f13.net

Oh wow. This is going to be one of those  :popcorn: threads with some healthy doses of  :ye_gods: :uhrr: :uhrr:

So recently Steam did a weekend deal on Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition.
It didn't work with my setup so I request a refund, got an auto-can "we don't do refunds, we can try to troubleshoot"
I don't accept this and insist.
I didn't behave myself 100%, but I tried at points to be as polite and civil as I could. Odd that I am having to admit fault here, but well, don't want to paint this entirely as a woe is me. I could have handled things better.

That said, I'm an angry upset consumer and these are professionals who deal with this day in and day out as their job.
I'll include the entire ticket in spoilers. Tech responses in Green, everything else me. I'll add a bit of commentary before each message when relevant.
Link to full Support ticket text. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aapJDQzHrBL2iWsMixUBvBq5ol84W3X8mFp3n_lq2UA/edit)

The following is based on true events. The names may have been changed to protect the innocent.

It starts.

1 Message by you on Fri, 9th Nov 2012 5:53 pm

---

I get an auto-can in response.

2 Message by Support Tech Katriina on Sun, 11th Nov 2012 1:54 pm

---

Little perplexed at the reluctance to refund, even to Steam Wallet, I press on, you can see my tone start to change here. I also pull the "I'm a valued customer!" card.  :facepalm:

3 Message by you on Sun, 11th Nov 2012 2:50 pm

---

I realized I was a bit rude, so try to clarify here.

4 Message by you on Sun, 11th Nov 2012 3:28 pm

---

No response for two days.

5 Message by you on Tue, 13th Nov 2012 11:51 am

---

Anouther day pass, still no response. I inform the tech I intend to pursue legal action.
6 Message by you on Wed, 14th Nov 2012 5:42 am

---

4 hours later I get a response. The tech has taken it upon herself to refund me, but does so through Steam Wallet.

7 Message by Support Tech Katriina on Wed, 14th Nov 2012 9:39 am

---

Too late, I'm pissed, I've already filled out the legal forms required to start the ESCP. This is likely the point where a good number of you will go all  :ye_gods: :uhrr: :uhrr: :ye_gods: at me. I 'won', and noooooo I insist on a proper refund. At this point I am angry, I am not even sure I want to make further purchases with Steam, so the Steam Wallet refund is no longer acceptable to me. I effectively still don't have the refund as far as I am concerned.

8 Message by you on Wed, 14th Nov 2012 10:01 am

---

9 Message by you on Wed, 14th Nov 2012 10:07 am

---

10 Message by you on Thu, 15th Nov 2012 2:56 am

---

Two more days, no responses, I send a message to Katriina that I am escalating the ticket and waiting for her response.
 
11 Message by you on Fri, 16th Nov 2012 10:00 am

---

New ticket to escalate the ticket so I have a soild idea of what they are willing to do and how I should file my legal papers. Still hoping they might open their eyes here and just refund me proper. This gets merged into the original ticket.

12 Message by you on Fri, 16th Nov 2012 10:01 am

---

I get their final verdict. They are highly annoyed. I won't drop this, I keep insisting, and I am threatening legal recourse.
I'm not 100% sure Robbie here knows what he suggested himself, but he seems like a smart guy, I get the feeling he is full aware and it is his professional way of telling me to go eat a dick. Got yo money. Deal with it.  8-)
Dark Souls is 39.99€ right now, I got 26.79€ credit  :drill: :drill:

13 Message by Grand Support Tech Robbie, Lord of the High Realms and Master of all He Sees on Fri, 16th Nov 2012 10:36 am

---

Last message to them, and before the bolded and underline bit from their response really sunk in.
Just want to make sure at this point that they are indeed refusing to redact the Steam Wallet credit and put the title back.

14 Message by you on Fri, 16th Nov 2012 11:13 am

The bolded underlined bit only sunk in later.

I buy a product from you. Say for 5$. Shortly after I realize said product does not work as intended, I ask you for my money back. You say no. I insist. You take the product back, but don't give me my money. You inform me that I have credit with you now for further purchases. I say that isn't acceptable. You tell me well, you can buy back the product I took from you then. For 7.50$  :why_so_serious:

I'm sure that is covered in the EULA or something however. Right under "I drink your milkshake".  :oh_i_see:

edit: spellings

The Digital Age is here.

And how.

If nothing else, this is a big lesson for me to be more careful with my money when purchasing online. Laws are pretty uhhh... not clear at the moment.

I'm curious if I will get a ruling in my favour. They do have it in their EULA afterall. Even if said EULA is also unlawful according to some (lawful according to others). Like I said, it is unclear, and cases like what I am presenting here aren't numerous and well documented around the net from my poor mans Google-fu of it, part of the reason I decided to post this here.

