Android in-app billing - How to handle refunds

Question

I'm trying to add in-app billing in my app; everything works ok except for refunds. Since I have been struggling with this for the past few days, it still amazes me that there is no way to determine from the app's perspective whether a user has requested a refund. After the user has received a refund, I want to have the option to terminate access to a one-time managed product (remove advertisements). I am utilizing Google Play APIs because I do not use a backend.

I tried using queryPurchaseHistoryAsync, which returns a list of the user's most recent purchases, to query the Google Play APIs. Given that the purchases are still present even after requesting a refund, this does not appear to operate (been waiting for one day before writing this).

Here's what I did:

1. Install the app on a real device
2. Buy the in-app content
3. Verify that app unlocks the content
4. Go to my Google Play order history and ask for refund for the in-app product
5. 10 minutes later the transaction got refunded (without me as a developer being involved at all)
6. App still provides the paid content
7. Cleaning Play Store App data & cache
8. App still provides the paid content

So after purchasing my in-app product, any customer can request a refund on his Google Play page right away? Is it just me, or is this API a nightmare? Am I missing something simple?

The PurchaseState enum is

  public @interface PurchaseState {
    // Purchase with unknown state.
    int UNSPECIFIED_STATE = 0;
    // Purchase is completed.
    int PURCHASED = 1;
    // Purchase is waiting for payment completion.
    int PENDING = 2;
  }

I do not see anything related to refunded here, This seems to me a pretty normal use case, so I'm still thinking that I am missing some key piece of information, how do I do this?

Thanks for any help

Answer 1

Simply disregard the library's purchase to overcome this. instead of the getPurchaseState() method, use your own unmasked custom:

int getUnmaskedPurchaseState(Purchase purchase) {
    int purchaseState = purchase.getPurchaseState();
    try {
        purchaseState = new JSONObject(purchase.getOriginalJson()).optInt("purchaseState", 0);
    } catch (JSONException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    return purchaseState;
}