Tough one and something I'm about to get into myself. As a rule we simply give anyone a refund who asks, but in app, unmanaged purchased would be much tougher to handle.
What I would do in your case is simply reuse whatever system you have for delivering the unmanaged purchase goods to flag as soon as the user did anything with what they bought, and make the policy: refund on "unopened" merchandise only. You may need to modify your app a little to make this clear to the users, but should be a small price to pay for smoother integration :) - Brill On Monday, 3 December 2012 15:29:48 UTC-5, Keith Wiley wrote: > > I'm trying to design a policy for processing (or refusing) refunds for > unmanaged in-app purchases. Refunds for managed purchases are quite simple > in concept since the app can simply "unflip the bit" that the managed > purchase corresponds to. If you granted access to higher levels, you can > simply take them away again. The refund is tightly correlated with the > account and the device so you (the developer) don't have to keep that > association, you let google process the money and you let the app "undo" > the managed purchase. > > However, unmanaged purchases are kind of messy. You can buy the same > thing over and over again, they cannot be easily associated with a google > account to verify the inventory, and unmanaged purchases are often > nonbinary in nature, i.e., if an unmanaged purchase is in-game-currency > (canonical gold coins) then you could buy 100 coins for $.99 and spend half > those coins in the game...and then -- rather unfairly -- want a refund of > your original purchase. It is difficult from for the developer to identify > that this is an unfair request at the time the refund request is made, so > the developer cannot easily determine whether to refuse the refund. > > As described above, it is difficult to flatly refuse to grant refunds on > unmanaged purchases because it is difficult to determine whether the > original purchase has been fully or partially "used up" in the game. I am > attempting to implement a server-side database of unmanaged purchases so I > know who had bought what *and* the extent to which those purchased items > have been used up...but it is difficult to associate google purchases > (google accounts) with devices or app installations...and it is devices > which would report their unmanaged purchases to my server, not google > accounts. Sure, my app can identify itself with a UUID, but how do I know > which *google account* that installation (and its unmanaged purchases) go > with. To put it differently, if I receive a refund request, how do I look > the installation up in my server database to see if the unmanaged purchase > has been partially or fully used up such that the refund request from that > google account is unfair and should be denied? > > At any rate, I'm just swimming through these issues trying to decide how I > want to handle them, and I'm extremely curious what sorts of solutions > other developers have come up with. This could make for a very riveting > discussion if others care to participate. > > *Cheers!* > > Cheers! > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
