REFUND REQUESTED - Sports Cup - Bootstrap 3 Sporting WordPress Theme

Over 6 days ago I purchased an extremely buggy, poorly documented, poorly maintained template by Vergatheme, Sports Cup - Bootstrap 3 Sporting WordPress Theme. I had to request a refund within 48 hours of purchase because of the following:

  • Massively out of date documentation,
  • Demo import scripts import less content than shown on original demo,
  • The icons are missing from template elements on the backend control panel (Gallery/Events/Experts/Team/Players/Locations),
  • No supplied plugin etc included to generate the site sliders even though the demo openly shows the site with sliders operating,
  • Despite contacting the template author via the Comments section of the template, the Contact the Author section of the Author’s Profile and directly emailing the Author via vergatheme@gmail.com all over a 2-day period there has been absolutely no response or communication from the Author whatsoever. This is unacceptable and is halting development works on a client’s project.

Despite requesting a refund within the prescribed manner the Author has made no attempt to contact me and despite Themeforest’s very own service level agreements, no button has appeared to ‘Dispute Refund’; which is what is meant to happen if a refund request goes unanswered for 5 days. We are now in Day 6 since raising this dispute.

What the hell is going on? How come the massive breakdown in communications from Themeforest whom are normally pretty awesome to deal with? This is holding up development on a client’s site and needless to say this is completely unacceptable. Is there a way to contact Themeforest about this other than the email link they provided me?

The way I understand it, the author has 5 (business) days (I think I read that number somewhere) to make a decision. After that period, or if the author declines the refund, the buyer should find an option to dispute. I guess you can always contact Envato support directly, and provide them with the refund request ID, so they can take a look.

Thanks @Tekanewa

I did that however Themeforest never bothered responding so I filed a refund request with PayPal - within minutes my account was locked and I received an email from Richard Girling at Envato Market Help stating that if I rescind the PayPal Dispute then Themeforest will finally actually look at this request.

Let’s see what happens now.

Envato’s response times are unfortunately notoriously slow (although finally improving), so it can take several days until your hear back from them.

Opening a dispute with Paypal will always and automatically lock your account, as it is seen generally as an indicator for fraud (obviously not the case here), where a buyer purchases an item, and then rescinds the payment, without going through the proper channels first. Which is why Envato asked you to cancel the PayPal dispute.

Yup - seemingly.

They were quick enough to request that I cancel the PayPal Dispute however despite me having done that and notified them of it my account is still locked and nothing resolved. Meanwhile I’ve got a client all up in arms about the lost week in development. Not a great week so far. Thanks Themeforest and Vergathemes.

PROGRESS UPDATE: Progress? Still none. Now 9 days since the initial refund request and nothing has been done other than Themeforest changing the status from In Progress to You Raised a Dispute. Now it appears to take a full 48 hours before Richard Girling even bothers responding to emails. Not impressed with Themeforest. Definitely lost confidence in them now.

PROGRESS UPDATE: Progress - still nothing. A total of 11 days later and still nothing resolved. This is beyond ridiculous. I have just been informed that only now has this been escalated to a Level 3 Team. So basically the buck has been passed somewhere else. Brilliant. I’ve already got another project coming up and to honest after all this I’m seriously loathe to spend any more money with Themeforest whatsoever. I’ve been with them for 4 years, bought a lot of stuff and never experienced anything like it. I’ve now got a project 11 days behind, an angry client clamoring for resolution and a new client on the horizon whom I may have to refer elsewhere. Thanks Themeforest. Awesome. Absolutely awesome.

Progress Update: After 13 days the refund has finally been processed. Wow! It took almost two weeks despite Themeforest’s Refund SLA’s stating a total of 7 days (5 days for author response + 2 days for Themeforest).