App Store Refunds Brouhaha

TechCrunch is running a piece (picked up by slashdot) about a potentially developer-unfriendly clause (6.3) of the App Store contract: If the user decides they don't want your app within 90 days of buying it, Apple may choose to refund them. If they do, they charge you the full sale price of the app, including the 30% commission they already took.

Now, it's Apple's choice whether to make that refund, and it seems a tad unlikely that they'd do it for no good reason, but 90 days is a long time for some of the apps in the app store to remain useful to users. And let's face it: there's no small amount of people out there who are happy to save money at others' expense.

How realistic the danger is remains to be seen, and the fact is that it's part of the price of doing business in the App Store.