Re-purchasing subscription after it's expired doesn't renew subscription

Question

Created Jan ’23

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When testing our integration with Apple Server Notifications, we have noticed a strange scenario.

When a Sandbox user first purchases an automatically renewing subscription, our server successfully receives a bunch of DID_RENEW notifications, and then eventually a DID_CHANGE_RENEWAL_STATUS notification with auto_renew_status as false. This lets us know that the subscription has expired.

When that Sandbox user purchases the same automatically renewing subscription (via the app, or from within Settings on their phone), the subscription doesn't actually renew. Instead, we only receive:

INTERACTIVE_RENEWAL
DID_CHANGE_RENEWAL_STATUS with auto_renew_status as true
DID_CHANGE_RENEWAL_STATUS with auto_renew_status as false

In both instances the IAP purchase

Why doesn't the renewal of an expired subscription automatically renew? Is this a bug, a Sandbox issue, or perhaps something else?

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Answer 1

App Store Commerce Engineer OP

Apple

Jan ’23

Sandbox has a limited number of renewals before disabling auto renewal. It performs this check at each renewal by looking at the number of renewals that have occurred in the last X time. If you resubscribe immediately after it disabled auto renewal automatically, at next renewal it will just disable itself again. You can clear your purchase history, wait longer, or use a different sandbox account.

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