In-app purchase items are not correctly fetched only by the App Review team causing rejection multiple times!

Dear Devlopers comunity,

After 4 rejections of my submitted app to the App Store Connect with the same persistent issue, I am lost!

It is always the same reason for rejection (Schedule 2, section 3.8(b) of the Paid Applications agreement.). Specifically: in-app purchase items can not be fetched by the App review team. The screenshots provided by the App Review team indicate clearly that they are not able to fetch my in-app purchase items.

I checked everything, guides, FAQ, the status of my banking contracts, etc. My own tests are all OK with a Sandbox account with Apple's recommended validation approach (production then testing environment).

In my tests, in-app items are showing correctly, and purchase works as expected. The main issue is that the App Review team is not able to fetch in-app items.

I read this post (1 year ago):

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/122896

but I tried everything, except the solution posted by "wrty" (that I am trying now, waiting for the Review decision..)

I think also -if my app receives a new rejection- to regenerate new product IDs for my in-app items and change my code, and rebuild..

Does anyone have a new brilliant idea, please? Thank you very much.

Answered by LR_FR in 685893022

Epilogue:

After my requested appeal, I received an App Review call indicating that the problem is solved and my app is ready for sale (without any change from my side). My lovely in-app purchases are finally approved !

Thanks to them (& to Bettina, Rich & Marcelo and the others behind the scene) for the fast reaction and happy to see my first app on the store !

5th rejection : The Apple Review message is always the same event after trying the "wrty" method :-( :-( : "We were unable to find the following required information in your app's binary:

Price of subscription, and price per unit if appropriate"

6th rejection: although I deleted my previous in-app purchases and created new ones, and modify my code to use the new product identifiers, rebuild and submit the new build with the new in-app, it is rejected for the 6th time. Always with the same rejection with the reason: "Schedule 2, section 3.8(b) We were unable to find the following required information in your app's binary: - Price of subscription, and price per unit if appropriate". It works very fine with me on tests and follows Apple's guidelines.. I don't understand.. I am frustrated..

After my 6th rejection, although I checked all the possibilities, I sent a Request Technical Support, based on the advice of this old post : "From time to time, App Reviews of in app purchase apps will fail when the SKProductsRequest is made to preflight (validate) the in app purchase identifiers.." "..For whatever reason, the SKProductsRequest can fail in the App Review environment." "..For anyone who is sure that the App Review failure resulted from a failure by SKProductsRequest to validate the in app purchase identifiers, one suggestion is that you submit a DTS incident. DTS will review the App Review rejection response and if the failure condition appears to be caused by an SKProductsRequest failure, DTS can request a second review of the app on the newly restarted device.."

(post of "rich" : https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/6401)

7th submission to the App Review: despite believing that there is actually a bug in the App Review environment (as it happened in the past see: https://twitter.com/JPEGuin/status/1174217758604705792), I modified the following (as suggested by some persons in the developer forum): 1- I deleted fetching the in-app items immediately after launching my app; 2- I made the code of the 2 methods: "productsRequest(_ request: SKProductsRequest, didReceive response" and "request(_ request: SKRequest, didFailWithError" inside "DispatchQueue.main.async {code}" ; 3- I uploaded a demo video for the App Review team within this 7th submission to show that all works fine with my sandbox users; 4- I added a note for the App Review team to validate the in-app items (attached with my build) since they have to be validated within my app binary in the same time. Hope this will work !!

my 7th submission is always "waiting for review" since yesterday. It is the first time that takes a long time to go to the status "under review", maybe this is due to the weekend, this is good to know..

my 7th submission is get rejected, and now I am sure that the problem is that the Apple Reviewers are failing in receiving my in-app purchase items: they receive an empty answer in the "productsRequest didReceive" method !! I believe that the bug in the App Review environment described in https://twitter.com/JPEGuin/status/1174217758604705792 is happening again and a lot of apps are getting rejected for this reason!

My 7th submission is get rejected, and now I am sure that the problem is that the App Store Reviewers are failing in receiving my in-app purchase items see the screenshot that confims that: they receive an empty answer in the "productsRequest didReceive" method after my SKProductsRequest(productIdentifiers:) request and this has no relation with receipts as the APP reviewers mention!!

I believe that the bug in the App Review environment described (by pgleeson) in :

this link

is happening again and a lot of apps are getting rejected for this reason!

I tried to explain that to the APP reviewer, I sent a working demo with my sandbox users, and tell them to investigate if they have a bug. The answer was -as usual short- "We are unable to provide information regarding our review environment."

Today, I requested an appeal of my app’s review to understand the situation !

What happens with Apple ?! Why do the reviewers behave like that.. I really don't understand!

Accepted Answer

Epilogue:

After my requested appeal, I received an App Review call indicating that the problem is solved and my app is ready for sale (without any change from my side). My lovely in-app purchases are finally approved !

Thanks to them (& to Bettina, Rich & Marcelo and the others behind the scene) for the fast reaction and happy to see my first app on the store !

In-app purchase items are not correctly fetched only by the App Review team causing rejection multiple times!
 
 
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