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Recently we have had a number of users contact us because they’re unable to purchase a subscription:

 

After a bit of investigation is appears that RevenueCat SDK is returning:

{ 
   message: "There was a problem with the Play Store.", 
   readable_error_code: "StoreProblemError", 
   readableErrorCode: "StoreProblemError", 
   underlyingErrorMessage: "Error updating purchases.",
   debugMessage: ErrorCode: ERROR.:
}

When we look up these users in RevenueCat we see no activity.

When we look up these users in Google Play Store’s Order Management they all show cancelled purchases:

We are using: react-native-purchases v4.2.0. Does anyone have any insight into what could cause this error? 

Hey @CarbonKevin 

We have that error code documented here: https://docs.revenuecat.com/docs/errors#--store_problem Are you still seeing other purchases coming in as successful and able to go through the entire payment flow while in sandbox? 

Hi Tina

Thanks for the reply. I have seen that documentation but I'm not sure it's related to what we are experiencing. This issue appears to be isolated to Android and we are not able to replicate it ourselves.

The users with this issue have tried subscribing multiple times over multiple days, which makes me doubt it's a problem connecting to the store.

These users are using modern devices, not rooted, and have confirmed they have current subscriptions through Google Play to other apps.

Besides these handful of users we have no other billing issues of concerns. Hundreds of successful transaction are going through daily. 

Hey @CarbonKevin 

Since you are only seeing a handful of reports while receiving hundreds of successful transactions daily, it makes me believe that it is an issue specific to the device. Do you have any details on what device those reported customers are using? 

Hey @tina,

The users with this issue are all using modern phones, Samsung Galaxy S20/S21 with Android 11 or 12. Doesn’t seem to be specifically related to the device either. I was hoping someone had seen this issue before. The strange part is that Google Play Console shows the purchase as cancelled, and the RevenueCat customer profile shows no transactions. Users have attempted to reach out to Google about the issue but have not received any support from them.

Thanks for the information @CarbonKevin ! One of our SDK engineers is also going to take a look into this. I will keep you updated when I hear back with new information.

Hi @CarbonKevin 

I heard back from the SDK team and they agree that it is a Google issue. If you take a look at this Play Console Help article, the status ‘Canceled’ can mean either “Payment was canceled during processing by the user or due to a payment issue.” Here’s another article on how to fix issues playing for Google products & services. Have the customers try changing payment methods or reaching out to their card issuer yet?

Hey @tina thanks for following up. One of the users have reported back that after their free 1 month subscription we granted them, they were asked to subscribe again and this time it worked. Still not closer to sorting out the issue, but if we get anymore additional clues I will report back.

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