Tesflight eCommerce error, Beta testers outside the US, for our MacOS App, are being told their ID is not valid in the US Store

Question

Created Jul ’24

Replies 5

Boosts 3

Participants 3

Beta testers outside the US, for our MacOS App, are being told their ID is not valid in the US Store and that they must switch to a store in their country. Yet the store switch fails

Essentially beta testers outside the US cannot do testflight sandbox eCommerce for the Mac version of our app. Note that eCommerce on the Mac works for US based testers and eCommerce for the iOS/iPadOS works for testers in all territories. Many of these testers are in India, the UK and Canada. We believe that this is incorrect, that storeKit is not correctly detecting the AppStore Region for mac based testflight eCommerce. At this point we have 382 testers, most outside the US and we can only Beta Test our app with US users.

Attached are images of the messages that are coming from storeKit:

Here is a link to a video from a user in Canada who is demonstrating the problem (cut and paste into browser)

https://youtu.be/kB818wfVld4

Here is another link to a video from a user in Canada who is demonstrating the problem (cut and paste into browser).

https://youtu.be/7uAZKo8wpfU

We see that there is another post with a similar problem.

Similar eCommerce Problem

Because eCommerce works in all territories on iOS/iPadOS but ONLY in the US for Mac we suspect that this is an error that either a DBA or a coder will need to fix.

Any insights from anyone would be appreciated.

Answered by saxmanbob in 796341022

Thanks for making this known. I'm in the same situation converting my app from Paid to Freemium, and am completely stuck. I really can't risk putting it live without being able to properly test it.

What to do?

I've sent a TSI in, asking DTS engineers to respond. No idea whether they will.

Boost

Answer 1

saxmanbob OP

Jul ’24

Accepted Answer

Thanks for making this known. I'm in the same situation converting my app from Paid to Freemium, and am completely stuck. I really can't risk putting it live without being able to properly test it.

What to do?

I've sent a TSI in, asking DTS engineers to respond. No idea whether they will.

0

Answer 2

saxmanbob OP

Jul ’24

UPDATE:

I contacted Apple via Developer Support, in addition to the TSI I sent in. The advantage of that is that I got to speak to someone and explain the problem. They sent me an email requesting details - I submitted these, a screenshot and a video of the problem. It is currently in the works, being looked at....

I will keep you posted.

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Answer 3

pianonik OP

Jul ’24

We updated our Feedback Assistant ticket this morning with this. Note that the ticket was filed on June 12, and except for a single response on July 2 asking for more info, we have not heard anything from Apple.

Updated this morning in Feedback Assistant (FB13878109) We released another testflight build to a few of our testers including testers outside the US. Beta testers outside the US are still unable to do eCommerce. The still get the error in the attached image. This error is not coming from us, it’s coming from the Apple eCommerce flow.

The majority of our testers are outside the US because over half our customer base is in India. This situation has been blocking us for almost 2 months. Can someone please respond to our FB assistant ticket. Testflight eCommerce Error India.png

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Answer 4

kdang.kim OP

Aug ’24

I have the same problem now.

The TestFlight app has the same problem, and the AppStore app does not have a Region issue.

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Answer 5

pianonik OP

Aug ’24

We have been in contact with Apple about this bug for months and very little response and no movement forward. Here is what I send our contact this morning:

Apple,

What is going on with this eCommerce bug in the testflight sandbox?

Again restating, Beta testers OUTSIDE THE US for our app GeoShred Studio are unable to do eCommece testflight sandbox eCommerce. The eCommerce flow believes that they are in the US Store and throws up an error dialog. The “Change Stores” button on the dialog fails. |

We believe that there is a bug in the eCommerce flow where part of the flow is NOT looking at the region setting and is assuming that the machine is in the US.

This bug has blocked us for over 2 months. At this point there are 13 other developers in the developer forum reporting the same bug.

This is clearly a bug and is blocking our beta testers from giving us beta feedback. Given that testflight fails we have no confidence that production will work. Shipping “blind” with eCommerce failing would do harm to our business.

We have provided all data that has been requested. We have provided a public link to GeoShred Studio so that a DRI outside the US can reproduce the problem.

When I ran Liquid Audio/Digital Media with Walmart as my primary customer, eCommerce was mission critical. If there was an eCommerce bug we would get all stakeholders in a “sunrise room” and work until it was solved. I’m struggling to understand how a 3 trillion dollar company can let an eCommerce issue slide for months.

PLEASE RESPOND TO US WE, NEED APPLE TO FIX THIS BUG.

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