Refund count and discussions should be public

#1

I just had a refund request from someone who actually bought both versions of a script of mine, reasoning for one that he had purchased the wrong version of the script and for the other one (after one month) that the script was slowing down his internet?

Anyway, I have accepted the refund as he told that he will no longer use the scripts, even though he has already both of downloaded them.

Now comes my suggestion. Why not make the refund count and possibly the refund discussion public, now that the author refunds the items?

What I was thinking is something like this:

  • Buyer asks for refund
  • You can now see a “badge” showing the number of refunds that user requested (you can see the total number of purchases on his profile also). Clicking that badge will send you to a page where you can see all refund discussions that were set to public (so, the author can decide to make the refund discussion public or private).
  • This way, if the buyer has a lot of refunds or the refund reason is very similar to the one he gave for other items you will be able to see that he is a scammer OR, even better have a system to mark users as false buyers and let envato take it further from there. If a user is marked a scammer multiple time he should lose (silently so he doesn’t notice, such as shadow-banning) his right to rate/review and all of his ratings will be hidden.

TL;DR: Show us if a buyer refunds a lot, if he does, hide all his ratings without him knowing.

#2

Badge showing the number of refunds that user requested is a great idea.

#3

hi refund maybe a strategy to cheat so , in other words , a badge might be a good idea, as for me , i am more likely to believe that refund should just not exist indeed … this is a digital marketplace and once the item is downloaded there is nothing to do indeed , so that would be legitimate to protect authors rights

#4

My suggestion is don’t do refund and envato doesn’t refund after file download, buyer can say anything he/she wants but we don’t know what is in his/her mind. One of buyers said he doesn’t have Element 3D plugin after he download the project and he wants a refund and I said can’t do refund after download the project because it has mentioned that this template need Element 3D, then he gave me a 1 star rating for it. So that’s how some of buyers here.

#5

I personally go with the “money back guarantee strategy”, that if the client doesn’t like the script or simply can not use it I will refund their purchase. But, I don’t want for people to abuse this and say that they don’t use it after they downloaded it but actually they will, having some way to know if a buyer is actually a known scammer would help a lot.

In this case I refunded his purchases. One more thing that makes refunding easier for me is that I know that I release regular updates and if they refund but they still decide to use my script (even though illegal) they will be stuck with an old version.

#6

I strongly dislike what the buyer did to you; Now authors are been put at stake so either you refund or you get a 1 star review; in another word sometime you will need to decide to either give a fair rejection which will end up in 1 star review; or give an unfair refund just to keep your reviews intact.

Notice: I am only talking about buyers who try to abuse the system.

#7

Yeah, as of now those are the only two options: refund or 1 star review. That was why I was suggesting being able to mark buyers as scammers and have all their ratings hidden. This way you don’t refund for no reason and still keep you ratings high.

#9

NO NO NO and no :stuck_out_tongue:
The public reviews are more then enough, we got a public review 1 star on missing style css and envato did not remove it now i am stuck with this review being public and another 5 star, that effectively demolished our sales, we went from 3 to 5 sales per day to 1 to 2 sales from that day on.

This only serves as yet another tool for extortion. We have sent bunch of request for removal of ratings solely on extortion and we provided proof. Only one rating got removed and this one was because of the content in the review. They can extort you and state anything they want in review with 1 star and even if you provide proof of extortion it just does not matter.

Trust me any more of this negative notation public features will bring more and more pain. We already do not have any means of protection ourselfs

#10

Did you read my post or just the title? You have just said NO NO NO and mentioned problems that would actually all be solved with my idea implemented…

#11

awesome idea, I’d vote for it, if we could. Hope someone from the team reads this.

#12

Great idea I think… Envato team must look at this…

#13

“You can now see a “badge” showing the number of refunds that user requested (you can see the total number of purchases on his profile also). Clicking that badge will send you to a page where you can see all refund discussions that were set to public (so, the author can decide to make the refund discussion public or private)”

Bad idea. Authors are already overwhelmed with so much new obligations and I personally really don’t want to look at customers profiles and badges. That would be too much information.

And there will already be lot of “interesting” things in public ratings. I wonder what will someone who comes first time to this site will think of it when see all that.

Anyway if Envato wants to do this job of finding customers scammers, that would be fine.

#14

This won’t add any complexity to what an author has to do. It will just provide a way for authors, in case of a refund request, to see if the buyer abuses the system or not so he can take a better decision when deciding whether to accept the refund or not. This will also protect authors from abusive buyers that rate 1 star only because they were not given the refund.

#15

Yes i did read it again any negative connotation means bad news for clients. Most of the clients do not bother much with reading one bad thing can scar you even if it is unjustified.

#16

Authors should not even think about refunds. This way when there is so much threads about it customers will get impression it is so easy to get. And what would that mean for Envato? What kind of product gets refunded all time?

My opinion is that all refund requests for digital products are abusive. I accept as valid refunds only if item is not downloaded yet.

If you do this as hobby and to have nice portfolio then I understand why you have “money back guarantee strategy”. Otherwise it is just blackmail for authors but sure there will be authors who can afford that cost to keep their reputation.

#17

The refund count is per buyer not per item. I’m not saying that buyers should be able to see the refund count of an item. Only the author will see how many refunds did a buyer have and only when they ask for a refund for your item.

@rayoflightt You have some valid points, but what if the item has a bug that makes the item unusable for the buyer? Maybe you stated that a specific theme was compatible with a certain system configuration but turned out it was not? There are certainly some reasons for which the buyer may be entitled to a refund even after downloading the item.
And you said that we should not think about refunds. Well, now we are deciding whether to accept or not a refund request, so we are forces to think about it. And yes, I prefer to reund someone who has a valid argument for refunding the item (and if the problem was with my script) then receive a bad abusive rating and lower my sales volume. Don’t get me wrong, if someone just asks for a refund cause they want one for no reason, they will never get it. That’s why I’m asking for this feature, to be able to distinguish between valid and abusive refund requests.

#18

Then what item updates and improvements are for? There was a time when refund requests were sent to Envato and if reviewers find bug they ask for improvements. I’ve never had refund in 4 years being here as author.

I accept as valid refund cases when item has false advertisement, something like “this theme has two premium plugins bundled” but when you open it there is only one. That is valid reason but not for refund at first, but for asking author for improvement and Envato should have some time frames for this.