Last night as I was loading up a few apps on my phone I hit an anomaly: I was asked to buy Amazing Weather HD. Why is that odd? Well, Amazing Weather (along with Weather Flow) is one of my top apps and I bought it the day it came out, months ago.
As it turns out, it appears that this is becoming a widespread problem with the Windows Phone Store, a return of a similar glitch that hit Windows Phone 8 users last fall. That issue was much more frustrating though as it hit a lot of apps, depending on your purchase history.
Today, we’ve come across at least three apps that are having problems with this: Amazing Weather HD, Cowlick! and Mehdoh. Indeed Mehdoh has been temporarily hidden due to that problem (and another when attempting to download the app,failure to install). Liquid Daffodil, the developers behind Cowlick! recently tweeted that users should contact @winphonesupport if they are being asked to re-buy their app.
We’re not sure how many Accounts are affected nor how many apps, but it seems to be an unintended consequence of some of the backend changes Microsoft has been making to their services. For instance, we had sporadic reports of SkyDrive login issues yesterday.
For now, we of course recommend that you don’t buy the app again and instead hold off until things get sorted by Microsoft. Also, you can spare any developers your wrath, as it’s not their fault—they’re not trying to double dip.
Have you had to re-purchase an app? If so, which one(s)? Let us know in comments.
