So I went through the effort of getting a refund from App Store recently, and contrary to popular belief it's not so much as getting a refund is hard for armchair quarterback reasons but rather Apple is too incompetent to process a refund. For one, despite having to submit a reason for why you're requesting a refund, after talking to Apple reps it's clear that they don't actually read it in any meaningful capacity. This is almost certainly because the person processing your request lacks the knowledge of the product you're attempting to refund, and therefore whether you had a great reason, bad reason, or outright lying actually makes no difference because it's all the same to a guy who knows nothing about the product you're attempting to refund on. You might as well just go with the 'my son brought it' even if you don't have a son since that seems to be the statistically most likely reason to succeed.
Now, again contrary to popular belief, you could get something refunded that people told you is impossible precisely because Apple is incompetent. They explained to me that they basically look at your history and often accept the first refund you requested if you look like you've been a good citizen of the Apple system, with no regard to the amounts you requested. After that, they figure you got your freebie and will reject the rest. But since the entire system is predicated on randomness, you might still randomly get some approved even if it's the identical item with identical reason that was rejected earlier. It's literally just a lotto and see if the guy processing your review likes your name more than the last guy.
Finally, Apple doesn't care that if they get your account banned with the app developer for issuing a refund. Apparently that's your own problem. It'd probably help to make your case to your credit card company though for being banned, but if you can only work with Apple, then you're stuck. They'd just tell you go crawl back and pay back when you refunded to the app owner if you don't want to lose the account.
As an aside, don't expect to ever find a person that you can talk to involved in the actual refunding process. You can call their help center, but all the guys you get will tell you they can only explain the process and none of them has any power to affect the outcome.
I suspect they settled on this system because they got tired of being tricked by people with bogus reasons for refunding stuff. However, I'd think if you're even going through Apple's refund system at all you're probably not that bad of a person. There are surely far more effective ways to scam an app developer than going through Apple. Or maybe it just costs a lot less manpower when you process all refund requests using a system that's basically random as opposed to actually figuring out if it was merited, especially if the guys you have processing these requests have no idea what they're doing to begin with.
Now, again contrary to popular belief, you could get something refunded that people told you is impossible precisely because Apple is incompetent. They explained to me that they basically look at your history and often accept the first refund you requested if you look like you've been a good citizen of the Apple system, with no regard to the amounts you requested. After that, they figure you got your freebie and will reject the rest. But since the entire system is predicated on randomness, you might still randomly get some approved even if it's the identical item with identical reason that was rejected earlier. It's literally just a lotto and see if the guy processing your review likes your name more than the last guy.
Finally, Apple doesn't care that if they get your account banned with the app developer for issuing a refund. Apparently that's your own problem. It'd probably help to make your case to your credit card company though for being banned, but if you can only work with Apple, then you're stuck. They'd just tell you go crawl back and pay back when you refunded to the app owner if you don't want to lose the account.
As an aside, don't expect to ever find a person that you can talk to involved in the actual refunding process. You can call their help center, but all the guys you get will tell you they can only explain the process and none of them has any power to affect the outcome.
I suspect they settled on this system because they got tired of being tricked by people with bogus reasons for refunding stuff. However, I'd think if you're even going through Apple's refund system at all you're probably not that bad of a person. There are surely far more effective ways to scam an app developer than going through Apple. Or maybe it just costs a lot less manpower when you process all refund requests using a system that's basically random as opposed to actually figuring out if it was merited, especially if the guys you have processing these requests have no idea what they're doing to begin with.
