Anybody cares?

Envato Authors Author Hangout
1

Any one knows anywhere where some one purchases an item and can request a refund after 4 years? except for Envato for sure.

I want like to suggest but I know my suggestions like any other suggestion here will be thrown in the trash but I will do what I should and is able to do. may be some body accidentally cares

Refund allowed period must be limited.
Rating allowed period must be limited.
Ratings must keep its order not go to the top every time the rating changes.

There are cases as an author suffers and sure every author does

Case 1#

-Buyer support period got expired
-Buyer open a support request and got denied requesting support renewal
-Buyers give 1-star rating and open a refund request

-Angry author says “Calm down author, Envato will help in this case don’t worry”

-Author opens a support request explaining the case
-Author waiting 4-5 days waiting for this unfair review on the top of his reviews removed
-The valued customer support representative removes the rating

-The customer is back to rate again and start the suffering process again.

Case #2

-An angry customer rates the item 1-star and keeps doing that periodically so you always have a poor rating on top and in front of any prospective customer.

-Authors contacts support, rating gets removed, author rates again and so on.

But who cares, Don’t mind Envato.

9 Likes
2

Hi,

Yes i agree with you. i had few exp like this. :frowning:

3

Same here. I have been recommending a refund period, review period to Envato for ages but they just do not care. And its now new, all big sites like AirBnb has the same policy of time period for reviews and rating.
I have approved refunds after 3 years. Of course you do not want to take the risk of a negative rating :confused:

4

These sound like completely reasonable changes you’ve proposed. Where’s the downside, is it really unreasonable for customers?

5

Anyone can request a refund, on any website, in any shop, for any reason, and after any amount of time. Whether you have to give them one, or want to give them one, or do give them one… is the important part.

6

Well, not anyone and not after any amount of time. Not at least within the European Union, the European law doesn’t give the right for a refund for digital products after you download them.

7

Refunds…
When it comes to digital products, a direct way to abuse authors.

8

You’re confusing requesting a refund, and having to provide a refund. You’re right, but that doesn’t mean I’m not!

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What confuses me is why do we have to go through a frustrating procedure when legally we don’t have to, as you admit.
Yes I have the right to go into a store and ask for a free product and the store has the right to refuse while the security politely escorts me out. Bad rating extortion is something that must be dealt with.

2 Likes
10

Legally you do, under certain circumstances. Here’s the guidelines when it comes to refunds…

So there needs to be the ability to accept or decline refunds. Not to mention that you might want to provide a refund even if you’re not obligated to provide one… i.e. you have the choice. Yes, Envato used to handle all the refunds, so I could understand if you were complaining about authors having to handle refunds rather than Envato, but it sounds like you want to do away with refunds altogether?

Not the best analogy, as you’d really be going into a store after buying something and asking for a refund, which is a pretty common occurrence. Just going in and asking for something free is pretty rare. Yes, because it’s a digital product, you’d get to keep it, but still… it’s pretty unlikely security would get involved.

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Like you wrote under certain circumstances that are nicely mentioned in the envato article you have attached.
Not me and not anyone in this author community are advocating against refunds altogether and really I can’t understand how have you come up with this impression. The option of giving a refund even if I don’t have to, should be without the fear of revengeful bad rating.

The analogy is just fine when you have to deal with customers acting in bad faith but let’s have it your way and show me an example of common occurrence where a customer asks for a full refund after four years having used the product under the threat of defamation.

The company I am working for is buying regularly envato projects, they will be pleased if they can ask for refunds without any consequences.

Sounds like that you try blindly to defend a bad policy.

12

Two points that make me think that you might be ‘advocating against refunds altogether’…

why do we have to go through a frustrating procedure when legally we don’t have to

a bad policy

Why is it a bad policy? The system is set up so people can ask for refunds and authors can decide whether to give them or not. What’s bad about that? What would be a better system under the circumstances? If the policy is frustrating, then what should the policy be?

If the current policy is bad or frustrating, then we can only assume that you either want people not to be able to ask for refunds (which they would still be able to do even if there isn’t a structured means to do so… unless they got rid of item comments and our contact boxes), or you want authors not to have the ability to decide whether to give a refund or not.

Did you not read the original post by ValvePress? There’s an example right there.

What do you mean?!

13

Ok I think that we have a comprehension issue and I am not willing to continue it.
In your first “point” if you read what you have quoted you will notice the word “when” , meaning that WHEN a customer downloads a good project then he/she shouldn’t have the option to ask for a refund. WHEN the project is with errors or he/she never download it then of course can ask for a refund. So no valid point here.
Your next “point” is 3 words out of context that I have wrote after your accusation of me being against all refunds.
So no point here either.

Yes because I have read the original post that’s why I asked you where in the rest of the world you can ask for a full refund after using a product for 4 years. It’s not logical and certainly not legal. And dealing with THIS kind of refunds requests is frustrating.

