I have just run into this as well for a submission I did today. We didn't use the app store connect route as we are offerring both a time and a usage type trial and give the user the option of choosing which is best for them. While we might be able to do the time based trial in app store connect, the usage based trial is not possible. For our app, the app is fully functional until the trial runs out. At that point, all the functionality of the app is still present, but the user cannot add any more data. If they wish to purchase a subscription, they can and the app will open up to data entry again. This seems like a pretty standard use case and is also used by some of competitors that also dont use the App store connect introductory offers. Has anyone successfuly worked through this or fought it?

Thank you for the information. Its a good suggestion and somethign we could do, but it is also a lot more complicated than offerring a single IAP after managing our trial ourselves. I am curious if this is a recent change from apple and if anyone has been able to fight it via an appeal. As everyone else above, to me the guidlines do not explicitly say that free trials have to be configured as part of an IAP via a introductory offer, etc. We had three verisons of the app that are exactly the same to the version that was just rejected in terms of their ability to offer a free trial. For the approved versions, new users are prompted to pick a trial and it is now that onboarding screen that is being flagged as an example of the problem. Now it seems as though the review is just looking for the words "Free Trial" and if they exist, and then failing the submission.At this point, it is not as simple as adding a free trial/introductory offer to our yearly subscription. We added a two week trial to our existing IAP, but are still being rejected. I am guessing this is becuase the trial period for the IAP is different than what is offered to the user during onboarding. What is very frustrating is that we have competitors that do exactly what we want to do (and what we used to do), but either got their versions in before this change or have found another way around the issue. Changes like this on apples part, really make the playing field unlevel and uncompeditive. Luckily we have a version approved, but have some great new features and bug fixes we want to get out there.

We were able to get a version of our application approved that used a non-consumable Tier 0 IAP for the free trial. Once the trial period is done, the user has the option to purchase the yearly subscription, but it is strictly opt in. Unfortunately, although that version was approved, a subsequent bug fix release that made no changes to how the trial is setup or presented was rejected with the reason that we are potentially trying to mislead the user. The kicker is the screen shots provided are the Apple provided confirmation dialogs for the free trial IAP. Currently trying to get more information and will try to appeal things if that does not work. Truly a frustrating process.