Changes to the refund, dispute and ratings system on ThemeForest and CodeCanyon

You won’t ever get rid of them, especially if you are willing to refund easily. They will come for more.

@ThemeGoods mostly we get a robotic common reply from Envato for this case saying that we must respect customer experience :slight_smile: don’t know what that means. They only remove 1 star if reviews that are obscene, defamatory, threatening or discriminatory.

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First of all, I’m not rich, I can develop plugins full-time thanks to the buyers here. I’m sure Envato will one day rethink this whole comments/reviews system. It hurts more than it helps.

This it would be great if it were true, but most of the time the support department removes only the ratings with offensive/rude language and they hide behind the “policy”. We had a lot of tickets with crystal clear blackmail messages like “I will rate with 1 star until they implement the feature that I want”. They don’t event want a refund, they simply blackmail you for $50 to create their project because “Hey, I paid $15 for support, you are my slave now”.

This is not healthy, the authors should focus on creating new stuff but instead, they keep patching products for individuals and keep their rating up.This is sad because authors will lose time, Envato will lose better and qualitative products and I’m pretty sure that the market will also lose all the confident authors with self-esteem.

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It helps nothing. Authors become punching bag for customers to stop bother Envato about themes quality. I had one proposal if Envato really wants to satisfy customers and stay fair to authors - demo theme dashboard preview feature as default feature on market, lot of improvements with themes and it’s code could be implemented that could be more fair and more long term healthy, lot of good proposals were given from authors about improvements here on forum etc. This refund thing is just short term satisfaction, long therm it will be great problem even for Envato, but nobody listen…

When I say code quality that means non standardized code in themes, non transparent hosting requirements for themes, why wouldn’t Envato have clear list of hosting requirements for themes listed in front of customers and keep all themes in that limits listing all requirements transparently before authors upload themes?

And this percent of customers who really misuse all system and ask for refund same moment when they purchased theme etc, some of authors proposed time limits for refunds etc I would say, no refund option should be possible to ask for in one month after theme purchase and e.g 3 months after purchase, refund should be possible only after support is asked for help, if theme has bug, author should be informed to update it, give author some time frame for that etc…

Themes are not pair of socks to be tried and replaced with others after 2 minutes if someone is too fat to use them!

Is this applicable to audiojungle files?

I wonder how the system created by Envato works against authors - everyone can blackmail authors, 30% cut for support, users are free to leave 1 star rating for no reason and authors can’t do anything, extra taxes, no support tools for authors despite mandatory support, sale reversals etc etc. And users are free to do anything they want. I miss those days when Envato was transparent and respectful.

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Try to ask Envato to remove an unfair rating and this is the type of answer you will get - they accept the rating is unfair, but also they clearly states nothing can be done to remove it. Real email from Envato:

Wait … since when do ratings still stay after a refund was given? This was not what we were told! :expressionless:

If a refund is given a rating is automatically removed. It’s not removed by the help officer.

I think the help officer might have mispoken.

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image

Envato can only removed rating based on review comment so sending email conversation, tickets screenshots etc. to prove the case won’t help anything. It just wasting time contacting Envato support for this.

In this ticket. I sent them a screenshot of tickets which prove that customer made change on core code and causes the issue and insist that we have to fix it. We tried to explain to customer that we can’t support on heavy custom modification changes. We can help re installing theme to see if it fixes the issue.

So customer asked for refund but he asked for refund of $2,000 for product he bought at $59 because he said he paid $600 for custom changes and we are wasting their time for 80 man hours so he want us to pay that for him as well. Of course, We sent email screenshot of this to Envato support but it doesn’t help anything.

I guess we might have just to live with it or find other alternative market so your sales don’t depend only on Envato market.

Again it’s concluded that new system is giving more power to buyer and less protect to author.

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Ok. My screenshot is from an old email; I thought that same pattern was live until now.

I appreciate the clarification!

Well, this buyer clearly has some “cohoness”!

