Get used to it. Rating nowadays is not used widely by buyers (you will have to tell them to rate if you want, ofcourse after you gave a very prompt support), mostly they will rate 1-3stars when they have some issues working with the themes.
Hey Alienjones! In this very same scenario you mention, the same would go for no authors => no Envato => no buyers. Itâs not about that, never was. This is an ecosystem where Envato is facilitating demand (buyers) with supply (authors). This is not a game, buyers vs. authors and should never be treated like this. We need each others to make this ecosystem work. So far Envato did an awesome job these last 10 years (and for sure itâll continue to do so). Regulations and policies are constantly improved and thatâs what iâm hoping here.
Onto support, iâm in this business for about 5-6 years (and iâm a buyer with over 100 items purchased) and one of the reason i became a Power Elite author here was not entirely for my so called designer talents or developer talents, but due to an overall pre-sale & mid & post-sale package i deliver. I care a lot about supporting buyers. Even if itâs a simple âhow to change text colorâ or a complicated âHow to redesign a particular pageâ, buyers get responses, and in 99% cases theyâre helped. Iâm strongly against not supporting an item, even with expired package. However these are the new marketplaces rules now. I will read and pay attention to any support request (from buyers with expired support package), however - depending the case - i will or wonât provide support for that particular request. I understand in some countries thereâs a 12 month support law, however at this moment, as far as it goes for Envato Market, this is the policy http://themeforest.net/page/item_support_policy .
My personal rant was due to item rating removals and the broken system that it is. For example, after insisting with justifications, screenshots, links etc. today i just got refused the 3rd time by a support officer, for my request to remove a rating that was caused by not âproperlyâ helping a user to make customisations to his item. Iâll continue to fight this as iâm not going to take a no on this one.
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This is getting totally out of hand. Buyers have started reacting with negative ratings on simply reading the Envato email or seeing the âsupport has expiredâ message. We offered a complementary 6 months support for existing buyers but they simply opt for negative ratings as thereâs no way for us to contact them.
On a related note, itâs absolutely atrocious that weâre called the âsellersâ yet thereâs no way for us to contact our buyers. Itâs not because of privacy issues but theyâre afraid of authors building mailing lists and moving away - which is illogical at best as everyone that knows a thing or two about permission marketing would immediately see the flaw in the idea.
@Alienjones as @Enabled and @hogash said you canât say envato exists because of buyers. Without a farmer there will be no marketplace and you cannot buy vegetables. So everyone is important in this eco system and everyone fulfilling their requirements with others.
The question in here is with the new support policy regulated by envato which doesnât work well as expected. We know only supported products can sell in a marketplace but it has to be some limitation as one cannot support a customer for lifetime. Envato has set 6 months period for the new support policy.
I can say there is no good reason for a buyer to buy a support extension like for silly things like asking questions about the item which will take a few minutes for the author. But itâs the term we have to follow. However weâre looking for some changes on this policy to have a good reason for buying support extension which do not make controversies between authors and buyers.
Hope envato will look in to this and take appropriate changes/action.
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Yes, it would be nice to block a customer after their support has run out but this is bad business practice and has consequences.
I guess this is why when support expires, the system reverts back to previous behavior where support is implied but not enforced. It is up to you and will cost you dearly in rating.
The best approach is to introduce a bit of a nag when responding to customers whose support has run out.
For instance after answering their question, add:
For further support and quicker response times, please consider purchasing a support extension as your support has run out.
Iâm sure they will understand as pretty much all businesses function in this manner.
Really? Itâs forbidden to give Support if the Buyer hasnât bought a support extension?
Hmm, seems that many of the good authors donât know that.
Seems like most of you have big misunderstandings about what you are selling here and what Envato does for you and how itâs taking advantage. I do not respect Colis just for the simple fact that he doesnât know how to take care of the community here. Simple problems take too much time to be resolved. You donât have to be a genius to lurk around the forums and notice these things.
So hereâs the thing. YOU ARE ALL SELLING PRODUCTS, NOT A SERVICE. Support is generally expected when you buy a service from someone, like hosting, plumbing repair, car mechanic, laywer services etc. Thatâs when you need support, you need someone who answers your questions about these fields, takes care of your problem and deals nicely with you.
You donât buy vegetables, go home, realise you donât know how to cook and then go back to the market and bash the farmer. This is 99% the attitude of buyers here when it comes to Wordpress themes.
Another example, you buy a washing machine. There are instructions handed with it but they are not going to come to your house and put your clothes inside of it or buy detergent. Itâs broken and doesnât work? Send it back, get a new one or refund.
