What's your refund policy?

We received our first refund request with a vague reason of “It was a mistaken purchase” and then “Theme is great but I will be looking for another one”.

What do you guys do in this situation since this may be a genuine customer or somebody who simply bought the theme and will keep on using it since he/she has the files or is a competing author who wants to see our original solutions?

Thanks,
NordWood

We, and most authors, decline this refund reason. We only offer refunds to items that had not been downloaded or if we cannon resolve an issue, after the client has contacted us with the problem.

5 Likes

This makes a lot of sense because our demo and presentation are very clear on what our theme offers. We didn’t oversell anything so we were confused with the imprecise reasoning for a refund. But then again did it happen to you that the buyer takes “revenge” by staring your theme with 1 star? It’s a silly revenge but it will decrease the public rating of our product.

He rates the item, you publicly explain in that rating that revenge ratings are not allowed, then contact support and tell them the situation, if support doesn’t remove the star rating you still have the public comment to prove the fact that the buyer was simply wrong.

It’s recommended ( and I recommend as an author ) to reject mistaken purchase refunds, for a simple reason, these set precedents. Everyone will " make mistaken purchases "

2 Likes

I’m having the same issue , A buyer is threatening me to “speak badly about his experience” if I didn’t refund him , The refund reason is “It was a mistaken purchase” and I already told him to contact Envato because he already downloaded the file .

I think Envato should block “Mistaken Purchase” refund requests automatically if the buyer already downloaded the file .

What about if somebody thought they were buying a Wordpress theme but they actually bought an HTML template? I’m not saying they should get a refund (unless maybe you also have a WP version and they want to pony up the extra cash), but if they didn’t know it was a mistake at the time of purchase… then how would they find out without downloading it?

I’ve also received a refund request because the user thought it’s a WordPress plugin, when it’s a simple jQuery plugin.

I was going to refund it anyway, but the buyer also threatened me with a 1star rating.

In my opinion there should be the possibility to ask for an envato specialist to intervene and block the user from rating the item or at least answer in our stead when the user is doing insulting remarks.

I don’t know…maybe read the title of the item you are purchasing… 99,9% of the items have specified in their name the tipe of file you are purchasing.

Just a quick example. We had a client that purchased a html file, than asked for a refund for a mistaken purchase saiyng that he wanted to buy the wp, and if we give his money back than he would buy it right that day. It was so urgent because he needed it for a project. We gave his money back. It was the only time we accepted that reason, he seemed legit, but guess what? He didn’t purchased the wp version. I, and all the parteners that I work with discurage a refund based on this reason.

1 Like

Why would they visit the item page to read the title after they’ve bought it?

In your example, you should have got them to buy the other item, and hen refund the original purchase… but I’m guessing you won’t make that mistake again!

Definitely won’t do it again, but apparently people tend to be really convincing when they try to con you. I really don’t think that people can mustakenly purchase something on Tf. The items are really clear named and you can see the names many times before paying it and even before you hit the download button after purchase.

Everything you guys said here makes sense. Fortunately the customer canceled this withdrawal but it is helpful to get some info on how more experienced people do it here.