Propagation delay when changing In-app Product price & description in Google Play developer console

Question

How long does it usually take for the price / description change made in the Google Play Developer console to take effect and propagate to devices?

I have two In-App products I am testing with a price and description change.

Using getSkuDetails() from the IabHelper library I am able to query this information at app runtime. After changing the information in the Google Play developer console, the description change showed up fairly quickly in app. However, it's been 2 hours and the price change has yet to query with updated info - it's still getting the original price.

Given that I changed both at the same time, I would expect both to have the same propagation delay.

Which brings up a new question: If the delay is significant, what happens in this interim? Has the price changed for purchases such that going through the Google Wallet workflow will show the new price, but the value shown to customers in the app, gotten via getSkuDetails(), will reflect the original price?

I've scoured the documentation, but there is very little info on what happens when changing prices. This blog post was useful, at a high-level:

http://android-developers.blogspot.ca/2012/12/in-app-billing-version-3.html

Finkle

It's been 24 hours, and the new product price is still not being reflected in the app. I've even uninstalled and re-installed the app, in the case it was cached in the client. Very frustrating. – Finkle

Did you try doing a Force Stop / Clear Data on the Google Play app? I think the caching might be done in that app instead of your app... – Softy

Answer 1

I had a similar issue today, which turned out to be an error with the way I changed the prices. I'm based in the UK and changed the default price field value from 1 GBP to 30 GBP.

The app isn't live yet so I didn't bother to change the local prices further down the page which meant that the store was returning the local price for the UK, which was still the original 1 GBP.

I had to check the "Overwrite existing prices" option and click the Auto-convert prices now button and, finally I had to save the product before it would return the correct price. It still wasn't immediately updated, but did eventually return the correct price after about 3 hours.

Molybdenite

This should be the accepted correct answer. I had the same issue, waited over 12 hours and there was no change in price. Checking "Overwrite existing prices" and hitting Auto-convert as suggested by Chris did the trick. For me in US the change was instant. Furthermore I feel Google gets away with too many bugs lately such as this one (not to mention the Lollipop roll-out disaster). – Overrule

Answer 2

I was observing the same behaviour. Clearing the cache on the "Google Play Store" app fixed it for me.

Simply force stopping my app or the Google Play Store did not. Nor did clearing cache on either my own app or "Google Play services".

Doublestop

How do you "Clear the cache on the Google Play Store app"? – Vilayet

Answer 3

I believe this should happen instantaneously if everything is done properly. If that isn't the case, it isn't an issue for stackoverflow but rather Google. I'd recommend you contact their support.

Sorry for the short answer =/

Nolasco

Answer 4

I have found the google console IAP cost/price updates to be nearly instantaneous.

But I always have to clear the Google Play app's cache on my local device/simulator.

1. Open up the App Management and find Google Play (in your android device's settings usually, this has morphed over the years.)
2. Clear the cache of the app.
3. Then... just to be safe... kill and restart your app you are testing to be sure.
4. If that doesn't cause it to work. Restart the device.

This has worked for me every time. The local instance of Google Play app caches those values (to save on chatty network bandwidth requests if I was to guess...)

One other thing to remember... if you using the file import function to set your products/prices and you set prices per region... the base region (US for me) will have a SECOND entry... make you to set that value too. Your prices will NEVER change if you don't and it will say the price you set overall in the console.

Enisle