Apple - Suspend / refund in-app auto-renewable subscription

Question

I have an iPhone/iPad application that offers a monthly subscription to a service. Although, this service is totally useless during 2 months in the whole year.

Is there any way to either suspend all my users subscription for 2 months, or give them a 2 months refund every year so they don't pay for a useless service ?

Answer 1

Have you found any better alternative, since posting your answer about canceling all subscribers every year?

In addition to 1-year subscriptions, apple lets you do other terms as well, including 1-month subscriptions, for both renewable and non-renewable subscriptions.

Maybe you could make your in-app UI look as if the user is signing up for a long-term subscription, but behind the scenes, your app only sends a 1-month non-renewable subscription request to apple. Then, each month, your app automatically requests another 1-month subscription, and another... just skip the months you want to skip.

The user fills out the subscription form in your UI 1 time. Your app logic remembers how many times to start a new 1-month subscription.

Answer 2

After a good talk with an Apple employee, it is not possible to suspend an auto-renewable product.

Also, 0$ subscriptions do not exist outside NewsStand apps for the moment.

In order to solve our problem, we will have to delete the in-app product in iTunes Connect. This will automatically cancel all active subscriptions we have so the users will not be charged for nothing.

A big downside to this solution is that we will lose all current subscribers, so next year we have to build up a new subscriber bank from scratch.

Answer 3

Maybe you can give two months for free to your users instead of refund them.