We discontinued a subscription before ever shipping it, and we cannot get it out of App Store Connect. The app has now been rejected five times under Guideline 2.1(b) for an in-app purchase that does not exist in the binary.
The facts:
The app contains no StoreKit code, no paywall and no purchase flow. The subscription was removed from the codebase before the build under review was uploaded.
The product was never approved and was never in review. Its state is MISSING_METADATA / DRAFT, it is available in 0 of 175 territories, it has no promoted purchase, and it is attached to no app version.
Every rejection is the same macro text: "In-app purchase products associated with the app version submitted for review... could not be found in the submitted binary. If these In-App Purchase products are not intended to be available at this time, remove them from App Store Connect before resubmitting."
We cannot follow that instruction. App Store Connect offers no way to delete a subscription or a subscription group. There is no delete action anywhere on either page, and the API returns 409 ENTITY_ERROR.ATTRIBUTE.INVALID.UNMODIFIABLE ("Cannot delete last localization") when trying to strip the record down.
So we emptied it instead: removed the App Store review screenshot (it showed the old paywall), rewrote the product review notes (they explained how to reach a paywall that no longer exists, and we believe that is what kept sending reviewers to look for it), deleted one of the two localizations and neutralised the other, and renamed both the product and its group. The one field we cannot clear is the price sheet, which offers Edit Price but no delete.
Questions:
- Is there a supported way to permanently delete a never-approved subscription and its group?
- If not, how do you stop App Review from associating a draft product with a binary that does not implement it?
- Has anyone had Apple remove such a product on their side, and through which channel?
Happy to provide the app's Apple ID and submission IDs privately.