It can take just one click or tap to purchase an app in Amazon's new Android Appstore. On one hand that's convenient, but on the other it means that accidental purchases are far too easy to make.
TechCrunch's MG Siegler discovered just how easy it is to accidentally purchase an app when he managed to do so while merely scrolling through the Amazon Appstore on his mobile device.
As a seasoned tech writer, Siegler's certainly not unfamiliar with the way similar services are laid out so we sincerely doubt he made the purchase out of confusion — and he does not appear to have abnormally large hands or fingers, so we can't blame his purchase on that either.
Instead it was a matter of simply accidentally tapping the wrong spot while one-click purchasing is turned on.
"But hang on a minute," you're shouting right now. "He had one-click purchasing turned on! Must be his own fault then!"
Not exactly. The purchase settings for the Amazon Appstore on your touchscreen device match those of the Amazon Appstore on your computer — meaning that you'd have to sacrifice convenience to reduce the risk of unwanted purchases:
In the [Amazon Appstore], it is literally one click. If you touch the screen in the wrong place — whoops — you just bought an app. Of course, this is assuming you have one-click purchasing turned on. But if you do on the web, you will in the Appstore. That’s what happened to me. It’s super-convenient when it works. And super-annoying when you make a mistake.
On Amazon’s website, one-click is great because it greatly speeds up the buying process. But since most of the things you buy on the website are tangible things that have to be shipped, it’s relatively easy to cancel a mis-click. Not so in the Appstore where there is nothing to ship.
So the lesson? Lose some convenience and turn off one-click purchasing if you want to avoid accidentally buying an app — because despite the exception made in Siegler's case, there are no refunds on such purchases.
Either that or avoid the Amazon Appstore until purchase settings on mobile devices can be different from those on the Web.
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- Sneak peek: Amazon Appstore
- Android apps may overtake iPhone's in a year
- Apple exceeds 10 billion apps downloaded
Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She's a bit obsessed with Twitter and loves to be liked on Facebook.