Everyone seems to be getting confused with requesting a refund and getting a refund. I would have no problem requesting a refund for my TV.
I bought your Uber Store theme three years ago and I would now like a refund. I mean, I didn’t, but for the sake of providing an example… I have now successfully asked for a refund on that item. Will you give me one? It’s highly unlikely because I’ve never even purchased it. So, that’s a clear cut example of when you wouldn’t give a refund. There will be clear cut examples of when you would give a refund… and there ill be borderline cases when you’ll have to make a decision. But there’s nothing stopping anybody from asking for a refund. Whether it’s a theme, a video, a 3D model or a TV.
Since we all seem to enjoy analogies here, does calling any helpline ever say the first thing as “Hey, would you like to request a refund? No? Alright, ask for support then.”
How about highlighting the fact that you should contact author for support first and leave refund as a small option somewhere. Instead they choose to emphasize and highlight the refund.
Refusing a refund is not that simple. The buyers reactions can have bad effect. For example we got a bad rating on a different reason but whas threatened because we refused the refund, the mistaken purchase one. And its still there.
But let me ask you then, why shouldnt we have a system in place to make it easier for authors. The refund guide system could be in place with steps and in each step educating the buyer and even stoping it if a certain time has passed from the purchase. I ask you why not implement something like this? Developing would be simple and fast and would do wonders for us without big negative effect for the buyers. In any case enev if the refund is rejected by the script they can always contact us for further explenation.
Well I found six sites that sell digital goods and have a specific page or section for requesting refunds, before I got bored and gave up. Can’t list them here as they offer competing products, so it’s against the rules.
Nobody is disputing that part… it’s just coming up with a solution that is the issue.
The refund guide system could be in place with steps and in each step educating the buyer
The information is all available, for both buyers and sellers. Might be best to link to that information if a buyer is questioning why they can’t have a refund… Refund Policy for Customers | VideoHive
Six years would be the absolute maximum that Envato and/or the author could be obligated to provide a refund, so I guess they could go with that. I’ve not heard of anyone asking for a refund over that time period though… so it wouldn’t change much.
The thing you need to remember is that a whole bunch of buyers think Envato sells all the items. Those that don’t, might not even know a refund request goes to the author or to Envato. And having a refund handled by Envato rather than the author, is unlikely to make them any happier with the outcome. So it’s very unlikely it would result in less one star reviews… I don’t think the drop would be very significant.
Just placing the info available is not enough. You have to put it up front, in step by step mode you could place the most crucial things and link the rest.
And the laws are there. For example for nondigital goods in our country and majority EU I presume since we are in EU, you have 30 days time to return the merchandise and get the money without a question, but the product has to be packed back in the original package and not used, I mean you can try on shoes but there must not be any visible wear and tear.
After 30 days there is no I changed my mind, bought it by mistake etc. and if there is something wrong you have the warranty which stores take up to 40 days to correct.
And for digital goods… do read up the laws for EU.
I think that we can agree that rarely anyone ready legal terms, policies etc. well clients don’t even read the description of the item itself that well.
We pay Envato for the usage of the platform and if they change policies and terms because things evolve. Then the platform has to evolve also there are plenty of good ideas on the forums but almost all are ignored mostly we get things that directly benefit Envato with complete disregard of the Author.
In the past few years, we got dumped on our backs all the burden and got tons of distractions that take customers from our products including the refunds. And the policies now further tightens the loop and takes away that little marketing wigle room we had.
And a solution is not to say that is not a solution, authors are putting them out and you are disputing all of them rigorously.
The solution you placed that we do not have to approve the refunds is also not valid as it brings the wrath of the clients.
There are ways and solutions, Envato just needs to show some will towards it.
I’m disputing a lot of the solutions presented as I don’t think the majority of them would work. And whenever you’re looking for solutions to perceived problems, it’s always best to try and identify the possible reasons that solution might not work to start with… before you waste too much time on the things about it that will work.
mostly we get things that directly benefit Envato with complete disregard of the Author.
