How to cancel an in app purchase on iPhone – Quick Guide

Today we’re going to look at what we can do if we make an accidental purchase in an app, and what to do if you need to cancel your subscription.

This could be from not unsubscribing after a free trial, or just unknowingly signing up to a subscription without realising it. If this is you – here’s what to do.

How to cancel an in app purchase on iphone

To cancel an in app purchase on your iPhone, you need to go into your settings, and then into your Apple ID profile. You can manage subscriptions from App Store account.

Here, you should be able to tap cancel subscription, which will only show if you’re signed up to an app subscription on your iOS device.

The tougher part of this doing this is when you require a full refund. You can go ahead and put in a refund request on your Apple device too.

In future, it’s usually a good idea to check the renewal date when you sign up for a free trial with other subscriptions. You can do this within the Manage Subscriptions section in your Account Settings.

After you’ve done this, you can delete the purchased app from the app store on your iPhone, as auto renew will be disabled.

Thankfully there are a few ways to go about this and it’s fairly straight forward. We’ll go through the different options here and hopefully one of them works for you.

As there are so many apps out there, it’s not guaranteed – but these are the best strategies for getting a refund.

Cancel subscriptions

Forgetting to cancel subscriptions is probably one of the number one causes of accidental payments when it comes to apps.

There is an insanely large amount of subscription apps where people take advantage of a free trial only to forget and then be charged once the free trial is over.

So, here’s how to cancel these subscriptions.

• First navigate to your settings app.
• Next, select your name at the top of this page to bring up your personal apple ID page.
• Here we have a subscriptions option, select the subscription here you wish to cancel.
• Finally select the cancel subscription option.

If you accidentally allowed a subscription to go through, first follow these steps to cancel the subscription then use the next step to try and get a refund on the transaction.

If you’re having trouble cancelling, make sure your apps are updated (although apps should update automatically on an iPhone).

Request a refund

Something to note with requesting a refund is that the purchase has to have gone through, you cannot request a refund on pending transactions.

So, what do we do if we have a payment that has gone through and want to refund? Follow these steps;

• Navigate to your browser on either your phone or a PC and open reportaproblem.apple.com
• You’ll be notified to log in and may have to authenticate.
• Once on the page, there will be a drop down menu, from the options select request a refund and then from the next drop down select the reason you would like a refund.
• Finally, choose the item from the list that you would like a refund for and select submit.

If you want a refund from your app purchase, then this is the best method you can use to try and get one.

It’s not guaranteed, but it’s the best choice you have if you want your money back from an app subscription.

Are you eligible for a refund?

Let’s take a moment to mention some considerations that most purchases will come with.

If you have made a purchase and then used the purchase for a substantial amount of time then you likely will not be eligible for a refund.

The best example I can think of here is say you purchase a paid version of a fitness app then take some time to use the app across a week or so, do a few exercises, browse some of the meals that come with the paid version and just generally use the paid features of the app.

If you then decide that you don’t like what you’re paying for you likely cannot get a refund unless specified by the app itself.

This is a fairly standard practice when it comes to apps so if you are looking to test out an app before paying for it what you can do is look for an app that has a subscription payment method and see if they offer a one week free trial.

Simply do the week free trial and then cancel the subscription before are charged the subscription fee.

Please make sure you check your subscriptions as we outlined above because this is a common marketing strategy that is used and can catch you unaware.

You sign up for a free trial, forget about it after not liking it for a few days and then you get charged for a 6 month subscription – which isn’t great.

Conclusion

It is entirely case dependant on whether you get a refund but if you accidentally make a purchase and then go to refund you should have no issues if you didn’t use the purchase at all.

Please bear in mind that if you make a purchase and use the purchase to a significant extent that vast majority of the time companies will not allow a refund. Unless of course there a free trial period or they state they will give refunds to customers who are unhappy.

This is actually becoming more of a marketing trend as of recently so it’s worth checking if the company is offering this before potentially contacting them so you can quote it and hold them to honouring their outreach messages.