Apple’s new subscription policy allows developers to charge you more money without your permission

• Apple has announced new App Store rules that allow developers to charge more without your permission.
• The revised rules allow developers to increase the prices or subscriptions without your permission.
• Apple has announced certain conditions that need to be satisfied for this to work.

Apple has announced a new subscription policy as part of the new App Store rules. The major change is the update to auto renewal of subscriptions, which will enable developers to charge more without asking you.

Currently, when a developer revises the price of a subscription, customers who are already subscribed are informed about it via email, push notifications, and in-app messages.

Customers who wish to continue are required to opt-in before the revised price is applied. The subscription is not renewed if customers do not opt-in for the new price, saving money for users who might miss the messages or emails sent by the company or the developer.

Apple has claimed that this has resulted in services being “unintentionally interrupted” for users and they are forced to re-subscribe.

As part of the new subscription policy, under certain conditions and with advance notice to users, developers will be able to increase the price of auto-renewable subscriptions without asking the user or taking their consent.

The conditions listed for this by Apple are –

• The price increase shouldn’t occur more than once per year.
  
• The price increase shouldn’t exceed $5 or 50% of the subscription price.
  
• For annual subscriptions, the price increase shouldn’t exceed $50 or 50% of the subscription price.
  
• The price increase should be permissible by local law.
  

Apple will inform users about the increased prices through email, a notification and in-app messages. Users will only have to act if they do not wish to continue the subscription.

Users will still be able to cancel their subscriptions if they are not okay with the increased prices. The new subscription policy has no effect on the user’s ability to view, manage and cancel subscriptions.

Do note that if the above conditions are not satisfied, the consent of the user will be required to auto-renew the subscription at increased prices.

We feel it would have been better to allow users to opt-in for the new subscription policy as some users might miss the notifications about increased prices sent by Apple and end up paying more than what they agreed to while starting the subscription.

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