I can absolutely guarantee 100% that changes are are not made with absolute disregard for the authors. That is not to say that a change might not have a negative impact on authors, but every conceivable outcome will have been considered before something new is implemented. Some outcomes will be missed, some will me misjudged, but they’ll usually have a rough idea of what is going to happen.
Although, to be fair, a lot of suggestions I hear in general do have a certain lack of regard for Envato. It’s rare I see any that consider or take into account costs and potential negative outcomes for Envato. Are they not allowed to be mindful of their bottom line, when a good portion of concerns from authors are related to their bottom line?
So… dropping refunds on authors in the easiest way possible is not an absolute disregard towards authors?
Changing a policy to limit authors capabilities to market (for example offering free items which even aren’t on TF) is not a complete disregard?
Advertising elements on all authors pages and items and stealing away our hard work with any marketing we can do is not complete disregard toward authors?
These are just a few new implementations, don’t get me started on taxes, element price changes, etc.
To even take a 5 min brain storm you can immediately see the overall negative effect all of this instances are having on the majority.
Just to give you few examples of contradictory statements from Envato.
They told us that they do not believe price race to the bottom is going to occur but they implement fixed fee.
They do not believe Elements is going to steal many clients away and is targeting the different public and yet they spam us with it ,they implement websites -> Envato sites as an integrated part of the menu they implement hosting to a limited Envato market authors with implementing it like demos are separate sites.
…
on the other side, they change the policy just to prevent authors using the rare options they have to market their products because few big players found the same way to profit more and use Envato’s machine as Envato does constantly to us.
And for you to dispute solutions without any marketing insights into the works of selling on TF and any analytics insight into the traffic of authors and any analysis behavior of the current support situations and clients behavior well that’s not disputing that speculating without any statistical knowledge of the situation is well your own complete disregard towards authors hard work.
Thanks to all of you guys, I didn’t ever think that my in the trash suggestion will get this controversy
Thank you all, invest your time in something important please. leave all the hard work improving the marketplace to Envato
They are working hard on these improvements, Don’t you remember changing the background to white?! we authors are greedy requesting new improvements each couple of decades
and thanks respected moderators, support is faster than the air, requesting a refund is the buyer right which gets inherited after his death as well, we have no problems at all, just hallucinations
to cool things down a bit let me tell you why the guiding system would work…
We are spending a lot of time educating clients on refunds. Guiding them through the process, what can they do, what can we do to help them. quite a few of them do not even bother to open a support ticket and ask first for help, they go to Envato help and they see that big exposed refund trigger finger happy button and go directly there basically we have to comment the bazooka out of that refund options to get them to support.
And the Envato support link is nicely hidden, back when we did not have the refund option that button did not exist. So yea they know why.
All of this could be solved with simple step by step system which would have the purpose to either get them to contact authors support or detour them from a refund.
And I am not against us being able to provide refunds, I am actually for that, but things lately get dumped on us and are left despite constant pleading to make improvements.
Can never agree with the word ‘after any amount of time’. They can ask, as anyone can write anything, but considered as beyond rules itself.
Envato has no such timeframe rule.
And in shop…lol…will never be possible…use it or not…every purchase receipt has timeframe mentioned. At least in my country.
Exactly, that’s what I said! They can ask, they can request, they can beg, plead, demand, implore, order, or inquire to their hearts content. Doesn’t mean they’re getting one. I said they can ask and you’ve agreed that they can ask, so there’s nothing really to ‘never agree’ about.
And in shop…lol…will never be possible…use it or not…every purchase receipt has timeframe mentioned.
Well it’s very possible for the same reason. A receipt stating somebody has X amount of days to return an item doesn’t stop the occasional attempt to return something at X+1 days or more.
This forums is for sellers and buyers but I rarely see a buyer post here. Seems like every discussion is from a sellers perspective. So as a buyer I can say it is not easy to get a refund from Envato, you need to have a really solid reason for it.
Envato giving somebody a refund after 4 years is either a mistake or they looked into it and decided the buyer was due a refund for whatever reason, usually to do with item being not as described. Maybe you could give more information on the buyers problem with your product?
