The reason for this post is to share with other authors my recent experience with Envato support. I believe things might change only when we point out what we don’t like and we talk about it.
On the 15th of March I was supposed to receive my payout, this time to a new bank account. I updated my payout details and apparently I spelled “Barklays” instead of “Barclays”. The money got returned back in my Envato account, I didn’t receive any note or email to let me know that the payout failed.
I contacted author support immediately and next day I received a response saying that they did notice a typo in the bank’s name but they couldn’t tell me for sure if that was the reason. They advised me to contact my bank for more details.
Then I proceeded to contact my bank (Revolut) and they asked for a code, which the sending bank can provide in case a transfer got denied.
I contacted Envato support again, asking for this code and any information that might explain why the transfer failed. Support contacted the finance team and after another day of waiting I got this:
We have no other documentation to provide so my advice would be to enter in new details carefully and try this next month.
After another 10 emails of me desperately looking for options to find out what happened, this was their final email:
I appreciate that this is frustrating but I need to draw a conclusion to this now as I am just repeating myself.
We have no other options for you.
We have no documentation to send.
Please follow the steps we have advised.
Essentially, wait 30 days and better luck next time.
They mentioned security reasons, they said sorry we can’t be more flexible, but come on - I just need to know why the payout failed. They even refused to give me any evidence that the payout was even attempted, so I can show it to my bank and maybe get some info from there.
I don’t think I have to explain (1) how frustrating this is - both sides saying “it’s ok on our end” and being unable to do anything, keeping in mind that’s my full-time job and (2) despite being an author since 2012, the lack of any good will to do anything to help.
All I got was “try again next month” and I concluded that if anything goes wrong I can’t trust and count on Envato to help. Don’t even get me started on the Elements store, that’s a whole other topic.
Thanks for reading.