It doesn't matter if you asked for a refund or not, Apple is giving you back your money if you bought Marco Arment's Peace content blocker app. The app quickly became the top selling App Store title, but Mr. Arment pulled it after two days and told customers they could request their money back through Apple. Now the company is doing something new and unexpected: It's proactively refunding every Peace purchase.
Apple is refunding all Peace app purchases
"Apple notified me this afternoon that they’ll be proactively refunding all purchases of Peace," Mr. Arment said in a blog post. "As far as I know, this effectively never happens. When I decided to pull the app, I asked some Apple friends if this was even possible, and we all thought the same thing: iTunes billing works the way it works, period, and no special cases can be made."
Peace was an app that let users take advantage of the content blocker feature in iOS 9 to prevent Web trackers, ads, cookies, and code that slowed sites from loading in Mobile Safari. After releasing the app and seeing its instant success, Mr. Arment realized he had become the arbiter of what we see online—a notion he wasn't comfortable with.
When he pulled the app from the App Store, Mr. Arment also stopped development and support, then told users they could request refunds from Apple. About 13,000 people did so, but that was only a fraction of the number of people who paid for the app.
Refunding every Peace purchase will take a few days, and you'll get an email letting you know when your US$2.99 is back in your bank account. What isn't clear yet is whether or not Peace will continue to run after refunds are issued. This is new territory for Apple, and the company hasn't offered up any more details yet.
[Some image elements courtesy Shutterstock]