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September 19, 2006

itms

Warning: iTunes pricing is seriously buggy

Authored by Dan Moren at 10:38 AM
Category | Music » iTMS
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iTunes pricingUpdate: As of this morning, 9/20, the problem appears to have been fixed, with all movies registering the higher price of $14.99 in both browsing and normal modes.

In what appears to be a flub by Apple, it seems that the price of movies on iTunes can vary, depending on what listing you look at. This has the potential to overcharge consumers for their purchases; if you’re buying movies via iTunes using the 1-click method, I seriously recommend you change to the shopping cart method. How to do so is detailed at the end of this post. Keep reading for the full story.

I was talking to Scott about downloading movies from iTS, and we were both surprised that Disney has sold so many already. For both of us, downloading a movie is more of a novelty than anything else. I mentioned that perhaps I would download A Bug’s Life which, besides the recent Cars, is the only Pixar movie I’ve never seen.

Bringing up A Bug’s Life yielded two shocks: one, that a movie that was released when I was 18 is referred to by Scott as “a good movie from his childhood” (shiver) and two, that there seems to be a discrepancy in price. If I go to the iTunes Store page for A Bug’s Life, it lists a $14.99 price. “That can’t be right,” I thought. “This movie is almost ten years old.” Library titles for iTS were supposed to be priced at $9.99.

Here’s where it gets strange: click the “Browse” button in the bottom right hand corner of iTunes (the one with the eye), and you’ll get a hierarchical view. Select “Movies” from the first column, and “Kids & Family” from the second. A Bug’s Life is the first movie in the list. And it’s price? $12.99.

It’s not alone, either. On a hunch I checked Toy Story, Pocahontas, and Cinderella. All showed the same discrepancy.

This is very serious for consumers. Many customers are set up to use iTunes’s 1-click purchasing method, and if you buy a movie from this listing that’s marked $12.99, you may very well be charged $14.99. I tested this by switching to the shopping cart method. I added A Bug’s Life from the $12.99 and checked my shopping cart—sure enough, it was $14.99.

I strongly recommend that anybody using 1-click purchasing in iTunes switch to using the shopping cart until Apple has addressed this problem. To do so, go to iTunes -> Preferences -> Store and select “Buy Using a Shopping Cart.” Hopefully, Apple will fix this before too long though I wouldn’t hold my breath for them to adopt the cheaper pricing across the board.

I’ve taken screenshots of the varying prices to document the discrepancies and posted them to a Flickr set.


Comments

Well, it seems that Apple has allowed Disney to be flexible with the pricing since A Bug's Life is listed in the "Library" section.

As for the $12.99, THAT price is reserved for those that buy the "new" movies either in as prepay or within the first week.

You are right that not using 1-click is wise (well, I think 1-click is signing up for problems, anyway). However, what it looks like is that a) Apple IS gonna be flexible on pricing and b) that Apple has some coding within the iTMS to fix. That said, I dunno that the $2 is gonna make or break anyone. It's early and a little patience will go a long way (that is unless Apple handles this badly...).

Posted by: MacKeyser [TypeKey Profile Page] | September 19, 2006 04:55 PM

Wow... that's pretty serious... you haven't seen Toy Story?! Get to it!

Posted by: Daniel | September 20, 2006 06:02 AM

I just checked the store and all seems to be correct now in list view. I'm sure that Apple will make good on the money that people might've lost. Very easy to check and easy to put back on the credit cards.

Posted by: James Gowan | September 20, 2006 07:50 AM

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