Old version of my App Store app is installed on users' iOS devices

Question

We released an update to our app that had a serious bug - it basically crashed when users tried to login. We removed the app from sale after 2-3 hours and we released a hot fix update 3 days later. The users were notified about the new version by Apple, but when they updated the app, some of them still got the old buggy version. Uninstalling and installing the app again didn't help. It happened for some users only.

The fix was a small update - we didn't change the target iOS version for example.

I read in the Internet that it might take 24 hours for the update to be propagated to all servers, but the users were still receiving the old app a few days later.

Have you guys experienced a similar problem with Apple App Store? Is there anything we can do about that? We're planning to release a major update and we want to be sure that when the users are notified about the update, they'll get it instead of an old version.

Answer 1

When a user that has already purchased the app clicks the they get the last version they downloaded, NOT the most recent. They must download that version and then update.

Answer 2

I have experienced it many times: when the status of my app new version have just become "Ready for Sale", I tried to install the app in my friends' iOS devices to show them the news, but it downloaded the past version and App Store notified the update again and again. I asked them to update the day after and it worked.

Because of that, I learnt to announce new versions one day after status change to "Ready for Sale" to make sure that the version listed by App Store is actually the last update.