You've already purchase this subscription. Tap Buy to renew or extend it

Question

We are developing an app that uses the non-renewing subscription IAP model. While testing the subscription purchase process in the sandbox, we are seeing two messages with ‘buy’ buttons pop up.

The first message is displayed with the product information: “Do you want to buy one subscription for $xx.xx?”

After you click ‘buy’ for the first message, a second message (with another buy button) is displayed: “You’ve already purchased this subscription. Tap Buy to renew or extend it.”

Is this normal iTunes/sandbox behavior for re-purchasing non-renewing subscriptions after they have expired? Does iTunes require you to tap a ‘buy’ button twice?

Answer 1

I checked the behavior of EverNote by extending their non-renweing-subs, and it seems that is the behavior which we can't avoid.

I encountered the same issue with Non-Renewing-Subs + MKStoreKit, and thought it has something to do with my settings first, but I don't think there is nothing we can do about it.

Answer 2

One thing you could try (although I'm not sure Apple will like this) is creating a bunch of identical products in the store (say 48 identical products but with different identifiers: subscription1, subscription2, ..., subscription48). Then, when you need to extend the subscription you just pick the next subscription. This way the user will not get that annoying message. With 48 different products you should be good for 4 years. Hopefully by then Apple has its sanity back :)