How to associate a user's email receipt or purchase history with our own transaction records?

Question

Created Nov ’18

Replies 2

Boosts 0

Views 2.3k

Participants 3

Hi,

When dealing with a user who contacts us claiming to not have received the IAP benefits they purchased in the app, how do we confirm that the user did in fact purchase the thing they claim to have purchased, on the account they claim to have purchased it on?

The user appears to have access to the following two pieces of information in their email from apple and their purchase history in the store:

Order ID (a 10-digit alphanumeric value)

Document No. (a 12 digit numeric value)

On the back-end as an application developer, we have access only (?) to the transaction ID for the purchase, which is a 15-digit numeric value that appears to have no correlation to the above values.

As an example scenario, suppose a user contacts us saying they can't access their subscription in-app, and shows us their receipt as proof of purchase. We have no record of the user's account making any purchase at the time specified. Maybe this is due to a bug in our IAP handling, or maybe they actually made the purchase on another app account, or maybe they're making the whole thing up, etc. How do we take the information the user can give us and locate the purchase on our end so we can resolve their issue?

In particular we're interested in subscriptions here, but I believe the same information is available for both those and traditional IAP.

Thanks.

Boost

Answer 1

john daniel OP

Nov ’18

The only way to check is to get a copy of their receipt somehow. You could then use Apple's receipt verification service to see if the receipt is valid. But if the purchase never made it into the receipt, then there is nothing you can do. Just have them contact Apple and ask for a refund. Sometimes Apple gives refunds and sometimes they don't. At least if I believe user reports on the subject.

On the App Store, users aren't users, they are a commodity. They only have quantitative value, not qualitative value. Hopefully you will have enough happy users to offset the 1-star review you'll get from this one poor sap that lost his money and got nothing.

0

Answer 2

PBK OP

Nov ’18

I assume you have a 'restore purchases' method in the app and you have asked the user to log out of the app store and then use that method and when asked to log back into the app store they do that with the same iTunes user account used to make the original purchase. The source of the problem is usually a user who purchased using a different iTunes user account from a different device.

There is no way to align an email that the user gets from the Apple App Store indicating a purchase other than the time of purchase - and that's approximate and useful only if your purchase rate is small.

Unless you have a high Cost of Goods Sold (it's usually $0) I'd just accept the word of anyone who sends an email receipt from the App Store and push a subscription to them. For that purpose I have a 'back-door' installed. Without such a back-door you can do nothing other than ask the user to request a refund and try a repurchase. And with that 'back-door' you will have a problem when the next subscription period arrives.

If more than a small fraction of purchasers complain then you have a coding error.

0