Popular Twitter clients, Tweetbot and Twitterrific, are offering subscribers of their third-party Twitter applications refunds after being shut down by Elon Musk.
Back in January, Twitter, under new ownership from Musk, decided to ban all third-party clients from connecting to its servers. This meant that overnight, popular applications like Tapbots’ Tweetbot and Iconfactory’s Twitterrific stopped working.
For many Twitter users, their main Twitter client was gone and a move to the official Twitter app on iOS was the only option. Thousands of Tweetbot and Twitterific subscribers paid annually for their subscriptions despite losing access.
With the apps no longer functioning, pro-rated refunds will automatically be issued to subscribers next month, although you might want to think twice before accepting this refund as the businesses have been heavily impacted by a loss of income stream with no warning overnight.
As reported by John Gruber for Daring Fireball, these refunds will largely be paid out by the developers themselves which means that after being punished by Twitter’s laughable decisions under Musk they must now fork out from their own pockets.
How to decline the refund
Teaming up, Tweetbot and Twitterrific are offering customers who are due a refund multiple options. Here’s how to choose what option you’d like to take, although I’ll be declining my refund.
How to decline Tweetbot or Twitterific refunds
1. Open Tweetbot or Twitterrific
2. Choose the “I don’t need a refund button.” Tweetbot users also have the option to convert their subscription to TapBot’s new Ivory app for Mastodon
Refunds will be issued automatically, so this decision is purely based on your experience with the applications and whether or not you want to support the developers through a potentially devastating period for businesses. For those that do nothing, the pro-rated refund will be processed on March 28.
With the apps now essentially dead, the developers have no way of reaching out to customers and so there’s a real chance that very few people open the app and opt to decline the refund. Apple will require Tapbots and Iconfactory to pay between 70% and 85% of each refund depending on the length of the subscription.
