Steam's refund policy is based in greed

[*****.wes]

Steam’s refund policy basically says “no refunds if you’ve played more than 2 hours or if it’s been over 14 days.” That might be okay for them, but it’s not great for us players. And I bet I’m not the only one who’s run into trouble with this rule.

So, here’s what happened to me: I picked up a game recently, and when I tried to play it, all I got were crashes. I put off fixing it until the next day, and then I spent several hours just trying to get the game to start. It never worked, so within 24 hours of buying it, I asked for a refund. Even though I had 4.5 hours logged, it was all troubleshooting, not playing.

But then I get this automated response from Steam saying they can’t refund me because I’ve “played” over 2 hours. That’s not fair. I didn’t get to play at all; I was trying to fix it!

Now it looks like I’m stuck with a game I can’t use. But I’m not going to let this slide. Whenever Steam gets brought up, I’ll be sure to remind people about their tightfisted refund policy. I’ve bought plenty of games from them in the past, but after this? No way, not anymore.

[Start_Running]

Nguyên văn bởi quizplz:

Ask for steam wallet refund. This may improve your chances.

Not even then in this case.
The wallet refund basically only makes a difference when the payment method can't be refunded to.

[Komarimaru]

If someone needs a time out warning, for hours played and days on account, I feel bad for that person.

[Cray]

Nguyên văn bởi Komarimaru:

If someone needs a time out warning, for hours played and days on account, I feel bad for that person.

The feature requested was an opt-in switch to flip to show a notification when a new game is nearing 2 hours of playtime. Very simple feature to add. Stop being a fanboy.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

Nguyên văn bởi Komarimaru:

If someone needs a time out warning, for hours played and days on account, I feel bad for that person.

The feature requested was an opt-in switch to flip to show a notification when a new game is nearing 2 hours of playtime. Very simple feature to add. Stop being a fanboy.

Phones have that, it's called an alarm. The game also track playtime in the library.

[Komarimaru]

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

Nguyên văn bởi Komarimaru:

If someone needs a time out warning, for hours played and days on account, I feel bad for that person.

The feature requested was an opt-in switch to flip to show a notification when a new game is nearing 2 hours of playtime. Very simple feature to add. Stop being a fanboy.

Call me crazy, but it tells you hours played right in the client. It's not being a fanboy, it's using common sense.

And with all your ranting over the refund policy, it matches or is better than competitors policies. So a pointless rant.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

OP: beware the massive wall of stockholm syndrome apologetic fanboys steam has amassed in these forums who'll add nothing useful. some will defend their abuser at their own peril if they're allowed to.

yes, the refund policy is quite lame as it is. and without years of complaints from users and threats of massive lawsuits and EU charges, they wouldn't even have left it as it is now. it's quite realistic that someone'd try a game in the evening, play 1.5h, go to bed and get up the next morning and not come back home from work until after the deadline, and it is obvious, but they're quite fervent about protecting their revenue and making their own business exempt from stuff that's taken for granted in other businesses, both digital and physical.

worse yet, some game makers play on these rules and do whatever they can to ensure you stay past the refund timeout so it can't be refunded.

people've asked for a 'timeout warning' on the refund deadline, but steam won't implement this because they're scared of losing sales.

https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive

a timeout warning would be a minimum feature to ask, easy fix, but they won't even do that.

Wait, who goes to work for 2 weeks?

[Start_Running]

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

OP: beware the massive wall of stockholm syndrome apologetic fanboys steam has amassed in these forums who'll add nothing useful. some will defend their abuser at their own peril if they're allowed to.

NOthing to do with stockholm syndrome or beijng fan boy. Just comes from understanding the laws abnd how they work. The policy steam has goes a bbit above just about every regions local refund policy. So basically by any way you loke at it,. The OP screwed themselves.

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

yes, the refund policy is quite lame as it is. and without years of complaints from users and threats of massive lawsuits and EU charges, they wouldn't even have left it as it is now.

Except the policy was always there. The only change is that Valve uautomated the process a fair deal to save on man hours and expidite processing time. That's literally it.

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

it's quite realistic that someone'd try a game in the evening, play 1.5h, go to bed and get up the next morning and not come back home from work until after the deadline, and it is obvious, but they're quite fervent about protecting their revenue and making their own business exempt from stuff that's taken for granted in other businesses, both digital and physical.

Is it really that normal for people to not turn of their games when they're away from the computer?

LIke seriously. It made little sense with HDD's and even less sense with SSDs.

People just need to learn to be responsible. for their actions without having someone hovering overthem to mmake sure they don't spill their sippy cups.

[Cray]

Nguyên văn bởi Komarimaru:

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

The feature requested was an opt-in switch to flip to show a notification when a new game is nearing 2 hours of playtime. Very simple feature to add. Stop being a fanboy.

Call me crazy, but it tells you hours played right in the client. It's not being a fanboy, it's using common sense.

And with all your ranting over the refund policy, it matches or is better than competitors policies. So a pointless rant.

"This is better than that" != "this is good". Pretty basic.

[Cray]

Nguyên văn bởi Start_Running:

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

OP: beware the massive wall of stockholm syndrome apologetic fanboys steam has amassed in these forums who'll add nothing useful. some will defend their abuser at their own peril if they're allowed to.

