant lift it more than USD 50 without requiring an opt-in.
Here are some examples of what that could look like: lets articulate you have a subscription thats $60 a year. The developers could increase it to $90 ($60 plus 50 percent), and it would auto-renew without me having to opt-in. On the other pointer, if you have a monthly subscription thats $15, and the developers wanted to raise it to $22, youd have to opt into that its less than a 50 percent increase but over the $5 cap.
However, Apples wording leaves things a bit unclear: what if theres an app that costs $10 a year and goes up to $60 a year? Apples rules say, verbatim, that consent is needed if the price increase is:
More than 50% of the current price and the price difference exceeds approximately $5 United States Dollar (USD) per period for non-annual subscriptions or USD 50 per year for annual subscriptions.
We are reading that literally; both conditions would have to be true to require an opt-in. But the example scenario seems so ridiculous that its hard to believe thats what Apple intends. Weve reached out for clarification on this point and will update you if we receive any.
The price can only be raised once per year without requiring an opt-in, which should help prevent scammy apps from slowly increasing their price by a buck or two every other month. Apple also says the price increase has to be permissible by local law, though that one was probably a given.
If any of those conditions arent met, youll still have to opt-in to the price increase. Otherwise, your subscription will lapse. Apple says users will be warned about upcoming automatic renewals with price changes by email, push notifications, and in-app messaging. Of course, you could quickly turn Apples logic on its head: if users missed those renewal opt-in notices, wouldnt they also ignore these new price change warnings? But it does sound like theyll be relatively in your face.
Weve seen evidence that this change was coming last month; Apple appeared to be testing this change with a Disney Plus price increase. In March, developer Max Seelemann also posted a screenshot showing what one of the notifications looked like, though its not clear whether this is the final design. At the time, Apple confirmed that it was piloting a new commerce feature we plan to launch very soon and said it would provide details. It looks like that day is here.
The screenshot from March shows that, near the OK button, a link says, to learn more or cancel, review your subscription. Apples post on Monday says that it will also notify users of how to view, manage, and cancel subscriptions if preferred, a promise that that link would seemingly fulfill.
Apples making a trade-off here between consumer friendliness and convenience. There are probably many people who will be happy that they wont have to go and re-subscribe to a thing just because the price went up by a buck and they missed an opt-in prompt.
Personally, though, we like to know where every dollar is going and since we almost always opt for annual subscriptions. So well have to be on the lookout for apps that could be going up in price by a pretty significant sum (that $60 subscription wasnt a hypothetical example). There is an easy fix to this: let users pick whether or not they want the auto-renewing price increases instead of deciding for them. In our mind, thatd be a toggle in the App Store settings that says something like Always ask for opt-in if price increases, and turning it on would make it like this change never happened.