Sandbox subscriptions is_in_billing_retry_period

Hello! Since late May 2019 our Sanbox in-app subscriptions after typical ~5 prologation per day, it seems, moved to state, when "App Store is still attempting to renew the subscription". VerifyReceipt response contains

"auto_renew_status":1
"is_in_billing_retry_period":"1"
"status":21006


And, because it's sandbox, we can not affect it - manually finish subscription.

I have not found any annoucement about it on Apple sites.


Is it new expected behaviour, or is it bug? Or, maybe, now we can somehow control attemps to renew the subscription logic for Sandbox in Apple?

Replies

B

In the sandbox times are speeded up and the number of renewals limited to 5. After those 5 renewals the sandbox becomes unusual in that a ‘real’ subscription would renew over an over again. In the sandbox, after those first 5, you get no more auto renews. You can therefore no longer test auto renewals. You can test a new purchase. There is no transaction until you make a new purchase.

Yes, I understand that subscription in sandbox would not automatically renew after 5 renewals. But previously, it behave like after this 5 renewal subscription prolongation has been manually stopped ("auto_renew_status" moved to 0), and now it isn't. We have some backand logic for users with is_in_billing_retry_period, and it's different than for users who manually stopped subscriptions. Because we can't manually stop subscription in sandbox, we can only rely on Apple how it works for sandbox. And it seems, Apple behavior have change recently.

You can not rely on the sandbox responses, whatever they might be, when the sandbox behavior deviates significantly from production.

I encountered the same issue, do you have any new findings? Thanks.