NOthing to do with stockholm syndrome or beijng fan boy. Just comes from understanding the laws abnd how they work. The policy steam has goes a bbit above just about every regions local refund policy. So basically by any way you loke at it,. The OP screwed themselves.

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

yes, the refund policy is quite lame as it is. and without years of complaints from users and threats of massive lawsuits and EU charges, they wouldn't even have left it as it is now.

Except the policy was always there. The only change is that Valve uautomated the process a fair deal to save on man hours and expidite processing time. That's literally it.

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

it's quite realistic that someone'd try a game in the evening, play 1.5h, go to bed and get up the next morning and not come back home from work until after the deadline, and it is obvious, but they're quite fervent about protecting their revenue and making their own business exempt from stuff that's taken for granted in other businesses, both digital and physical.

Is it really that normal for people to not turn of their games when they're away from the computer?

LIke seriously. It made little sense with HDD's and even less sense with SSDs.

People just need to learn to be responsible. for their actions without having someone hovering overthem to mmake sure they don't spill their sippy cups.

It seems I mis-wrote there due to distractions, so let me re-phrase:

It's quite realistic someone'd play 2 hours, turn it off, go to bed, and not get home in time for the refund the next day. This has happened before, eg. when a game sub-process didn't shutdown cleanly.

I should've written 2h, not 1.5, my bad, but I think you can see now that this would easily happen.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

Nguyên văn bởi Start_Running:

NOthing to do with stockholm syndrome or beijng fan boy. Just comes from understanding the laws abnd how they work. The policy steam has goes a bbit above just about every regions local refund policy. So basically by any way you loke at it,. The OP screwed themselves.


Except the policy was always there. The only change is that Valve uautomated the process a fair deal to save on man hours and expidite processing time. That's literally it.



Is it really that normal for people to not turn of their games when they're away from the computer?

LIke seriously. It made little sense with HDD's and even less sense with SSDs.

People just need to learn to be responsible. for their actions without having someone hovering overthem to mmake sure they don't spill their sippy cups.

It seems I mis-wrote there due to distractions, so let me re-phrase:

It's quite realistic someone'd play 2 hours, turn it off, go to bed, and not get home in time for the refund the next day.

I should've written 2h, not 1.5, my bad, but I think you can see now that this would easily happen.

So you're saying they would wait just a few hours before the two weeks is up and play two hours?

[Start_Running]

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

Nguyên văn bởi Start_Running:

NOthing to do with stockholm syndrome or beijng fan boy. Just comes from understanding the laws abnd how they work. The policy steam has goes a bbit above just about every regions local refund policy. So basically by any way you loke at it,. The OP screwed themselves.


Except the policy was always there. The only change is that Valve uautomated the process a fair deal to save on man hours and expidite processing time. That's literally it.



Is it really that normal for people to not turn of their games when they're away from the computer?

LIke seriously. It made little sense with HDD's and even less sense with SSDs.

People just need to learn to be responsible. for their actions without having someone hovering overthem to mmake sure they don't spill their sippy cups.

It seems I mis-wrote there due to distractions, so let me re-phrase:

It's quite realistic someone'd play 2 hours, turn it off, go to bed, and not get home in time for the refund the next day. This has happened before, eg. when a game sub-process didn't shutdown cleanly.

I should've written 2h, not 1.5, my bad, but I think you can see now that this would easily happen.

If you're atv the 2 hour mark they will usually cut you some slack. I mean they won't split hairs of 120 vs 130 mns wghen you make a manual ticket. Though most sensible people come to their decision by the 1 hour mark.

In the OP's case they're mor than double the allotted time. I think its reasonable for any stiore to basically enforce the rules it set forth. I mean it'd be rude to all the people who actually follow the rules if they didn't.

[Komarimaru]

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

Nguyên văn bởi Komarimaru:

Call me crazy, but it tells you hours played right in the client. It's not being a fanboy, it's using common sense.

And with all your ranting over the refund policy, it matches or is better than competitors policies. So a pointless rant.

"This is better than that" != "this is good". Pretty basic.

Well, if you would prefer the minimum required of, once played no refund. We can do that if want.

[HEXEN]

Nguyên văn bởi Komarimaru:

If someone needs a time out warning, for hours played and days on account, I feel bad for that person.

Because that tells us that this person has no control over their own consumer behavior or time management. A mistake that it is not Steam's job to correct.

[Will be deleted]

Nguyên văn bởi 𝙸𝚛𝚞𝚕𝚊𝚗:

Nguyên văn bởi Komarimaru:

If someone needs a time out warning, for hours played and days on account, I feel bad for that person.

Because that tells us that this person has no control over their own consumer behavior or time management. A mistake that it is not Steam's job to correct.

Well providing tools to help such people would be good idea.

[Ben Lubar]

Nguyên văn bởi Cray:

people've asked for a 'timeout warning' on the refund deadline, but steam won't implement this because they're scared of losing sales.

https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive

a timeout warning would be a minimum feature to ask, easy fix, but they won't even do that.

You're telling me you want the game store to interrupt my game 1 hour and 55 minutes into my first session and tell me that I'm going to lose money if I don't try to scam the refund system? That seems like a horrible idea.