I thought in the EU it's easier to get a refund for this sort of thing?

It is, you just file with the ESCP. Steam themselves will pull the "our EULA says no, neener neener!" thing it seems however. I'm fairly confident I will get a ruling in my favour, will just take upwards to 90 days. If I don't I'll appeal it. Doesn't really cost me much to do it, some minor court costs which will likely be more than the cost of the product itself. 50-100€ or some such.

If you mean from Steam themselves? Yeah, it had been for me, in my 8+ years on Steam, I've only done 8 refund request. All of them went rather smooth. Till now. I am guessing my tone might have had a factor in it, as well as the fact that I had other refund request ticket on my account, as Master Robbie points out. Refunds are gestures of kindness. Not a consumer right. Everyone knows that.

EULA or not that's just poor customer service.  If they can see that you have no time logged in the game and are a long standing Steam user they should just be making the customer happy.  I've never done a return through Steam, but I did fight with a company I pre-ordered from once.  The game I ordered still had no release date in sight months after it was supposed to already be out and I gave up on it.  After a bunch of back and forth the company wasn't refunding me, I just went straight to my credit card company and filed a complaint about it (Chase at the time I believe) and I had the money back on my card a few days later.  Don't know if that would work in this situation or not but it might be worth a look.

I'm confused as to why the wallet solution pissed you off?

To be honest? My first thought after the auto-can was "do a charge back through my bank". I decided to see if they would cave and just give the refund.

When they didn't I thought about it, and was worried that if I did a chargeback they would ban my account.
http://www.steamcalculator.com/id/vaiti/eu (http://www.steamcalculator.com/id/vaiti/eu) - 457 Games with a value of 5314,44€

I would rather not get my account banned, so I decided to go about it through the courts. Oddly, still worried that they will ban my account because I am making a fuss. Unreasonable worry. But there is that slight fear in the back of my head. I mean they did just demonstrate they can do whatever they want with my account.

I accepted the EULA afterall.

Deal  8-) With 8-) It 8-)

The amount of time it had taken to get any action, and having to resort to legal before they relented. I have accepted Steam Wallet credit twice in the past. In both cases the Tech asked before issuing. I wasn't pissed because they didn't ask here. I was simply not willing to accept store credit at that point.

I know  :uhrr:

But store credit isn't a cash credit. And generally you accept a stores credit when happy with their service. I'm not happy.  :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real:

I get your point there.

Doesn't mean it's not slighly Nerf of you.  :grin:

Seems totally Nerf to me  :uhrr:

I'm going to rate it at about 0.5 Nerfs, simply because the risk of actual violence is low and you didn't drag anyone else into your spiral of madness.

Thought crossed my mind, to be sure. Not blind there  :grin:

However this won't be a crusade. The ESCP and laws governing it are fairly clean cut. File, post, wait, get decision, appeal if you want, get final decision then done. All in all 90 days. I'll be out slightly more money or get my refund in the end.

The fact Steam would go through the litigaton rather than just coughing up a refund is far more :uhrr: :uhrr: and Nerf-like when you get down to it.

I'm a single entity, this is simple for me. I don't pay myself anything to file this. It cost me nothing other than 10 minutes of printing and filling in some forms then popping them in the post.

Steam however will have to pay someone to handle the paper-work. Make a case if they want to fight it. Send the refund plus court costs if I win and well, generally a lot more hassle than a 26.79€ purchase should be worth to them. But they are standing on principle rather than taking the easy road FOR THEM of just refunding me.  :awesome_for_real:

Nothing wrong with expecting businesses to follow the law (although I feel sorry for the customer support people swimming in an ocean of corporate bullshit and angry customers). I await the results with interest!

460 millinerfs.

I was pondering proposing a Nerf-based measuring system, but I was going to go with centiNerfs because I just don't think we need that much precision.

It's not the precision so much as 1 nerf being a significantly large quantity.

Valve doesn't care about the EU or EU law, contact your card issuer and dispute the charge and see if/how they fight the dispute.

Valve UK does.

Eh, I look at it like I would a small business.  If I walk into a local family run business and they have a homemade sign saying "NO REFUNDS.  STORE CREDIT ONLY ON RETURNS WITHIN 7 DAYS" then I sort of frown at the one crazy lady raising a ruckus about the earrings she bought 3 weeks ago without a receipt and she's demanding cash.

In your case, you clearly enjoy Steam.  The store credit/Steam wallet solution is a fair resolution.  Now if it's true you've returned like 8 games in the past due to technical difficulties, you start looking more like the lady described above.

