[29 July, 2016: Some update on this at the end of the post]

If you have ever developed an App for iOS, you would have experienced Apple’s stringent review process. I personally have appreciated the extra effort they put in to thoroughly test the app on our behalf. This definitely makes App Store far superior than its competitor Google’s Play Store which has an almost non-existent quality check policy.

Apple can be really harsh on some borderline violations, still some walk away Scot free despite some gross wrongdoings.

[Here is one BIG example of how Apple is letting a scam run in its App Store. I am calling it a SCAM because it has cheated over 100k users for roughly $200k in last 25 days since its release]

This scam is called — Automatic Call Phone or Phone Recorder App

App is currently being offered at a staggering 50% discount :)

It was launched on June 11, 2016 and it has quickly risen to be the Top Paid App across many countries. This App promises to let you record your Incoming & Outgoing Calls. Sure, it is an interesting use case and is in much demand looking at the hundreds of Apps offering a similar feature. There is one big problem here — Apple officially doesn’t allow any 3rd party Apps to record Incoming calls when its dialer is running. Only way to do that is to do a call merge with your server and record it there. There are some legitimate paid Apps doing that already, but this story is not about such apps.

This App seems to have struck a chord with the users worldwide, climbing Top Paid charts in several countries, including USA where it is No.10 Paid App in the Business category (really impressive).

This App is climbing charts worldwide

I have seen many good apps rapidly climbing charts BUT this one caught my attention when I started reading the App reviews across different countries. It had over 200 reviews and every single review had one thing in common — FAKE APP & ONE STAR REVIEWS.

The average rating of this App is 1.1 and every single review says it’s a FAKE App

If you have some spare time, do read all the reviews here.

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Since it is a paid App and promises a great utility, it has gone on and looted some 85k users and made a neat $186k in 25 days.

This review below summarizes the users’ plight beautifully:

So this App is essentially a bogus App which does NOTHING.

So here are my questions to the App Store’s team:

  1. How did you allow this App to go through your review system?
  2. How come you don’t have any filters to catch such large scale negative markdown of an App?
  3. How do you plan to compensate these users who have lost the money? Would you proactively refund these users?

I found several other bogus Apps with some more serious violations (like giving $$$ for 5 star rating) which has passed Apple’s watchful eyes but this one took the cake so I took an effort to write a post. I have nothing against this particular App/Developer but I wanted to highlight Apple’s slipping standards.

UPDATE: This developer seems to have some internal influence at Apple. This particular App was taken down and then resubmitted under games category under some different account. Then running it for few weeks under games, it has been relaunched again under “News” category with a different account. Why o Why Apple?

Feel free to write to me at dabbot@gmail.com or tag me on twitter at twitter.com/deepakabbot

Disclaimer: Revenue earned is taken from a 3rd party service. It may not be an actual revenue. However, the point being highlighted is that how easy it is to cheat users on App Store even if it means extracting $1000