Title: Sandbox allows free trial again on resubscribe to the same subscription
Hi everyone,
I'm testing an auto-renewable subscription using App Store Connect with a Sandbox tester (not a local StoreKit configuration file).
My subscription has an introductory free trial configured.
Scenario:
- Purchase the subscription for the first time using a Sandbox Apple ID.
- The user receives the introductory free trial as expected.
- Let the subscription expire.
- Purchase the same subscription product again using the same Sandbox Apple ID.
- I receive an App Store Server Notification with Notification Type = RESUBSCRIBE, and the transaction appears to have a price of 0, making it look like the user received another free trial.
From Apple's documentation, my understanding is that an introductory offer can only be redeemed once per subscription group per Apple ID. Based on that, I expected the second purchase to be charged immediately rather than receive another free trial.
My questions are:
- Is this expected behavior in the Sandbox environment?
- Does Sandbox sometimes allow introductory offers to be redeemed multiple times for testing?
- Or am I misinterpreting the
RESUBSCRIBEnotification and the $0 transaction?
I did not intentionally reset the Sandbox tester's introductory offer eligibility, and I'm purchasing the same product in the same subscription group with the same Sandbox Apple ID.
Has anyone observed this behavior or can clarify whether this is expected in Sandbox versus production?
Thanks!