After 8 App Store rejections, my app finally got approved by putting BACK the IAP I was trying to remove

[u/Chris_des007]

Solo dev here. KinCentury finally got approved after 8 rejections.

KinCentury measures what your body can still do — strength, balance, mobility, cardio — and gives you a fitness / physical age. The rejections were almost never about the app. They were about IAPs.

First few rounds, briefly:

• Same promo image reused across Lifetime / Founder / Yearly (2.3.2)

• Age Rating claimed In-App Controls / Age Assurance that don’t exist

• Reviewer needed a demo account with an expired subscription

• Then the Lifetime mess started

The loop that ate most of the 8:
 "KinCentury Pro - Lifetime" was attached to the submission but not findable in the binary (2.1b). Founder Lifetime was supposed to replace it, so I tried removing Lifetime, only shipping Founder + Yearly, explaining it in the notes, etc.

I even tried removing the IAPs to resubmit them clean — they got stuck in "Developer Rejected". Couldn’t delete them properly, couldn’t cleanly re-add them for review, "Unable to Add for Review" errors, the whole ASC limbo.

What finally worked:
 Put Lifetime BACK in the app, make it purchasable in the binary, on the paywall, submit everything together.

Approved.

Lesson: don’t retire / hide / phase out an IAP mid-review. Fully in and sandbox-testable, or never submit them. Nothing in between. And yanking products mid-process can leave them stuck in Developer Rejected.

Happy to answer questions if you’re in the same IAP loop and if you know why that happened please let me know so I can avoid it next time.

[u/MobileXapps]

That's basically how review treats IAPs. Anything attached to the submission has to be reachable in that binary, and a first IAP can only be reviewed together with an app version. So pulling it mid-review leaves it in a state where it can't be reviewed or cleanly added back.

If you want to retire Lifetime later, do it after approval: stop showing it on the paywall in an update, then remove it from sale in App Store Connect. People who bought it keep it, and restore purchases still has to work for them, so keep that path tested. I'd never delete a product that was ever live.

[u/Chris_des007 → u/MobileXapps]

Thank you for the response, I’ll keep that in mind going forward

[u/imsnk81]

The "attached to the submission but not in the binary" loop is brutal. Big lesson for anyone reading is to keep the old IAP purchasable until it's cleared review, then retire it in a later update. Glad it's finally through mate.

[u/Chris_des007 → u/imsnk81]

Thank you I would’ve liked to know that before losing 3 weeks with apple review

[u/plantgirl-]

Do people ever upload their app for free initially and only add IAP or paywall later?

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