I am glad I bumped into this thread. I am a buyer and I am very disappointed that I bought a theme and I have to point out this: I don’t have configuration issues, I just did not get what I paid for, everything little thing that I need to add I have to ask if there is a way to add it because the template does not offer an option to add it myself, it gives you what the author wanted you to have. Example: there is a form that offers ages and the theme only shows 10, 20 and 30 as default, and you can’t add more ages, so what do I do? Break my head looking for support, it took me 4 days to find the correct link to support (really), and what was the answer? ‘Go into this file… and there you can code it’. So I am still under my year of support, but support sucks, it takes a week to get an answer and when you are working on a site you don’t want and can’t afford to wake a week for each question I need to make.
My last question looking to add more options I was told to pay for the change instead of telling me where to go to make the changes myself. So I DO want a refund and I DESERVE a refund.
With all due respect (speaking as a big buyer not an author) while I can understand why this frustrates you, technically speaking according to your own description what you wanted was not what the demo showed and required customisation. No matter how trivial it may have been the author is still not in the wrong.
As for them asking you to pay for a customisation - without knowing what the change was and therefore how complex it may have been it’s hard to judge, but again customisation is not part of the support policy and if it was outside what was in the demo then they are well within their rights to do so.
Of course there are files with issues - it’s inevitable in a marketplace of so many items, but I (again as a buyer) can assure everyone that just as many “issues” are down to buyers as much as authors.
A marketplace like this relies on mutual respect and in most cases, authors go out of their way to help their buyers but there has to be some form of guideline to protect everyone and help to manage expectation.
p.s. to bring it back on track: as for 4 years late on a refund request - that’s just ridiculous. As @SpaceStockFootage rightfully said they can still ask , just the same as the author can still say no.
What you say is ridiculous and what I state is not something worthy to be called customisable, but a ploy to sell incomplete products that don’t offer basic things and the force to pay up extra.
If you sell me something that has a form that I can tell someone to put his age and you just as an author give me only 10, 20 and 30 years old as the only option then where to the rest of the world fit in here??? How can you defend such deceitful things??
Again without going too far off topic of the thread, I would stand by my earlier comment.
I do appreciate that in your case adding age groups is relatively simple, however, the rules have to exist because:
with the best will in the world it’s not the authors job to teach people how to work with WP or websites
each buyer has a different (not always accurate) view and expectation of what support should/should not include
adding age groups may be simple but each theme and each issue will be different and while some may be easy, others may be very tricky.
it’s one thing for an author who sells 5 themes a week to go above and beyond to help but what about those who sell thousands? If they offer extra help to one person then they have to do this for potentially hundreds?
The point is how do you define what is fair and what is not without concrete support expectations?
As it is, Items are sold “as-is” but what you required is beyond this and therefore a customisation which is beyond support policy.
These products are in no way “incomplete” - they are meant as a framework to build on and the author can never cater for everyone. There is also a certain level of expected experience and capability in using WP when buying a theme. Of course not every buyer is going to be a developer but it’s fair to assume that someone buying a template to build a website knows how to do it.
Looking at this thread if the other thing you wanted to modify was for new users to revieve confirmaiton emails then assuming that this was not a feature of the demo then it woud be completely reasonable to expect you to pay for something like that. Editing age groups on a form is one thing but automating responses connected to a registration process is far more complicated.
As for refunds. As per the T&Cs that all buyers agreed to… point 27 C " you do not have sufficient expertise to use the item;" so if you got the refund then you were lucky but there was no obligation. If you disagree with this then again with respect why would you agree with the terms?
As we said it is about mutual respect. I can appreciate having bought more items than most here, the excitement of using a new theme and the frustration when things don’t go according to plan. Nevertheless, what buyers get here is an incredible deal and not meant to be an out of the box finite solution, and this doesn’t mean that we can interpret the rules or terms we accept to suit our own individual needs or expect envato or the authors to go beyond their requirements.
