Video games website Steam fined $3 million for refusing refunds

[Aslan]

Gaming company Valve Corporation has been hit with a $3 million fine after the Federal Court found its online games site Steam breached Australian Consumer Laws.

here more : http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/video-games-website-steam-fined-3-million-for-refusing-refunds-20161223-gthdux.html

[Mofuji]

Yes, of course you're well within your right to get a refund if the game doesn't work within the two hours, but I personally like to actually play a game before I refund it. Fair shake and all that, even if I have to jump through hoops.

[McFlurry Butts]

Mofuji님이 먼저 게시:

Shamefully, most companies are run by short term thinkers, and it seems that many in this very thread are also short term thinkers as well.

Longer amounts of days to return a game just make it so I can buy a game play it and return it to Steam. That is retarded ans has long term consequences.

[LoTekRabbit]

Thank you Australia. Hopefully one day the US can be as pro consumer as you.

We probably only got refunds thanks to AUS and European pro consumer rights.

To those of you complaining about this I can only laugh.

Mofuji님이 먼저 게시:

Yes, of course you're well within your right to get a refund if the game doesn't work within the two hours, but I personally like to actually play a game before I refund it. Fair shake and all that, even if I have to jump through hoops.

Yeah they need to think of something. It took me an hour to get into the open world of Watch Dogs 2 to see how well the game runs. Then a hour to mess with settings and see if I am happy with it.

I just made it and was able to get a refund. This was my first refund request as well.

[Wh1ppet]

gallifrey님이 먼저 게시:

That seems a harsh penalty. Even if every one of those 21,000 queries featuring the word "refund" had been entitled to a "refund" at an average of A$50 the total unpaid refunds would have only been just over A$1 million. This excludes: -

1) General queries.
2) Repeated enquiries from same source
3) Enquires where refunds have been paid.

There does appear to be an excessively punitive attitude taken towards foreign companies who misbehave in all the Western world - the USA, the EU, Australia.

Perhaps all penalties over $1 million should go to an international arbitration court.

Still it shows the disadvantage of playing fast and loose with the law.

S.x.

It SHOULD be a harsh penalty.. That's the way you levy fines on corporations. You cost them more by the fine than they would have had to pay just following the law, otherwise corporations will do what corporations do... They will blatantly and knowingly BREAK the law because it will be chearper to pay the fine and the court costs over the next few years than it would cost them to actually follow the law... Companies do this in the US ALL THE TIME... The guys digging the DAPL pipeline were trying to do it under the lake, drilling without permission, because drilling now and paying $500,000,000 in fines later will cost them less than the $50,000,000 it's costing them every day they are not drilling... It's why the Army Corp of Engineers decided to raise the level of water in the lake and make drilling impossible, is because the corporation was drilling against the orders of the government and the Army Corp of Engineers and it was the one sly, non-confrontational method they had to force the company to stop drilling, by putting so much weight over their drilling path that there is too much pressure on the drill bits to safely drill... Not to mention I believe the whole area they built the drillpad on is now flooded, so they had to clear it out and remove the drill equipment completely.

[Darren]

To interject.

The lawsuit was against the OLD refund policy (no refunds period), not the new refund policy.

Additionally the lawsuit focused on the lack of the same text in the SSA that you see applying to New Zealand Subscribers (we have the same consumer laws) indicating that they can't limit their liability or right to remedy under New Zealand consumer law (which is still currently missing, and is part of the penalty is they have to include the notice).

The judge also ruled that all the refunds Valve in practice rejected (from those samples he was shown) they were allowed to reject. The only issue they were really pinged on was lacking mentioning that the limitations on refunds and rights to remedy they had in their SSA did not apply to Australians.

[(banned)]

xaxazak님이 먼저 게시:

The problem is they have a unique system of workers working on what they want. It has its benefits, but not many employees would want to spend much time doing customer service.

Meaning, tech support will never improve.

[Richard Upton Pickman]

According to valve they did try and wanted to train an external group for better support. Its been a while since they said they wanted to improve support but nothing new has come up about that. Maybe something will happen when they move office next year or the companies that could have helped with support didnt manage to improve the situation as much as they hoped. Leaving the customer with the same old system. Who knows but valve as it always has been.