This issue started at the same time that purchasing Pro subscriptions was temporarily disabled.
When I open FlowX every morning, it has reverted back to the non-subscription version.
I have to uninstall and then use the Google Play Store on my phone to reinstall. Then my Pro subscription is back.
What’s going on here?
The only details I can suggest are:
I have multiple Google Accounts on my phone, and only 1 has the FlowX subscription. But this has been stable for ages, so I don’t know what changed.
I did buy the early one-time paid FlowX, before subscriptions became a thing.
I haven’t changed any of the code that loads existing purchases. All I changed what the dialog showing the pro purchases. I replaced the content with just a message. So this is extremely unlikely to be the cause.
I’m not sure what’s going on at Google. I’ve seen some weird things since, like no installation or updates for a 1-2 hour blocks. I really don’t know what’s going on. They emailed us again last night with vague message about an issue but we couldn’t find the issue. It does make me wonder if it’s AI doing this.
For example, your app doesn’t provide a valid source of government information links or links that does not have access, it leads to a blank page in the description.
Regarding, your subscription, can you email me the email you used to buy the subscription, then I can check the status of the subscription. Google cancelled some subscriptions during the period we were removed from Google Play.
Having multiple accounts on the phone can cause issues too. The account you bought Flowx with has to be the primary account.
I really don’t know. Google is:
being very aggressive with following policy such that minor infringement that warrant a warning leads to removal
being very vague in what the exact infringement is
and it’s extremely difficult to get support or talk to someone
We’ve been removed three times pretty much 7 days between each. Tomorrow night/Wednesday morning is the anniversary so we’ll see if we get removed again. Probably for using the Helvetica font instead of Comic Sans.
Thank you for the detailed response.
I logged in via browser and my google account still shows the subscription.
The same symptom happened on another tablet that’s normally turned on, all the time.
Next, I turned on 2 other phones, which are normally turned off.
The Pro subscription is present.
I’ll check in the morning to see if Pro was lost overnight.
Regardless, an uninstall / reinstall brings back Pro for the day.
The FlowX on all 3 phones is 3.424.
The subscription is “Gold 50% off Intro”.
Edit:
Here’s what I’m setting up, as a debugging measure:
Phone #2 is GrapheneOS, so I’ll create a fresh Profile with only the 1 Google Account.
Let’s see what happens to Flowx overnight in this profile…
I did not. It seems to have fixed itself without me doing anything. A few other users are having the same problem and so I’m waiting to see if the problem fixes itself.
I think all have multiple accounts on the phone.
I’ve had two case that was fixed by updating to 4.066. 4.066 have very different code to Flowx 3 and a newer Google billing library - so maybe this is the reason???
3.424 has been out for a while (~month). For it to suddenly stop working, given the code didn’t change, is weird. This suggests it is the Google Play billing service with users with multiple accounts setup on the phone.
On most, if not all apps, purchases are handled by Google Play Store. All Flowx does is ask Google Play Store, “does the user of this phone have Flowx subscriptions” and Google Play will return a list of subscription if they exist.
There is an issue on phones with multiple accounts set up where Google Play does not return subscriptions even if they exist. I have never seen this problem happen with phones with a single account setup. Google won’t fix this problem. They’ve even removed the bug report.
In Flowx 3, the app would allow a several day grace period if a subscription goes missing. Usually the subscription will appear again before the grace period is over and the user does not notice.
In Flowx 4, I haven’t implemented this grace period yet so this is what I think we’re seeing.
I just want to be clear, this is not a problem with Flowx, rather it’s a problem with Google Play. Flowx just has a way to work around it - that I haven’t implemented yet.
Thank you Duane for continuing to dig on this issue!
Google is clearly doing a big disservice to paying users.
Is there any kind of report or thread or anything we can upvote, to raise this issue’s importance with google? We should all be filing reports on this stuff.
I know how annoying this can be - For almost a month now I’ve been going back and forth with Google on another unrelated issue. Even now, I’m not convinced they understand what I’m showing them.
In a web browser on a PC / laptop, log into whatever Google Account owns the Flowx subscription.
From the PC / laptop, go into the Google Play and re-install FlowX to that device.
Even if the Google Play store on your phone has the correct account selected, doing it from a PC web browser is different. I don’t know why, but it is a more reliable way to ensure apps know which Google Account owns their purchases.
