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iOS Free trial + offer code?

  • 20 July 2021
  • 7 replies
  • 416 views

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hey folks,

we’re facing a bit of a conundrum:

On iOS, we offer a 7 day free trial as an introductory offer. However, for some users that come from channel partners we’ve created (iOS 14) offer codes that give users either a 2 week or 1 month free trial. For these offer codes, we’ve set "No, this code will replace the introductory offer”.

A few times now, a user who was supposed to use the offer code, instead redeemed the introductory offer 7 day free trial. After they do this, we give them the offer code and when they redeem it, Apple adds the introductory offer 7 day free trial to the 1 month free trial and so they get ~37 day free trial.

Is there any way for me to have it change from the 7 day trial to the 1 month free trial instead, instead of going to the 1 week + 1 month?

Also, users report that after they redeem the offer code (after initially redeeming the introductory 7 day trial offer), in their Apple ID subscription settings, they see “plan automatically renews at $X.XX/month starting after [7 days]”. Only after the 7 days end, does it then switch to the 30 days.

This has also been causing user confusion. Are there any better ways to do this so we can also avoid these issue?

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Best answer by Ilya Usorov 28 July 2021, 03:14

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Userlevel 5
Badge +9

Hey Ilya 👋,

 

Once there is a free trial in the receipt, there unfortunately aren’t any ways to modify the trial - any new offers will initiate after the trial. 

 

I assume the offer code and free trial are on the same product ID? It may be worth trying to create a new product specifically for the offer code. You can make this subscription the same price, and you should put it in the same subscription group as your free trial product ID. The only difference would be to set the offer code product at a higher service level than the free trial product.

 

This way, when an offer code is redeemed, it would be considered an “upgrade” and Apple puts upgrades into effect right away. The customer would technically still have a free trial as well, but they would be “subscribed” to the upgraded product. 

 

If you’re Entitlements in RevenueCat, you should be able to test this out without an app update. You’d need to:

  1. Create the new product in App Store Connect and set it up with an Offer Code
  2. Add the product to the correct Entitlement in RevenueCat
  3. Wait for your product to be approved by Apple, then wait ~24hrs before giving out your offer code. This way you’ve given the new product some time to propagate throughout the App Store.
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Will try this and report back if it worked or not in a few days!

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 hey @ryan , just tried it today after the product was approved yesterday and I created the codes yesterday, and it got me stuck in a loop where it says that I’m upgrading to [?] and it doesn’t confirm and just keeps looping between sign in and pressing the redeem button. I’ll try again tomorrow?

 

 

 

Userlevel 5
Badge +9

Oh jeez - hopefully it’s a propagation thing, yeah I’d give it another day. At least it thinks you’re upgrading which is a good sign, Apple doesn’t mention anywhere that Offer Codes can’t be used for upgrades. This is in production on a physical device, right?

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Oh jeez - hopefully it’s a propagation thing, yeah I’d give it another day. At least it thinks you’re upgrading which is a good sign, Apple doesn’t mention anywhere that Offer Codes can’t be used for upgrades. This is in production on a physical device, right?

Yes, correct -- physical device, production app, brand new apple id account i created just for this to test the experience of first starting the 7 day trial on product 1 and then trying to change over to product 2 with the offer code.

Userlevel 5
Badge +9

Got it. The [?] to me makes it seem like things could still be propagating. I’d give it another day to be sure. If you want to DM me an offer code tomorrow I can give it a try as well. 

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Hey @ryan tried it again now that it’s been 5 days later and still getting the same result. Thinking that Apple just doesn’t support this type of approach :\

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