It's worth noting that a large part of his frustrations would be resolved if Google hadn't lowered the refund window to 15 minutes. Google justified that move by saying devs wanted it, but his and my experience says it's just created a huge pain in the ass for everyone.
Been thinking about this article as I play his game (which is great). Some thoughts:<p>(1) it seems like there's a big opportunity for someone to step in with a service that <i>just</i> handles the backend work on the Android Market. Something less then a full fledged publisher but cheaper too. If he's spending say 5% of his time dealing with these sorts of issues (I can't imagine the number is any higher or much higher) then one guy could, as he scales, work up to doing this full time, handle a number of mildly successful indie developers, take 5% from each and be mildly successful himself (more than mildly actually he'll be much more efficient meaning he can scale to many developers).<p>(2) Apple's App Store on the other hand could greatly benefit from some sort of Preferred or Trusted status for certain devs. Maybe it prioritizes their review or allows them to bypass approval for purely bugfix releases. Perhaps they have to fork over another 1-2% in additional fees or insurance or maybe revenues are deferred until the update passes review.
I have seen this same problem with people not understanding how to uninstall or install applications. Granted my app is free and without advertisements I still somehow get these same kind of reviews... My favorite one star review to date: "Once u download this to your phone u will not be able to uninstall this app... I have been trying for days to get rid of it and it won't uninstall!"<p>The funny part is these people do not send emails to me asking for support they just give the 1 star review and move on. I want to say 90% of support emails are people thanking me or asking for new features. When I respond I always ask then to write a review on the market. Hopefully this offsets the 1 star reviews. And remember I do all this for free.