BlackBerry App World™ Development

[QuiteSimple]

Long story short: I have a free app, which I upgraded. I changed the app price to $2.99 and set as upgrade price $0.99. So far so good. The upgrade went live today, however users are complaining that they see upgrade price $0.99 but are charged $2.99! As you can imagine the outrage is coming...

I'm pretty sure that I set the upgrade price to $0.99, I just checked it once again in the vendor portal.

Of course I have already used the vendor support form, just wanted to let you know if you plan paid upgrades.

[smiley]

did you set to all versions for the app by any chance?

[bec0ding]

Did you click next next next all the way to the end and click "Save" on the end?

I observed that some changes are not made by clicking "save" on the page we make changes.

[QuiteSimple]

@smiley, the app has only two versions - the previous, which was free and the current one. Only one bundle for all devices

@bec0ding, yes, I have done this like hundred times before and the info is still visible in the vendor portal, upgrade price is definitely $0.99

Sigh, I thought this upgrade would be the easiest thing to do, now I foresee at least a week full of pain

[bec0ding]

Arg, that sucks.

Looks like a bug then?

RIM needs to fix this asap.

[smiley]

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Sigh, I thought this upgrade would be the easiest thing to do, now I foresee at least a week full of pain

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Same here.  Whenever I screw up something in the Vendor portal it will take atleast a week for RIM to approve the changes.  No matter if its a typo or mistake.  I don't think the new CEO knows anything about Appworld problems.

[bec0ding]

If only RIM would process changes faster, would allow for better apps handling on the devs part.

We should send an e-mail to Mr. Heins with a list of things that should be improved on App World!

[zezke]

One thing I learned last year as a BlackBerry developer was to never use the paid upgrade feature. Why?

1) It doesn't work properly all the time, some people are asked the full price without apparent reason, some are charged more than notified... App World should just remove this feature or fix it.

2) Users hate paid upgrades: we delivered a whole set of new features, upped the full price with 2$, but charged only 0.99$ to existing users. Never received so many complaints that week, despite me trying to explain the situation. 

[QuiteSimple]

Unfortunately the paid upgrade is the only way - I'm aware of - when switching app from free to paid. Of course I can avoid converting free apps to paid ones, but then the list with things to avoid would grow much too much.

[MSohm]

You are seeing the expected behaviour.

When a Vendor has a Free app (which users have downloaded), then switches the app to Paid and adds a new Release, all the users who downloaded it for Free will be prompted to pay the price of the app, not the Upgrade Price.  In this case  $2.99.

Reason is users who downloaded it for Free don’t have a purchase record for it, and since it’s now a Paid app, App World wants to get a Purchase Record or prevent the upgrade. To create a Purchase Record, it charges the user the app price, not the upgrade price.

This prevents customers from side loading an application and obtaining a legitimate copy for just the upgrade price.