I can no longer leave an app review in the iTunes store

Apple support seems to be moving at a slow pace, but nonetheless in the same direction as of other smartphone providers like Samsung.

As far as helping others out in this board, that too is diminishing. For the most part, should you get a response, you will likely get an arrogant, brazen, belligerent and condescending type response where these high level posters just like to put down others and make themselves sound superior. Perhaps they were not always this way in this forum. Perhaps they became jaded or their status has gone to their heads which often can happen to the weak-minded. On a rare occasion, you may get a helpful and polite response from someone who is genuinely sincere in helping others.

In terms of trying to solve this issue, you really have to contact Apple customer support. This issue seems to be a bug with Apple. Sadly, they tend to be playing dumb and not acknowledging there is a problem. I guess Apple Corporate is losing site on who made Apple as popular as they are today.

This problem has been around for YEARS and nobody in Apple seems to care.

Yes it's not a killer bug and it's not breaking anything and I actually don't give a f*** if I can't leave a review for an app.

I can still use it anyway.

It's just ugly for Apple to ignore the problem in that I'm just trying to write a review in good faith for some app developer I don't even know but I can't.

Well, who cares?

Let's just f*cking not leave any review for anyone even though we are just doing it in good faith for the app developers.

We can still use the apps anyway.

Apple is just ignoring it because it's not doing much harm.

I'm trying to write a review for an app I purchased and its telling me that I have to own the app before I can write a review. Does anyone know how I can resolve this.

I am having the exact same issue!! What's going on Apple??

I am also having this issue, ever since the switch to iOS5. It even happens when I'm logged into iTunes via my PC. The phone allows me to write reviews, but not submit them. iTunes on the PC works more often than the phone, but for some apps (Wolfram Alpha in particular) I get this erroneous error message as soon as I click 'write a review', and there's no way around it.

I have the same problem (for Mac and iPhone apps) and contacted Apple about this.

The English speaking support said it is a known error and that they are working on a solution. The German support however (which I contacted first, unfortunately) gave me a refund of the apps I wrote them as an example. They told me I should buy them again – which is not possible, since the MacAppStore then gives the message "You have already purchased this app..." Ironically, for one of the two apps I was finally able to write a review, even at this point it wasn't listed in the purchased apps list anymore.

I've never asked for a refund, and it's causing me more trouble than I had before: now I cannot update these refunded apps anymore (since they are not listed in the "Purchased" list). So I have to check manually if there is a new update (comparing version numbers) and then delete the app and "purchase" it again. Of course I would simply buy the apps from the developer directly, however, they are MacAppStore only.

When I asked the AppStore support about a solution for this problem, they said it's technically not possible to write reviews for refunded apps (? yes, of course they were not really reading what I wrote them. I guess support at Apple is done by Siri now) and gave 10 free iTunes songs.

I think reviews are very important for both customers and developers and it's not just a minor inconvenience, but a serious problem; what is especially disturbing, is that it's not the same for all apps: for Pixelmator, I had no problems to post a review, for Jumsoft's "Relationship" it doesn't work, for some apps it worked immediately, for some after a few weeks, for some never.

Happening to me on both iPhone and PC, quite annoying. Something like this shouldn't take over a month to fix.

I am experiencing the same problem. Via iTunes on my MacBook Pro I get the message "You must own this item to write a Customer Review. In order to write a Customer Review for this item you must have purchased or downloaded it.". And on my iPod Touch if I write a review the same message appears when I try to submit the review.

Same problem here...

Seems no one takes the time to fix this...We should all just probably stop buying apps.

I've purchased some 5 star apps that were no good at all and can't leave a bad review.

How is that possible ?

That's it, I should just ignore the situation ?