Subscription iOS app always declined

Question

We have problems releasing our Newstand app on the App Store. It always rejects, since checking the receipts coming from the In-App-Purchase subscription does not seem to work in a live (non-sandbox) environment. The fact is that we tested everything against the sandbox environment, and everything works fine. For the release version, we made sure that we use our validation web service, which checks the action of the Apple Live service, and not the sandbox validation service. Therefore, everything should work, but in the review process it always fails.

Does anyone have experience with similar problems? Apple is doing a live test, right? Since we must present a live version of our application, sandbox checking does not make sense.

We introduced the IAP elements along with the application, but this should not be a problem, as Apple testers seem to be able to purchase a subscription, just checking does not work.

Answer 1

Ok, I found sth in the Apple documentation:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#technotes/tn2259/_index.html (way down frequently asked questions 16.)

"How to check your receipt (iOS)? Always check your receipt first with the production URL; go to check with the sandbox URL if you get a status code 21007. Following this approach, you should not switch between URLs -addresses while your application is being checked or viewed in the sandbox or in the application store.

We misread the line above, "Use the production URL http://buy.itunes.apple.com/verifyReceipt after your application lives in the App Store.", Thinking that Apple will use the real iin server authentication process, but they also use sandbox environment.

It is difficult to find this small line, they should make this fact more noticeable in my opinion!

Therefore, I hope this solves the problem.

Thanks for your comments though!