Authors are going out of their way to help buyers because of the competition, not because they realised over night that their goal in this life is to spend hours answering to dumb questions to people who canât google things. And on top of that, this Marketplace takes advantage of the simple fact that it has grown in traffic, but keeps ripping off the authors with taxes, ridiculous fees and ways the buyer can take advantage of. When someone leaves a blackmailing 1 star rating they are not only affecting the sales of that author, they are steering away other potential buyers.
And when you talk about support, howâs the Envato support towards authors when it comes to marketplace issues? You just saw it in this thread.
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Sorry to disagree with you here, I go out of my way to offer support because I believe in the products I build and my customers deserve what they paid for. Has nothing to do with competition for me. If Iâd care about the competition, Iâd focus on releasing 10 million files just for the sake of argument 
my 2 cents 
I recently received a 1-star rating as well, from an angry buyer who couldnât log into my support forum anymore, because his support period expired. And guess what, after contacting Envato to have the rating removed, I also received the same canned replies that this is âa relevant buyer experience and within community guidelinesâ. Even after multiple emails back and forth with Envato support, they still refuse to remove the rating.
Needless to say, that Iâm beyond words ⌠no, actually I have quite some choice words I would like to say, but out of politeness, will not say those out loud.
Iâm more than willing to provide support to my buyers and pride myself on the quality of support I do give (and usually go out of my way to make my buyers happy; a lot of my 5-star ratings are due to the support I provide), even to buyers without valid support package, but I do expect some respect and common courtesy from my buyers as well.
And after already getting insulted from that buyer, it just adds further injury to insult when Envato is unwilling to step up and follow its own guidelines and remove those ratings. Maybe authors should be willing to rate buyers as well, so other authors know who to look out for. But for now, the only recourse I have is to permanently ban that buyer from my support systems.
Luckily, I received multiple 5-star ratings from other buyers since then which make up a little for the 1-star rating, but even for someone with close to 500 ratings (maintaining a 4.8x average), it still takes about 12-15 5-star ratings to make up for one 1-star rating. I can only imagine how much harder it will hit authors that havenât been able to build up a large pool of positive ratings yet, where a 1-star rating can really bring down the overall average to a level, that it will hurt sales and author reputation. And all that, because Envato introduced a support policy that nobody wanted, without taking into account that angry buyers wonât lash out at Envato, but the authors instead, even if authors are just enforcing Envatoâs own policy.
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And he has driven 1000 kilometers around before realize the truth 
Just using our brain and we know what is fair & unfair.
Hello all,
I have purchased a Magento theme and the support has expired.
I asked the author whether the theme supports a specific feature but he refused to respond. I think he just looks at my badge-which says âSupport Expiredâ without reading my question.
In my opinion, what Iâm asking is somekind a presales question.
Every new customer can post questions similar to this one âŚ
"Hello, Nice theme. One of the best here. I have a question. Is it possible to make âquick viewâ option work on product page for related and upsell products area? Thanks. â
And every author wil answer these question.
But if you are a buyer who helped the author to succeed , they just donât care!
The only optionâŚregister a second account log in incognito and post the question pretending you are a interested buyer. A workarround.
Thatâs so wrong of him. I mean it would only take him 20 seconds to say âYes it supports.â, âNo itâs not supported.â or âHavenât tested but should workâ. I mean, leaving common sense aside, itâs just good business to reply for these types of questions. Perhaps youâll need support and purchase a 6month extended support. Itâs definitely his loss.
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No one like to pay extra $$ for support ⌠the best option for authors is to add donation button instead of supportâŚ
Yeah. The author should respond for pre-sales and simple questions. He might missed to read your comment just looking at âSupport Expiredâ.
Iâm afraid it wonât work. You will rarely get a donation, most buyers will think that, since they paid for a product, they are entitled to receive support. Even for products given away for free, donations are extremely rare (I have quite a bit of experience from that perspective).
Hi,
I agree I just recevied 2 stars from 5 stars, due a user asked support after support period expired. Incredibile.
Federico
Hi, the other day it happened to me as well. support expired and additionally the buyer was asking customization on theme which clearly declared that no customization service. Yet I got 1 star and Envato staff didnât even remove it no matter what I said. You better get use to it and remember weâre all alone.
Cheers
This brings up my question - should we even respect the support expired badge?. If Envato doesnât provide help authors handle support, should we even bother? Iâm starting to think that we should ignore the new âsupport expiredâ badges because it clearly shows that thatâs only going to annoy our customers, and Envato doesnât care.
Still no reply from Envato though 
Edit: On top of everything else - have a look at another authors comments. All of the comments appear as âPurchasedâ. So when youâre saying that you will not be providing support, other buyers will read that, and some might not understand why because a commenter with the âPurchasedâ badge has clearly purchased your product. A complete mess.
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best way to handle this will be ⌠provide support even after its expired ⌠and in the end just ask them to buy ⌠if they need any help in future
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