You’re actually saying that I can get a free theme every second year and use it in between? Well that’s just amazing. I would buy that for a dollar.
It is our prerogative to not accept a refund, but it’s also their choice to give a 1 start rating for not approving the refund, which is not a valid reason. Maybe we could also reject a bad rating and have it disputed by Envato, but they will never do that 
They’ve always had that option for refunds that are declined though.
Yes but they had to go trought a longer process if they really wanted to do that and the chances of Envato rejecting the refund were a LOT higher than if we are deciding it now because they knew Envato didn’t care about ratings of our items but now they know that we do and they can use that to threaten us. And also now it’s automatic, they can buy, tell us any reason to give a refund and rate 1 star if we don’t, and they KNOW we will give them the refund just so that we don’t have that bad ratings or having to deal with them.
How the refund system works? Where I can refund any purchased items? any screenshot here?
Edit : ok got it : http://themeforest.net/refund_requests/new
Not sure if refunds are coming to the other marketplaces, but I definitely won’t be issuing refunds out of fear of getting a one star rating. My landlord doesn’t accept stars as payment, unfortunately… only cold hard cash, so if they want a refund then they’ll have to prize their money from my cold, dead hands.
Unless there’s actually something wrong with my item of course, then I shall gladly issue one, and unreservedly apologize for any inconvenience.
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It make a lot of sense and you would be right if users would have to come up with real issue to ask for a refund … but they don’t have to, they simply have to say that they tought it would work on WordPress.com, or say they tought it was HTML or any other reasons.
Would you give a refund to someone who say they tought it would work on WordPress.com? Knowing they downloaded the theme already.
And I think you minimize the value of ratings, we all know they can absolutly destroy your theme. To the point where everybody who get a 1 start will automatically give a refund to the buyers to get rid of the rating and the buyer.
When they had to go trough Themeforest for a refund, I’m pretty sure a lot of them just didn’t even bother asking because they knew they wouldn’t get it, or just did it and got rejected, but now that they can ask us … they will take full advantage of it because they know we care about our products a LOT more than TF and we do care about reviews.
I’m not saying that the feature is bad altogheter … I really like the fact that IF it’s my mistake and I think the customer is definitly in his right to get a refund, that I can do it myself and make that customer happy, but I think there is really not much reason to issue a refund to someone who already downloaded the theme and can use it for free if he succeed in manipulating the system just a little bit to get his refund … and it’s easily doable when you have the power to give a 1 star rating. If you think they won’t use it, you are wrong and if you think it doesn’t matter to get a bad review, you are wrong again.
What I say is, we need to be protected against that kind of trick. That’s it.
Here’s something a friend of mine sent me, just an example of how customer can manipulate author into doing something.
And in this case, the “configured template” is already provided and everything is really well explained in the documentation and explaining it again doesn’t guarantee the rating will be changed. Something need to be done about this.
What I’m trying to say is, customer are ALREADY using rating to manipulate authors but now they will do it even more with refund because not only they will manipulate them to change something in the theme, now they will to get the theme for free.
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I have approved a refund request(according to new policy) yesterday, but his review/rating is still remaining!
What’s the link we need to give to customers to start the refund process?
Yaaaaay ! Got first refund request and first 1 star rating
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Guys. As @matthewcoxy mentioned, you can refuse refunds if the certain aspects are met and also, you can elevate the situation with support in case the buyer is abusing you. Just make sure you have a proper case and document all interactions with the buyer. If the buyer is out of line the rating will be removed.
As for the removal of ratings mentioned by @SW_THEMES, can I ask @matthewcoxy, what’s going on? We knew that refunds will result in review removal as well. Is there a bug? Should we contact support after offering the refund?
Cheers guys!
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@Enabled @SW_THEMES,
Once the purchase is approved by the author it will go to Envato Help for processing. This is for a number of technical reasons but also allows us to verify that the customer is not abusing the system.
It will usually take us 3-5 business days to process the refund at which time the customer’s review (including rating) will be removed. There’s some more info in this help centre article.
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What happens when the rating is removed, but then the customer rates 1 star again without putting in any reason at all?
Hi Patchesoft,
Only customers that own the item can rate. Once a refund has been processed (and assuming it’s their only license) the customer will no longer own the item and therefor they won’t be able to re-rate.
1 Like
Hi,
I think you may have misunderstood.
Say a user makes a 1 star rating which is against the Terms Of Use, say they write something like: Did not provide extra customisation! Or something like “Does not work with WordPress!” even when it clearly is stated it’s not a WordPress product.
You report it and the review successfully gets removed. But the user is determined to undermine you and then goes ahead and rates 1 star again, this time not mentioning anything.
Is there anything that can be done in this situation? I’m assuming not but perhaps you have some kind of safeguards in place? Like being able to block a user from writing a review for a month or something if they are found abusing it? IDK.
bad idea/system
Sure so this a general question about customers with deleted ratings and not related to ratings that get removed as part of the refund process. Got it.
Generally speaking if a review is in breach of our community guidelines the Help Officer will remove the review (including the rating) without informing the customer. So in your scenario the customer would need to be scrolling through your reviews, realise that their review was missing and review again. It’s a fairly unlikely scenario but if it does happen then you can report the customer to Envato Help and they’ll look into it further.
Just so that we don’t take this thread too far off-topic; if you have any further questions feel free to set up another thread and tag me in it, or direct message me.
Thanks.
Hi All,
Just a quick update to let you know that today we launched a small change so that Author Teams can now see an item’s Reviews Tab and reply to any reviews left by customers. This is part of the Public Reviews work (that Matt mentioned above) which is expected to be launched early next week.
Please let me know if you have any questions or see any issues.
Thanks.