Apple pulls app, says developer is responsible for refunds

This story just doesn’t want to end as well it shouldn’t I guess but the saga of Riverturn, Google Voice, and Apple takes a new twist today with word that Apple says it is up to the developer of VoiceCentral, a Google Voice iPhone app, to refund those users who bought the app before Apple pulled it from the store.

At the same time as customers are asking Riverturn if they will continue to support the app or if at some point it will magically be deleted from their iPhones there are also some looking to get a refund for what is basically a dead in the water app.

“Apple made it impossible for our customers to receive the fixes, updates, and support by pulling the app. We were fulfilling our end of the bargain. Why should those refunds come out of our pocket?” says Duerr. “The refund issue and lack of respect for our mutual customers has further soured us on the belief that Apple cares at all about their developers … other than the dollars they bring in.”

Riverturn, which develops apps to sell as well as apps for its customers to distribute, has now put all iPhone development on hold until they see how the situation pans out.

“We are interested in both the Android and WebOS (Pre) platforms. But at this moment, we have not made any final decisions at all, other than that it would be really hard to continue to invest our own dollars in the iPhone development program for our own apps. We think that we will continue to develop apps for our clients but will strongly caution them that they too could lose their investment if Apple ever decides to pull their app.”

Source: MacLife :: VoiceCentral Developer Talks About Being Pulled from App Store and Apple’s Lack of Communication

Add to this the news that the FCC has decided that all the companies involved need to start answering some serious question over this fiasco the next month or so could be pretty interesting on the Apple front.