Many authors are facing defamation blackmailing by buyers that want a refund. You could always read again the original post.

We don’t have to invent the wheel here, there are laws that protect the consumer and the authors.

I don’t know why you are being aggressive but as I wrote above I am not willing to continue the conversation in this way. I tried to express an opinion and you started accusing me for things I never wrote but you think I meant.
I can’t write my opinion more simply, so now I hope that I am understood by you.

Anyway, best regards

14

He gets disabled the second time he does that. So the process terminates quite quickly.

Again, he gets disabled without second notice.

You don’t understand an important aspect about Envato, they don’t step in where the buyer’s rating is RELEVANT to their experience, but in the cases you mentioned, I can guarantee they get disabled faster than air. I can vouch this because I know a lot of authors that had this issue, including over 100+ item comments, and the buyer got disabled.

There is a massive difference between a valued customer, and a spamming blackmailer, and Envato does not tolerate the latter. Buyers are valuable when they do the things the Terms of Service allow them to do, authors are valuable when they do the same, in each case, if those terms are broken or blackmail / pressure / insults are added, disabled, no second notice.

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Thank you for this information, I am glad that you have this kind of protection for the authors. Judging only by the original poster I was led to conclude that a buyer could leave repeatedly bad ratings on the same project without any consequences.

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When customers request support, that means they may have a problem in the configuration and when not replying them they will just rate it as not working

Support team will then reply that the rating is within our community guidelines

so at most cases, the ratings are not even removed

I have ratings reported that the buyer stated that his support got expired and so his request got denied and Support refused to remove it

Usually for Envato support to reply it takes 5 days so we have a poor rating on top of the reviews for 5 days at least so how exactly it is faster than the air?

I did not mention anything regarding relevant to user experience ratings. it is all about ratings for getting support and money back after years

Thanks for the tip, but I had some poor ratings for 15 days. 5 days waiting for the first rating to be removed, 5 waiting for the secod one, 5 waiting for the third

is not it better to limit the refund and review period other than this hassle?

Prevention is better than cure especially when the cure is in most cases lame and not effective.

1 Like
17

Might have been a high influx of tickets, usually, they reply much faster than that. And I keep in touch with a tone of authors and I did hear 5 day reply times, but that is on rare occasions.

I did because that is the reason why Envato sometimes leaves ratings in place, even if they seem unfair, they have something to do with the user experience.

Request that the buyer be disabled due to repetitive blackmail ratings. I believe they will assist you or disable his ability to rate your item, if he proceeds to comments or messages, he’ll get disabled.

As an author I agree, and as an author I don’t at the same time. Imagine what follows “I paid for this, now I can’t get a refund and my item broke my site” … that will lead to more and more painful experiences, in this case, Envaot become the middle-men ( so to say ) and you’re back up by terms of services.

Agreed, but at the same time, here, the cure is the TOS, which I recommend you stick to, and request that your buyers do the same, they break it or you break it, contact Envato Support, 1 day or 5 days, the issue will eventually be resolved, and on an item with a lot of good ratings, 1 rating of 1 star will not affect it.

Think of EBay, you go there, you see an awesome … chair ( whatever, random example ) and 50 buyers say it’s absolutely awesome!!! and one of them " it sucks " … I for one, totally ignore that 1 rating.

18

No aggression here, just trying to get to the bottom of your stance on refunds, as I still don’t understand it! Yes, I get that nobody wants to have to refund money if there’s no valid reason, and I get that people don’t want to get bad reviews if they don’t give a refund, but you’ve not been very clear on why it’s a bad policy and/or what you want changed.

There was no where in the rest of the world part, you just asked for an example. I provided one!

I’m not aware of any countries where asking for a refund would be considered illegal.

Absolutely… I get that, and I understand that nobody wants such things happening. But my question to you, is how do you fix that? You don’t like the current policy, but what should the policy be? How would you eliminate such things?

19

Honestly, the old policy where Envato handled this personally was a lot better. If there was genuinely an issue with the product, Envato would contact you to fix it, but for all the “I purchased this by mistake, I wanted the HTML version but I paid 3x more for the WordPress version, downloaded it and instantly asked for a refund” Envato used to handle this, reducing stress on authors and creating a more consistent experience for buyers.

Right now buyers have very little consistency, it changes author to author what will be allowed for refunds vs. not allowed.

Trying to operate these marketplaces with a skeleton crew is what it comes down to, and although buyers should definitely be able to ask for refunds, it just made a lot more sense when Envato handled this, instead of trying to strip as many man hours from their own commitments, they should just spend some of the millions on keeping areas like this properly maintained, instead of passing the book.

5 Likes
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Lol really, try requesting a refund for your TV :slight_smile: