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Does your email program have a confirmation step after its "Send" button?

Confirmation steps, in practice, don't really help. After a few uses, people build up the muscle memory that "action, confirmation" is the action. Then the one time in a hundred they want to cancel, they don't realize until too late.

One approach to try would be, for any purchase over $5, make a "confirmation step" that looks like a restaurant bill, and require the user to sign it (with their finger). Perhaps "sign name next to a big number" would be enough to jar them.

But really, the solution is to make it undoable/refundable. No matter what barriers you put up, somebody will do it by mistake (guaranteed), and is going to want their money back. If I can return a $1000 jacket in real life, I should be able to return a $1000 no-op app.



The really fun part is that Apple's policy states the developer must reimburse refunds 100%. Apple's 30% cut stays with them.

Any money the dev got through "accidental" purchases is likely going to fly away again with interest.


Hmm, keep the $1000 and get kicked off the App Store, or lose $300 to stay on? I'm pretty sure the guy is just going to keep the grand.


sending an email != charging your credit card


with $999.99


Don't turn on one-click ordering.


When I hit Control-Enter to send, it actually does confirm with me that I want to do that; however, it does not when I use the mouse... (Thunderbird)

But I still completely agree with you.




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