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I'm currently working on an iOS app that will allow users to purchase an auto-renew subscription to access service charged monthly. I would like to be able to offer a basic and premium service, and allow users to upgrade or downgrade from one or the other.

I've set up test users and some test products and I've found that if you select the basic subscription first and then later on select to purchase the premium subscription the test user is charged for both services simultaneously.

Does anyone know if its possible to programmatically cancel a users current subscription when we've noticed they've either upgraded or downgraded their service, so they are only being charged once?

I've seen that using this link https://buy.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/manageSubscriptions Allows a user to manage their subscriptions manually, but I would like to handle migrating them to their new plan automatically.

habs93
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The control over the subscription once purchased is by the user. Only the user who purchased can cancel the renewal. As a developer you can't do any changes.

Pichirichi
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  • Thanks @Pichirichi for your reply. That was the impression I got from there docs, but what confused me was some apps seems to provide this ability in app, without forcing the user into iTunes where they can manually manage subscriptions. For example, Hulu does this. – habs93 Mar 14 '16 at 18:37
  • Hulu are doing something interesting: Cancel is done from the server side, there is no iTunes traffic when you cancel. When you upgrade it is done through iTunes and my guess is they have two durations on the same Subscription. Didn't find yet any server side API that can do the subscription cancel. – Pichirichi Mar 16 '16 at 14:57
  • Auto-Renewable Subscription Duration Families, this is how they manage several type but It doesn't explain how they have multiple 1 month duration with different tiers. – Pichirichi Mar 16 '16 at 15:04
  • you are correct @Pichirichi .. They must be using a subscription family although like you said I see no docs about having the same duration for both products. Have you seen any documentation on that? – habs93 Mar 16 '16 at 15:09
  • No, we are looking into it since we are trying to do the same with out product. – Pichirichi Mar 17 '16 at 07:43
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After a discussion with someone at Apple the answer to this is question is that there is no support for multiple product subscriptions with the same duration. They would not comment on how certain apps are able to do this. Officially it's not possible.

habs93
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  • This is not true. You can always go to your iTunes Connect account and create two Subscription IAPs with the same duration in the same Subscription Group. – Iulian Onofrei Oct 03 '16 at 11:10
  • I believe this is true now, but wasn't at the time the question was asked. – habs93 Oct 05 '16 at 00:01