expected behavior of an auto renewing subscription in the sandbox ?

Question

Created Nov ’19

Replies 5

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Participants 4

Hi there,
I have an auto-renewing one week subscription with a 3 day trail.
How many minutes does the trial last ?
then How many minutes should pass before it expires and finishes auto renewing ?
what should happen after I purchase the same productId again (re-subscribe?) after expiry ?
this is what I see :
With a new sandbox user I make a purchase and save the receipt.
When I verify the saved receipt it says it will expire in 3 minutes (I check latest_receipt_info.expires_date_ms).

it renews about 5 times then expires (15 minutes)
If I purchase again I verify the old saved receipt and it says it will expire in 3 minutes
after 3 minutes it expires again and does not auto-renew.
is this correct/normal ?
thanks for your hlp

Boost

Answer 1

KMT OP

Nov ’19

Confirm testing/times here: https://help.apple.com/app-store-connect/#/dev7e89e149d

Quoting that doc on auto-renew:

"Testing auto-renewable subscriptions

Duration times are shortened when test your auto-renewable subscriptions. Additionally, test subscriptions only auto-renew a maximum of six times."

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Answer 2

PBK OP

Nov ’19

Yes, this is correct. Imagine what would happen were this not the way it worked - an autorenewable would renew over and over and over again. (Aside - many years ago this happened - it is called 'the endless loop' and created misery for many who deleted the test user before calling finishTransaction for all of the 2000 transactions.) You need to create a new test user to 'retest' the 5 autorenewals.

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Answer 3

lmassoud OP

Nov ’19

Thank you very much PBK for your reply.
I need to revise what I said.
after the 6 renewals it expires and doesn't renew but then :
I purchase a second time and it renews 6 more times
I purchase a third time then 6 more renewals
at this point after purchasing again it expires after 3 minutes and doesn't renew.
why am I seeing more than one set of 6 renewals ? is this 100% wrong behavior ?
thanks

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Answer 4

PBK OP

Nov ’19

This would not be 'wrong' it would be 'new'. A nice improvement. I have heard that every 8 hours you can get a new set of 5 (or 6?) auto-renews but within that 8 hour period you are limited to 5 (or 6).

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Answer 5

meekohi OP

May ’21

Sandbox behavior seems extremely erratic. Sometimes it will renew a few times then cancel, sometimes it won't renew at all.

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