"Restoring Purchases Failed" on iPad 2

Got a far from satisfactory response from Apple. And here was me thinking that under the Sale of Goods Act, my contract is with Apple. I will write back. Here's the email:

Dear Christian,

Thanks for writing in today! My name is Matthew with the iTunes Store and I'll be assisting you with your request. I understand you recently purchased a new iPad and would like to restore your magazine purchases on your new device. I can certainly appreciate how eager you must be to keep up to date with your magazines on your new device, and I would be more than happy to help.

Christian, I am unable to determine the cause of the inability to restore your purchases, nor am I able to restore your purchases for you. However, you may be able to reach some kind of resolution by contacting the providers of the magazines in question.

Here are links to their support pages:

Martha Stewart Living Magazine for iPad

http://www.marthastewart.com/msl-support

Martha Stewart Everyday Food Magazine

http://www.marthastewart.com/edf-support

Subscriptions and some In-App Purchases cannot normally be restored for free. For detailed information on In-App Purchase types, please read:

iTunes Store: About In-App Purchases

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4009

If you have any questions, or if the magazine providers are unable to assist, please don't hesitate to let me know.

Take care and have a nice day, Christian.

Sincerely,

Matthew

iTunes Store/Mac App Store Customer Support

Please Note: I work Thursday-Monday, 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM EST

Lang_Country : en_GB

Product : iPad (3rd generation) Wi-Fi

Support Subject : iTunes Store, App Store or iBookstore

Sub Issue : Unable to download certain content from the App Store

GCRM Case ID : 299096124

See additional info below

Which operating system is installed? iOS 5.x

What version of iTunes is installed on your computer? iTunes 10.6

Choose the iTunes Store or App Store for your country: United Kingdom

Describe the alert message you received: Restoring purchases failed

Details:

I have just bought the new iPad. I have current subscriptions for Everyday Food and Martha Stewart Living magazines. When I go into each magazine in the newsstand, I am prompted to restore purchased material..I say yes - I want to restore - and I enter my password. Each time I get an error message saying 'restoring purchases failed' - it does however allow me to re-download single issues I have bought but not any in a subscription. I also tried to repurchase the items and then I get told that I already have a valid subscription and asks if I want to restore purchases. I click yes but the same problem I already described happens.

I have the same problem. My subscription was taken out on iPad2 and I got my new iPad yesterday. I cannot restore previous purchases or evn repurchase as it tells me I have a subscription. I have the same problem with MS Living magazine.

My wife has the same problem with MS Living.

Just got the new iPad and transferred every thing over.

Yet all the magazines that have been purchased have gone, and cannot restore purchases?

We subscribed in December, and it show up under Manage you subscriptions as being paid until December 2013?

Same problem with MS Living.

Used back up of iPad 2 to transfer everything over to new iPad. Ivmedic3214 - yeah - did a backup and restored from that backup. All works fine except for a few newsstand restores.

Some magazines on Newsstand will restore but it seems that a couple of them just refuse even after putting in password etc.

Uninstalled app and resinstalled to see if that helped - no difference.

Hopefully there will be a fix shortly?

I've sent an email to Apple and posted this thread on Twitter copied to @everydayfood and @MS_Living. Will post again here if I get a response. Not holding out much hope as it is the weekend. I agree with DJ (UK) I think a fix is needed.

Yes, not very helpful reply at all.

I would've hoped for more help from Apple on this. Instead of a simple referral to a website that doesn't even answer the question.

Hopefully you'll get a better response to your follow-up email which may take matters further. I suspect we will just have to wait for them to release an updated app with this bug fixed. That, no doubt, could be in a matter of weeks! :(

Have to just keep trying.

I think you're probably right on that scottinhawaii.

Mind you, I still think it would be good for Apple to show some interest in resolving given that they are providing the service and being paid for hosting it.

I'm not convinced that the auto-download thing works at all either. When a new edition is due is sometimes get the badge icon. However, I only have one subscription that actually downloads automatically in the background. I wish more of them actually did that as it would be great to not have to actually go into the apps to download. I thought that was how it was supposed to work?

I have emailed MS too.

In Settings - Store, you'll see the apps that can automatically download.

As I say, this only works with one subscription I have at the moment although the settings page suggests it works on more.

With that one subscription, it's awesome, as when I get up in the morning I have the latest version downloaded and ready to read. Shame more of them don't work like this.

I have the exact same problem, and got a similar useless email to other posters. I did recently change my iTunes account email address, but surely it isn't that, I mean people change email addresses right? Keen to know if anyone finds a solution.

So I tried a clean restore of the iPad to no avail, so I went back to a backup, and the latest edition of Everyday Food is downloading now, I can view it, but it says 'Download Paused' at about 75%.

All other magazines I try give me the message:

"Error During Download: Cannont start the download because the file is missing or invalid"

Or on others I get:

"Cannot install item: Please restart the app and downlload your purchase again"

Check out this thread at Empire magazine: it mentions a problem with software/codes and subs. Seems similar to the problem here? http://www.empireonline.com/forum/tm.asp?m=3220348&mpage=1&key=

Same issue here with my wife's Martha Stewart subscriptions.

I'm thinking it could well be an issue with the MS magazine apps. They haven't been updated since October 2011 (iOS 5.0 release) — still, 6 months is quite some time for a magazine app and certainly predates the point increments to iOS 5 and iPad 3 / iOS 5.1.

My wife has written to the support page of the MS apps — without even an automated reply or support ticket so far. It's hard to know where to turn to, if one side of this equation doesn't even respond to mounting issues with its supscription customers.

I'm having same problems w/both MS apps with subscription. After deleting and reloading Everyday Food app, I was finally able to get my free digital subscription (I'm already a print subscriber) to work. MS Living (of which I have a digital subscription) didn't work and still gives me RESTORING PURCHASES FAILED. I tried to click on both buy & subscribe of the latest April issue. Subscribe tries to restore without luck. When I hit buy, and it said it will cost $3.99. I was hoping the pop up saying, you have already purchased this would show up as it had for other apps that weren't automatically loaded (I also upgraded from iPad 1 to 3). It didn't and proceeded to download it. The subscribe box is gone, but I can't tell if I got charged again. Everything else still indicates I am a subscriber since Sept 2011??? Wait and see. Will definitely deman a refund if I get charged again. ARGH! This shouldn't be so hard!

I have the same issue. I called apple support and they informed me that it was an issue with the subscription and that I would need to call the magazine. I called the Martha Stewart subscription help line (800 999-6518) and Carol at MS couldn't even view my subscription information because I had made my purchase through itunes. She referred me back to apple help. It looks like both places are blaming each other for the problem.

Add me to the list. Can't get my MS subscription. MS and Apple were not only unresponsive, they kept pointing me to the other. Neither seemed to care that I payed good money for a product I couldn't access.