When an auto renewing subscription is "Developer removed from sale", any auto renewal should fail.
Will this make the subscription enter billing "Grace Period"?
Our expectation is that the rewal would fail without entering a "Grace Period".
Auto renewing subscription removed from sale entering "Grace period"
The information from the subscriptions management is also a bit confusing as it claims the payment method was declined and suggests updating it.
We seem to be seeing the same behaviour. We have removed a subscription from sale (which is now in the the 'Developer Removed from Sale' state).
The documentation seemed to suggest that is all we needed to do to stop the auto renewal of existing subscriptions:
"Before discontinuing an auto-renewable subscription, remove it from sale, within App Store Connect, to stop additional sign-ups and renewals."
We were expecting to see a 'EXPIRED' notification event with a notification subtype of 'PRODUCT_NOT_FOR_SALE' when existing subscriptions tried to renew for a subscription that had been removed from sale.
However it appears that existing subscriptions are entering the billing grace period. We are getting a 'DID_FAIL_TO_RENEW' notification event with subtype 'GRACE_PERIOD'.
Can Apple confirm if this is the expected behaviour for subscriptions that have been removed from sale? Is it expected that they go into the billing grace period rather than expire immediately?
I couldn't find any definitive information about this apart from this post.
It doesn't seem right that they should be entering the billing grace period because the issue isn't with the user's billing information (and there is nothing the user can do to correct it). The subscription is not renewing because the subscription has been removed from sale.