Developers abusing price drops

Discussion in 'iOS Apps' started by different, Oct 18, 2008.

  1. different

    different Well-Known Member

    Aug 8, 2008
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    Roshambo seems to be constantly appearing in my 'latest price drops' feed. I'm thinking that the developer is abusing the price drop system, and so I am boycotting all of his/her applications. I highly recommend that you do the same.

    Any others that you've seen?
     
  2. arn

    arn Administrator
    Staff Member Patreon Silver Patreon Gold

    Apr 19, 2008
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    I only see Roshambo having one price drop

    see history here:

    http://appshopper.com/entertainment/roshambo

    There are apps that have abused it, but for AppShopper, I can block them from being shown. But it doesn't look like Roshambo is one of them.

    arn
     
  3. different

    different Well-Known Member

    Aug 8, 2008
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    Doesn't explain why it keeps appearing in NetNewsWire... :confused:

    I've unsubscribed from 148apps price changes list and now subscribed to appshopper. Perhaps it's a bug with their feed? :rolleyes:
     
  4. BlueGenome

    BlueGenome Well-Known Member

    Oct 13, 2008
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    I tried NetNewsWire for a while but stuff like that happened to me all the time, it is not a strong RSS reader in my opinion. I purchased Newsstand and I think its fantastic, best RSS reader I have found in the app store.
     
  5. nickels

    nickels Well-Known Member

    Oct 15, 2008
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    I refuse to boycot developers for dropping prices, raising them maybe ;)
     
  6. jlake02

    jlake02 Well-Known Member

    Oct 17, 2008
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    Amen.. finding price drops is like an adult Easter egg hunt! :D
     
  7. Fazzy

    Fazzy Well-Known Member

  8. VeganTnT

    VeganTnT Moderator
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    Jul 19, 2008
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    It's because the dev has changed something on their page. I use pichmedia's feed for new and updated apps. I see the some apps appear when they didn't have an update and I figured out that is what it was.

    if you subscribe to any rss in NNW you'll notice that if they updated a post that it will appear again in your feeds
     
  9. different

    different Well-Known Member

    Aug 8, 2008
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    It's not the price drop itself, just the fact that it kept showing up in my feed reader.

    Since subscribing to AppShopper the problem seems to have gone. :)
     
  10. break5

    break5 Well-Known Member

    Aug 7, 2008
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  11. Chiller ONE

    Chiller ONE Well-Known Member

    Sep 20, 2008
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    Just look at this! Three drops/increases in one day!
     
  12. Oliver

    Oliver Well-Known Member

    Well, that's Bootant. I'm used to that. They (imo) were the first to give out free apps, then make them paid to stay in the top 10 of paid apps. And then release the real free app.

    Also they like to increase the price, update, then decrease the price to be shown as a price drop, because "updates" get ignored most of the time, while price drops get attention.

    They really understood how the whole system works and use it against itself. It's of course annoying to always see the same apps increase and decrease just to get attention. I've put Bootant on my NO-list and won't buy new stuff from them, because they just annoy me (even though I still like BeeCell).
     
  13. vandy1997

    vandy1997 Well-Known Member

    Aug 27, 2008
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    #13 vandy1997, Oct 29, 2008
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2008
    Oliver,

    I understand your point, but I defend what Bootant is doing. He's just trying to make a buck. Things go on sale every week in electronics stores, supermarkets, etc. And if it were easy for companies to lower prices as it is in the AppStore, they would do the same thing. If Bootant were selling crappy products, then I would complain. But he makes some good games and puts effort into them. Sometimes they are even offered for free. So you are not spending one cent if you get them when they are offered for free. This is all a strategy of trying to sell and lowering the price when nobody is buying your product. That's what big companies do every day when they offer their goods for sale.

    I purchased Bootant's apps at their initial price, so I did not benefit from getting them for free, but I surely will not criticize him for implementing a strategy to sell more units of his goods. This is a business, and doing less than what you can to sell your product is bad business.

    I wouldn't choose NOT to buy somebody's product just because that person has a fluctuating pricing strategy. Would you choose not to buy an item on sale if the manufacturer put it on sale more than once per month? It happens more often than you think, and you probably have purchased such products without complaining about it.

    It's just more transparent in the AppStore (and on appshopper.com) because the history of pricing is displayed. But large manufacturers would do the same if they could change pricing so easily and effectively.

    My motto is: "Don't buy the product if it's crap." That is not the case with Bootant's products. Maybe you like DS Effect's strategy of charging a constant $0.99 for utter garbage. Do you respect DS Effects more? Go buy his stuff then to see how great it is. Those are the type of developers whom we should be discouraging from participating in the AppStore. They should be paying ME to use their app.


     
  14. SLDROFHLA

    SLDROFHLA Well-Known Member

    Oct 23, 2008
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    I definitely agree and that is a great point. There was a thread I started about DS Effects several days ago and that is a bad dev, bootant is a good dev
     

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