Naturally, you are under absolutely NO obligation to even consider his “proposal”, even less to actually give in to it. He bought the item as is and any customization/changes he did are solely his responsibility. Envato’s support terms clearly state that customization and changes are NOT part of any support package:

Item support does not include services to modify or extend the item beyond the original features, style and functionality described on the item page. For customization services that will help you tailor the item to your specific requirements, we recommend contacting the author to see if they privately offer paid customisation services or checking out the great service providers on Envato Studio.

If the buyer decided to hire a 3rd party to make those customization/changes, he did so on his own volition (nobody forced him to do so), and it has nothing to do with you as a seller. You fulfilled all support requirements already.

Your buyer is clearly trying to extort you here and to pressure you into providing something you have no legal obligation to do. In my opinion, buyers like that deserve their account on Envato to be locked permanently!!!

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@matthewcoxy I am getting refund request everyday because of the reason “It was a mistaken purchase”.

This did not happen before this change to the refund system. Really frustrated everyday and not sure what I should do. I received two 1 star reviews yesterday because I did not accept some refund requests for mistaken purchase.

Look, what should I do??? These are 4 refund requests that I received in recent 2 days, for mistaken purchases.

“It was a mistaken purchase
The theme was bought by mistake.
The customer wants another”

"Hello,

We purchased this items by mistake.
We bought this items for Magento and our developers are working with IBM Commerce.
Please reimburse our funds and remove the files from our account.
Thanks a lot!"

“It was a mistaken purchase
Hey guys,
Didn’t realize the Ultimate theme was only for Magento and not for WP at all. I bought WP theme and hoping you will refund my Magento theme.
Sorry for the inconvenience guys! I gave you a 5-star review anyway.
Kind regards,
Per-Ola”

"Hi there!
I am Per-Ola and I just made a mistake. I bought your “porto wordpress” theme instead of your “porto ecommerce” theme. The look very similar and while I blame myself 100%, I hope you agree that it was an easy mistake to make.

It was when I was setting up my website www.fitness-nation.co that realized my mistake. I have downloaded the theme already and I fully understand that I might not be eligible for a refund.

I truly hope you can make an exception! I am an honest guy and I have bought many wordpress themes on the envato market for myself and also for my friends (I am the “tech guy” lol). This is the first time I ever mess up. Please give me a refund and I will purchase “porto ecommerce” straight away. Perhaps I can buy the new theme first and THEN you can make the refund? I am open to suggestions but I really hope you are willing to help me out.

Kind regards, "

IS THIS WHAT YOU ENVATO WANTED?

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Yes basically we are happy to give refund to this kind of customer so unreasonable low rating will be removed. But this guy want us to give refund of $2,000 instead of $59 to remove the rating and in this case noting we can do as we can’t give $2,000 to him and Envato doesn’t care.

When I read this complain from fellow author and staff replied “oh you should contact Envato support blah blah…” for authors, we know it won’t help anything and it’s annoying to see such reply repeatedly.

For Envato’s the new service and direction. I think they tried to shift away from being a market place to be a tool instead so they pushes many things which they used to handle for author/buyer . In the end, we as author should try to find alternative market instead of depend on only this market.

We have also similar issue. this buyer is also an aggressive buyer and gave us 1 star. his revolution slider was an old one and didn’t work. we always provide the newest version and the slider was updated and fixed. but he didn’t change.

We have talked to envato support team with screenshots we talked. but the answer was just like what you got. “user experience and … they can remove ratings based on what user wrote down”. so… I guess it’s unfair for authors without any of our fault. it’s very clear but not working at all. we all can do is asking a refund to remove the star.

Wow, this buyer is a thief. haha.

One more from me. :slight_smile: 11 months later a mistaken purchase report. :slight_smile:

I’m not happy to do this and I don’t do this. That is how you support the system which is, as we agreed, not good for authors.

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@rayoflightt is right. Please do not give back money for remove rating. Then this user begin to use ratings for blackmails.

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