Purchase Restored

Topped off units to finish part of Variant 1 with a $9.99 purchase yesterday and experienced something I’ve never seen before in game...

First, the purchase (via iTunes) failed to go through and the in-game message mentioned something about “current payment information”—I failed to screenshot it, but everything on iTunes like CC info was and has been correct.

I tried the transaction a second time, and received a message that the units pack had already been purchased and gave me an option to “restore” the purchase. I did, was charged once, and got the units once.

Anyone else ever have this experience? I’m assuming the issue could be on my end, since I’ve got four people each with a couple of devices squeezing bandwidth with Zoom conferences, work log-ins, etc. But I’m curious to understand how my purchase would be restored—usually if something fails to go through, it just fails and you try again.

Thanks in advance...

Dr. Zola

Comments

UltimateBatJoke

Yes, I experienced that a few weeks ago. Really weird, and it took me a bit longer to solve it.

DrZola

Thx @UltimateBatJoke

I’ve had a couple of odd purchase messages in the past several months, but this was the first time I’ve had a “restored” purchase. Confirmed I only got charged once, but just odd.

Dr. Zola

UltimateBatJoke

Yea, when I started I bought the 2* Deadpool deal, didn’t work the first time, sis work the 2nd time, and charged me for both. I never got reimbursed, and at this point idc if the $5 value is returned or not, but I’m glad the in app purchase process is smoother now

SummonerNR

Could maybe be that the purchase (from the game's perspective) went through originally, but just not the payment (and Apple somehow knew that was the case) ??
Or visa-versa ??

So when tried again it sort of knew the “incomplete” status of the first time, and the “Restore Purchase” could be a way to reconcile just 1 transaction.

Instead of people asking for a refund of the first one, and then re-purchasing a second time. But that get's you into trouble because the game itself can’t take back Units on a Refund, so they put you into “Negative Units” balance because your money was actually refunded but you got to kept Units.

**So maybe this is a new way (“Restore Purchase”) of avoiding going thru actual Refund Requests from Apple when a purchase runs into initial problems ??

DrZola

Could maybe be that the purchase (from the game's perspective) went through originally, but just not the payment (and Apple somehow knew that was the case) ??
Or visa-versa ??

So when tried again it sort of knew the “incomplete” status of the first time, and the “Restore Purchase” could be a way to reconcile just 1 transaction.

Instead of people asking for a refund of the first one, and then re-purchasing a second time. But that get's you into trouble because the game itself can’t take back Units on a Refund, so they put you into “Negative Units” balance because your money was actually refunded but you got to kept Units.

**So maybe this is a new way (“Restore Purchase”) of avoiding going thru actual Refund Requests from Apple when a purchase runs into initial problems ??

Possibly. I had an issue last November over a week or two where I had a handful of purchases that didn’t go through initially. Can’t remember what I was doing but I needed units (Act 6? Variant?) because I played awful. I was also having a lot of game lag and uninstalled and reinstalled the game several times.

Shortly after my third or fourth “incomplete” purchase (one that didn’t go through initially), I lost the ability to access the unit store entirely—I got a message that said the Unit Store was “unavailable.” Couldn’t get a response from anyone on the team or with Support (other than a generic one), but after about a week the Unit Store came back online as usual. I’m guessing it must have looked like someone trying to game the system when in reality it was a frustrated guy playing badly on a bad connection.

Perhaps this is a way around people getting stuck in that kind of black hole?

Dr. Zola