Nope You shouldnât.
a guy just requested a refund this morning. The reason doesnât make sense. Wrong purchase, expecting features that I donât describe on the description page of my item. If I donât give him a refund, Iâm afraid he will leave a bad rating for my theme. Welp
Do not give the refund, his reasons are just an excuse to get his money back. Refund rules are clear.
Recently I received such message from Scott B (this is envato support manager) on a refund dispute from my customer:
We would like to inform you that after a review of the customers dispute, we found that the customers request was reasonable and that you are legally obliged to provide the customer with a refund due to the lack of response for their issue.
Customer request was:
The item is broken, malfunctioning or not as described
Unfortunately this plugin broke my website and caused the screen to bounce. Additionally, I set up the maps however they were erroring out on some browsers and not on others.
Also, Iâd like to have the font match the plugin uses match my websites, so it wasnât aligned with my branding.
Looks like the reason is âItem doesnât work the way it shouldâ from envato refund policy https://themeforest.net/page/customer_refund_policy
But in such case I have some questions to envato: whatâs the actual reason for refund? Who made this expertise and decided that especially the plugin really broke his website and caused the screen to bounce? I even canât imagine how it might look like, this buyer did not provide any information about such problems in our comments section.
What coding level has the reviewer? I ask because everybody who know basics of CSS easily can find that the plugin does not use own fonts and inherits Wordpress theme fonts (this is for the 2nd buyerâs statement).
So if you are going to be in the role of judge - provide your arguments and reasons.
I suggested to introduce review system similar to Upwork, but thereâs still no official response.
We should really do not allow to leave reviews several times. I have many customers threatening by bad review too often, but support team claim that its not out of Envato review policy.
We put this on top of our item description on all our HTML files, after we got a refund request for a " mistaken purchase" and after reading this topic. This seems to be the practice nowâŚ
With this new refund system. We got more and more 1 star rating when we rejected refund request from customer with reason ex. item is broken, I am not happy without any contact from this type of buyers to our support site, comment or email before.
Also sometimes, we give refund after 1 star rating then customer got it and we checked on customer site. He still using theme after got refund. Try to contact this buyer and hearing nothing.
This new system is giving more power to buyer and less protect to author.
Is this new refund system rolled out to graphicriver too? I got a new tab at my dashboard.
There is a bug with new ârefundâ tab. When I click on other authors refund tab I see my refunds. Should that tab be visible to all or just to authors? Anyway when I click on someoneâs refund tab there should not be link to my dashboard tab, that is a bug obviously.
This new system has given âBlackmailâ power to bad people/buyer.
Refund my money OR I will leave a negative feedback with 1 star
Yes and a lot of people just buy the product and then say âoh i made a mistake, my customer wanted another product, can you refund me?â
Totally a bad idea.
I never refund anybody, 1500 people using the product, we know it IS good, so the refund story is total bull****.
Blackmailing is a real threat.
Envato rethink this please.
I just got refund requests because customer see message âare you sure you want to do thisâ when installing theme. I get pissed off every time when I get refund but didnât get support message before that. Totally disrespectful! Do they think someone is an idiot? But I just say to them, go ask Themeforest support is my theme broken, they should check that and if it is they should let me know, theme will be updated and thatâs it.
Envato, are you sure you donât promise âmoney back guaranteeâ somewhere for our themes? Because I am shocked how customers actually expect to have money back because of reasons like one I mention in previous message. Even they donât bother to ask for support, they just want money back. I canât be sure are they attempt to blackmail or are they really mislead with this refund feature to think this is clothing store? Try the theme, nope I am too fat for that, give me another theme.
Mate, relax. Practice my sport. If the refund is valid, Iâll grant it, else, no! Buyer education. Rate 1 star and threaten? No problem, support message to Envato and account disabled! Voila! Youâre not a slave to anyone, you can refuse the refund, take the hit, and move on! Furthermore, you see the username, and the reason, and you can reply to the review and explain there ⌠the review thatâs public, and everyone will see that the buyer is inexperienced.
Thanks for your positive comment but actually I donât know what youâre talking about, is there any author who got some help from Envato for blackmail? I read only complains that Envato do nothing to protect us.
And Iâve already sent 2 support messages for previous cases of blackmail, screenshots of emails etc and get answer that support can do nothing. Emails are not enough evidence for them, only what has being said in review. Of course, customer wonât say anything about blackmail in review. Last time Envato said they going to rethink this whole refund thing but it requires more time and evidences of blackmail. That is why I will ask authors to send their proofs of blackmails to Envato so we can try to do something and change this situation.
Letâs move this to the PM. Cheers!
One positive thing about the new system - you can get rid of the worst kind of buyers, that leave a 1 star review AND request a refund. Just approve the refund and the review is gone
Contact Envato support? Itâs useless. You will only got general rejections message and they donât even look at screenshots or information you provided.
Send them screenshots of conversation, either emails or messages in requests. More we send better chances they will finally do this policy revision. I got answer from support that they are working on that, but they need time and proof.
@nickys hey mate, please no offense but if youâre that rich why bother to spend hundreds of hours developing a product and dealing with these scummers? Iâve been blackmailed several times and itâs not the right way give refund IMO.