Why I can't purchase my own application on the Android market? [closed]

Question

I just uploaded my application in the market, but I'm not able to purchase it (it's a pay app).

I saw here that it seems to be made by design, but then why the error message is Server Error try again ?

Is there a way to bypass that ?

Answer 1

Do you have an Android Developer Phone? If so, you can't purchase your own app by design. Since ADPs are unlocked, there's nothing preventing an ADP from easily pirating any app it downloads, so they are purposely cut off from downloading paid apps.

Answer 2

'Please note that it is against Google Checkout's policies to purchase your own application. You will receive an error message when you try to purchase your own application.'

Doesn't look like it. Why are you wanting to buy your own app?

Answer 3

There's definitely validity in trying to buy your own app, simply for the licensing service.

I tried to do the same thing, and received the same error on the server. My purpose for buying my own app is that even when I install the signed .apk file on my phone, the Licensing Verification Library that I use to check License validity does not cache licensing checks UNLESS it is purchased from the market. So there was absolutely no way that I could test the true Licensing experience that users would have on there phones before publishing!

In my case, my brother bought the app right away and tested it, and it worked great coming from the market, where it works a bit differently on my phone. Because of this, I have to wait for it to do the License check every time I run my own app. This wouldn't be bad, except for the fact that I can't run my app when I don't have a connection, such as airplane mode, because it doesn't cache the successful licensing responses!

I would really appreciate Google changing it so you just couldn't rate or comment on your own apps, but that you COULD purchase them. After all, you're actually losing money by purchasing it, since they take 30% for the carrier fees, etc.

Answer 4

Yes, the Google account associated with your market seller account cannot purchase it's own apps.

Personally I think this is a mistake on Google's part. I found some issues I couldn't solve until I had a market downloaded copy of my app - for some reason the debug version worked with the license service all the time, but downloaded ones didn't. I ended up buying it on my wife's phone.

Personally I wish I'd created a new Google account to use for selling my apps.

Answer 5

Yeah, I ran into the same problem. I uninstalled the APK from my phone so that I could download it from the market. It works fine for my free apps but not my paid apps. I guess there is no need for QA and the customer to use the same process lol