intermittent erros with android (google play) in-app purchase

Question

Some people trying to do in-app purchase within my Android game report that they can never complete the purchase -- that they always get an error message. (Ie, The market app reports an error to my application, and I show the user this error.)

Unfortunately, I don't have any real log data for this one, because it only happens for certain customers of my game, not for me.

What's strange is that after updating to a new version of the app, for some users the problem goes away, and for some users the problem starts. So user A might have the problem in version 1 of the app, but it clears up when they update to version 2. User B might not have the problem in version 1, but it appears when they update to version 2.

I say "intermittent" above, but by that I mean that it only seems to affect a small number of users. But for any given user, once they get in this state, they seem to get the message all the time. HOWEVER, I have had some cases where the problem does clear up suddenly, without an app update. I'm not sure if, for instance, power cycling, or, say, making an in-app-purchase in another app is away to "break out" of this state.

I realize that without a specific error message or API call to name/blame, this question is difficult to answer. I'm just trying to understand if this pattern -- of some users mysteriously getting stuck in a state where they are unable to make any in-app-purchase within a given app -- sounds familiar to anyone for Google Play in-app-purchase.

Also, I build my apps on top of Marmalade, so it's possible that the problem is in the Marmalade layer, not in my app or in the Google Play market itself.

Answer 1

The same problem here: a lot of users can buy items in my app but some users send me emails complaining why they can't buy considering that they can successful purchase items in other apps. I think it occurs because of a temporary problem on the Google Play server or is something to do with the service on Android. I am still looking for an answer to this weird problem...