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Infinite Loop / The Apple Ecosystem

Should US$1.99 get you ad-free television? Apple’s not entirely sure.

One blogger wrangles an iTMS refund for a faulty show download. The fault? His …

Chappelle's Show While the iTunes Music Store offers up a veritable cornucopia of delicious media, it is definitely buy-at-your-own-risk. Peruse the iTunes Terms of Sale and you'll find the Refund Policy is short and to the point: "All Sales are final." There have been reports that Apple will, on occasion, let you re-download your purchases once, but your chances of getting your cold, hard cash back are just slightly worse than they are when you set your bills aflame

Enter blogger Kevin Khandjian, who has a very interesting story about actually getting his money back from Apple after a less-than-satisfactory iTunes Music Store purchase. It seems that Khandjian decided to purchase Chappelle's Show: Uncensored, Season 1 and cheerfully began downloading his new purchase. So eager was he to bask in the gentle comedy of Dave Chappelle that he began watching before he had the entire season downloaded and immediately noticed an 8-second ad for some non-Chappelle, content. Unnerved, but willing to live with the inconvenience, he soldiered on only to discover ads during the end credits, and a three-minute clip of something else entirely. In spite of this, Khandjian still kept watching and found similar advertising in four more consecutive episodes of the show.

At this point, he decided to contact the iTunes Music Store and ask for a refund, which is no easy task. The only way to give feedback is through a web form, and after contacting them, he almost immediately received a form letter telling him what we already know, that all sales are final. Khandjian did his best to escalate, even figuring out a way to call Apple directly and speak to someone. His complaint is simple. He paid for the shows and at the time saw no indication that they included advertising. For less than the price paid, he could have gotten ad-free DVDs of the programs. It wasn't an easy battle, but after many days, many emails, and one phone call, the unthinkable happened. Apple gave Khandjian a refund of his full purchase price along with this interesting message:

Please do not repurchase this show in the next two weeks. This will give us time to resolve the issue with the title or remove it, if needed.

Presumably this means Apple will try to hastily remove the advertising. Would they really take the show off the iTMS if they were unable to replace the current version with an ad-free one? Chappelle's Show has proven to be pretty popular among iTunes customers so it seems a little extreme to remove it. It's also interesting to note that at this point it's not clear if the problem is Apple's or Comedy Central's. It's just these kind of quirky content issues that make me marvel that the iTunes Music Store manages to work as well as it does. The image of Steve Jobs making a Vader-like motion to a choking Comedy Central exec and telling him menacingly "There was an advertisement in Chappelle's Show, Admiral," certainly makes me giggle.

Though both companies should lose money when a refund is issued, chances are that it doesn't actually work that way. Apple surely has a mechanism in place to send the royalty checks over to Comedy Central, but getting money back from them again is probably something of a bureaucratic nightmare. In all likelyhood, Apple will just bear the loss. You can at least see why Apple is so keen to never ever give money back under any circumstances.

Chappelle's Show is definitely still up on the iTunes Music Store. Has anyone else purchased it? Were there ads? As customers, we'll probably never see all the fallout, but it would be interesting to find out if there was a change in the show content at least. 

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