South Korea Asks Apple, Google, To Enable Paid App Refunds

It seems that South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has issued an order for both Google as well as Apple to make changes to their existing policies that concern app store refunds. The Fair Trade Commission has expectations that this particular ruling will be a precedent for other similar cases elsewhere around the globe. Google did announce that the Google Play Store will kick off a refund policy based on the system that is currently in use by its developers, and do take note that this new Google refund rules will be enforced only in South Korea at the moment.

As for Cupertino, Apple has decided to issue a notice to consumers each time the company performs a change to its contract terms. Apple’s route is slightly different from that of Google’s, they do mull over instituting this new policy across the globe, but it is interesting to note that a non-governmental agency known as The Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice were the ones behind this request, knocking on the Korean FTC’s door in order to force domestic as well as foreign app stores to halt their existing business practices which have been deemed to be unfair.

What do you think of this situation? Would you like to see it implemented elsewhere around the globe as well? It would be interesting to see if the likes of Amazon’s Appstore that has passed the 200k app milestone this year be subjected to a similar ruling or not.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Apple, General
Tags: App Store, Google, play store