Auto-Renew of Subscription stops after 12 renews, how to allow more autorenew in TestFlight?

Question

Created Apr ’23

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I'm trying to test my IAP subscriptions. Testing in the Sandbox environment has been kind of a nightmare, because it sometimes returns out of date information on the phone and the server events are either never delivered or delivered very late, etc. It makes testing nigh impossible.

So I'm trying to test via TestFlight, because that is, at least, working in the production environment and delivers events more quickly and seems to return the correct data when I query the StoreKit2 APIs.

However, it's using my REAL Apple Id for the purchases (no charges though), and after it has auto-renewed my subscription 12 times... then it NEVER will auto-renew ever again (as far as I can tell). Even if I resubscribe, the subscription immediately dies at the end of that period.

It's making testing impossible again... and I can't find a way to clear TestFlight purchases similar to the way I can clear purchases for Sandbox users.

At this point, I have -no- confidence that my Apple IAP Subscriptions are going to work correctly and I don't seem to have a way that I can test them properly in order to gain that confidence.

Is there any way to clear purchases in TestFlight or any way to allow more than 12 renewals in TestFlight?

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Answer 1

App Store Commerce Engineer OP

Apple

Apr ’23

I am sorry to hear about your issues with TestFlight and Sandbox. Going through your concerns. First, Sandbox and TestFlight use the same server environment, so if you are seeing different behavior for a Sandbox user and a TestFlight user, please file a ticket in Feedback Assistant and we will look more closely. Second, to the auto-renewal piece. It will allow you to subscribe again, it just takes a while. It calculates how many periods you have in the last so many hours, and if that value is 12 or greater, it will disable auto-renewal for you, hence why if you subscribe immediately after it turns it off for you, it does not renew. Besides waiting, the best way to deal with this is to use a Sandbox account(s) with clearable purchase history, and I would encourage you to post a ticket in Feedback Assistant with issues you are experiencing in Sandbox so we can work to resolve them.

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Answer 2

kennywyland OP

Apr ’23

It will allow you to subscribe again, it just takes a while. It calculates how many periods you have in the last so many hours, and if that value is 12 or greater, it will disable auto-renewal for you

How many hours? If it limits me to 12 renews in "the last so many hours", how many is that? Because yesterday it stayed broken for the rest of my work day and that means that I get to test for one hour during my work day. It seems like this should be seen as a previous obvious design flaw in the system. Developers don't work for one hour and then stop.

First, Sandbox and TestFlight use the same server environment...

The differences between the responsiveness in TestFlight and in the Sandbox should be plainly obvious to anyone who uses it, because it can't just be me. :( The AppStore server events that get delivered to my server get delivered from TestFlight in about 5 seconds or so. In the Sandbox, they get delivered about 60 seconds later or sometimes not at all. It's hard for me to believe that TestFlight and Sandbox are really be the same with that kind of difference.

And let me tell you that I've tried filing several bugs in the past through the Feedback Assistant and they usually get ignored or X months later I'll get a follow-up question about it that I can't possibly answer because my development environment has X months worth of changes between now and then. So, I'm hesitant to spend that time because I worry that it isn't worth it.

But you're one of the Commerce Engineers, so, please tell me what info I need to provide in my post to the Feedback Assistant so that this problem can actually be looked at and you'll know what you need to know and avoid the X-months-later request for info that I can't possibly give anymore.

One example of problems we see in the Sandbox environment is that if I have a paid auto-renew subscription and then I turn off auto-renew and then turn auto-renew back on during the same billing period (i.e. no other transactions happen in between), then the info I get back from StoreKit2 will still say their auto-renew is turned off, even though the attempt to turn it back on was successful. It -will- auto-renew at the correct time, but until then, the StoreKit2 response says that it will not.

If you can let me know what info I need to put into the ticket to inspect that problem, then I'll file a bug in the FA.

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