A wrong tap in an app store is not final. Both Apple and Google publish a route back, and each route has one door, one deadline and one set of conditions.
Apple
There is a single door: reportaproblem.apple.com. Sign in with the Apple Account the purchase was made on, choose “I’d like to”, then “Request a refund”, pick the reason, pick the app, subscription or item, and submit.
Apple says to allow 24 to 48 hours for an update on the request, and that once it is approved the money may still take extra time to reach your payment method.
If the charge is not on the page at all, it was almost certainly made on a different account. Search your email for “receipt from Apple” or “invoice from Apple”, read which account the receipt names, and sign in with that one. A Family Sharing organiser can see the group’s purchases from the same screen.
One thing that stops a request before it starts: while a charge is still pending you cannot request a refund on it. Wait for the emailed receipt, then try again.
Google Play
From a browser: open play.google.com, click your profile picture at the top, then “Payments & subscriptions”, then “Budget & order history”. Against the order, click “Report a problem”, choose the option that fits, fill the form, say in it that you want a refund, and submit.
Google says a decision usually arrives within a day and can take up to four, and that sending the same request again does not speed anything up.
The line that moves the request to the developer
Google draws it at 48 hours. Past that, the person to write to is the app’s developer, not Google. The same applies to an in-app purchase that never arrived or does not work as you expected.
Most apps on the store are not made by Google, and Google itself says contacting the developer directly is usually the quickest resolution.
A charge you did not make
If a store charge appears on your card that neither you nor anyone around you made, that is not a refund request. It is a report of an unauthorised charge, and the window for it is 120 days from the transaction.
Photograph: a phone and an open notebook on a desk. Photo by JESHOOTS.COM, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: Apple’s “Request a refund for apps or content that you bought from Apple”, and Google Play’s “Request a refund on Google Play” and “Learn about Google Play refund policies”.
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