I got a question. can we (author ) stop giving support to a buyer and ask them a refund? a buyer gave 1 star with revolution slider old version issue ( it solved after update and never change 1 star … and with bad review ). he has been playing with ratings with small problems ( 1 star --> 3 star --> 1 star ). we have been trying to be nice to him. but we feel it will be never end and tired. it hurt our time for good buyers. can we push him to get a refund?
Thank you,
Hey guys, maybe it’s a bit out of the topic I’d like to share my recent experience with a scum. On the same day I got 2 sale reversal with different items. Checked the invoice and it’s so obvious both the same person who abused me. No official, proper name has entered. What I wanna know why Envato doesn’t share the info if the item has been downloaded or not?
Sale reversal isn’t the same as refunds. A sale reversal happens most likely because of payment issues.
@twisted1919 yes I’m aware of it sir! This issue was up before refund request and it still happening and it’s easier than asking refund if you’re intent to abuse one.
@matthewcoxy Don’t know if this has already been asked but: what if customer asks a refund because of my plugin doesn’t work on a theme?
I mean: plugin has no problems, but because of a theme issue or bad codes, it has problems and customer is unhappy.
Am I forced to give refund in this situation?
Would be a bit worrying for plugin devs…
We’ve been receiving quite a lot of seemingly random refund requests without a proper explanation, things like “Doesn’t work, want refund”, and from new users that had just created their accounts this month. These buyers are not even trying to solve their issue - they are not directly contacting us, not offering any kind of details, not raising any support tickets. When we ask them for details about their issues and direct them to our support site, they simply stop replying. After 2 or 3 days of radio slience we proceed to decline their refund since we suppose that they managed to solve thins on their own.
What I’m saying is that if they truly had a valid reason to request the refund, they would have at least replied or contested our decision with Envato, but they never do. Looks to me that a bunch of scammers are trying to download our plugins for free - hopefully Envato is aware of this and doing something about it; I’m going to message them to make sure.
You’re never forced to give refund. In this case you’re not responsible at all according to Item Support Policy: https://themeforest.net/page/item_support_policy
see “Hosting, server environment, or software”. Theme would be “third party software” that customer uses.
Just seen my first super-duper-mega refund genius.
Purchased 3 of my plugins 2 years ago. Ask refund for all of them saying “mistaken purchase”.
Genius! 
what??? 
Denied. Denied. Denied. This is absurd. Really? 
Some refunds I have to refuse since although I take a lot of effort try to figure with them the reason for future improvement but they don’t give any good reason, just want a refund.
Some reasons are just they don’t have enough expertise for the theme (they asked me why you include so many plugins such as Woocommerce, Redux (for theme option), Ooops?! the core plugins are the shortcode. That’s minimum requirements for a premium. I know some use Live customizer but that’s a different dev methodology & approach.
YES, it seems they’re buying the physic product where they can return within 7 days??! They don’t know what they bought is a digital product, return is not actual return. None can guarantee they won’t use it or even delete it from the HDD.
I decided to refuse and don’t take any time for these kinds of customers. Take your limited time for those deserve your effort or at least give you a chance to help.
@matthewcoxy
Look at the term at “Why a refund may not be given” and “you simply change their mind”.
It seems to be a copy/paste typo issue when you adjust this content from https://themeforest.net/page/author_refund_policy and may lead to confusion/misunderstanding of both buyers & authors sometimes.
@matthewcoxy @MhW can we have a clear way of handling “1-star rating” blackmail?
I can understand that you tried to solve this manually with “open a support ticket and we’ll solve the issue” but it doesn’t work.
Almost every time we open a ticket about this issue we hit the wall with a “feedback is relevant to the buyer’s experience” reply. Well no it is not. The fact that a buyer gives us a 1-star rating because he demands custom work support and we can’t offer it is not User Experience.
This is an intentional blackmail to get authors build someone else’s project for free just because “Hey, it works”.
@lup countless times I’ve tried to explain this to Envato officers however they act like a automated robot mate! No luck!
I totally agree with you.
When we try to help theme they start blackmailing and not even ready to show if they have installed the theme in a correct manner or not.
While I was at WordCamp Vienna I am pretty sure that I heard @jamesgiroux saying that Envato is trying to get closer to authors, listen to their problems and that we should get involved more in forums and Envato Community.
Well here we go, take this topic with 435 replies(mostly problems) without a clear answer or statement from Envato.
Hi,
Quick question. We approved a couple of refunds this month (as users had a problem with an item, and didn’t want to use our product even if we solve it, giving fair proof). However we do not see the approved refunds in the statement, and only ‘Manual adjustment’ deducting the earnings for these refunds.
At the same time, we see 2 refunds for the users that we didn’t approve - actually refund requests for these were never open! Clearly these say ‘Sale Refund’, ‘Author fee Refund’ - not a ‘Sale reversal’ which happens for uncompleted payments.
Before we contact support, just wanted to check here - are there any specific valid reasons for that, e.g. refund is approved automatically if the item was never downloaded? As for now we do not understand what is going on.
Thanks!
It can be possible the payment was not completed due to invalid payment. we had a similar one and was told the user’s credit card was invalid… etc.
Thanks! These usually appeared as “Sale reversal” in the statement, I’ll check with the support then if that’s the case for ‘Sale refund’ too.
Hey guys, one of my customer has bought my item 3 months ago and yesterday bought another copy and now asking refund claiming that was a mistaken purchase. I’m kinda confused. Should I refund or not? 