16 Message by Grand Master Support Tech Robbie, Lord of the High Seas on Sat, 17th Nov 2012 11:02 am
Hello Chris,

Once the store credit has been issued it cannot be undone.

I have issued the refund to your payment method.

Please note - this is the only exception to our policy that will be made on this account.

This matter is closed for discussion.

Victoly!

Is it really?

I am disappointed. I was expecting a full Nerf.

If more people knew about this thread and how consumer law trumps a two-party contract a lot of people would save a lot of time off customer support arm-wrestling.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2673592/avatar_387.jpg)

I'm surprised that Valve - the saints of the gaming industry would behave in this way.  They seem to be almost EAish in their willingness to fuck over their customers on the way to a profit.

With 8 refunds in 8 years (combined with the hilarious 'only') plus the tone of your emails, this thread lets Steam look like saints here for Not calling Out a known troublemaker. :)

8 refunds in 8 years out of 800 games. I don't see the hilarity.

I do. There are Not that Many broken games on Steam that warrant a refund, if you don't make a Habit of buying the crappiest Games on purpose.

There are Many Bad Games, but that is Not a reason for a refund. So likely Steam was lenient at some  of those 8 times and now his tone implied their leniency was a right of his. May Not be true but thats how it sounds to the professional customer support personell  :grin:

It's kinda freaky that people consider it "troublemaking" to expect a company to obey the law.

Is there a new Europan Law that gives refunds for crappy Games? I'd Love to Hear about that to get my Money back from Blizzard.

For games that don't work, there is.

I misspoke. 4 Refund requests including this one. The other tickets involved not being able to make purchases due to outages or travel. I am a troublemaker and completely unreasonable.

Refund 1:
1 Message by you on Wed, 11th May 2011 12:19 pm

Credit card was refunded.

Refund 2:
1 Message by you on Wed, 31st Aug 2011 12:07 pm

Friend was given Steam Wallet credit.

1 Message by you on Fri, 6th Apr 2012 9:09 am

Bought the expansions separately after getting the Steam Wallet credit.

And then this.

I'm an old lady in a shop making a fuss over earrings 3 weeks later.  :oh_i_see:

I openly admit on this case I was less polite than I could have been. But really? It ended up there, it didn't start there. Why I am suddenly the bad guy for not accepting their Steam Wallet credit after getting some pretty shitty service from them blows my mind. I clearly should shut up and swallow.

It seems that in the EU you are entitled to a refund of even completely functional Steam games, provided you haven't downloaded it.

4 including this one is entirely different than 8, I hope we can agree on that. Thats about half as many and paints an entirely different picture.

Customer support people are just people as well. and even if it shouldn't be the case they have good or bad days. And if they stumble upon a sale history that can be construed as "return policy abuse" and/or emails that gets you on their bad side, they are more likely to interpret their rules more strict and give less leeway.

Would that happen in an ideal world? Of course not. But neither is Steam the new "Evil incarnate" replacement of EA, nor did they abuse you because they are mean sadists or something.

The whole thread is hyperbole by you, as you admitted yourself. So I hope you don't get too annoyed when some of the answers are hyperbole as well.  :why_so_serious:

Nah, I don't. I intend to do a kind of "afterthoughts" thing later when I can drum up the :effort:

Like I said right off. I don't want to paint this entirely as woe is me. I'm disgruntled and annoyed, so of course that is going to come through. But yeah I'm not wholey blameless or without fault.

Robbie there did a good thing in backing his Support Agent for one, I give him kudos for that.

Turns out I'm suddenly in the same position, I purchased Pole Position 2012 at their -75% sale after inspecting the store page very carefully to see if there was any hint of an auxilliary account requirement; I even googled it to see. Nada. So I purchased it, downloaded it, fired it up and was met with the kalypso login page.

I have a few other games which does have an auxilliary account requirement, such as soase, galciv2, r.u.s.e etc, but I haven't bothered asking for a refund on those, since it took a while from purchase until I actually tried it out, but pole position 2012 was tested within an hour of purchase, and the initial request was sent within 6 hours of purchase. Personally I don't think it unreasonable to expect a refund in this case, and I do intend to have a quick chat with norway's consumer agency regarding what exactly our rights are, but if Valve still won't refund me (they've given me the initial boilerplate "no, we don't do refunds after the game has been launched" mail, of course), meh, it's €3.49. It's still disappointing, but I'll live.

But basically I just requested
1) A refund (I don't care how, it's the principle of the thing)
2) A removal of the game from my account
3) An update on their store page to show that the game does, indeed, require a kalypso account, so others who don't care for 3rd party auth systems can see that they should avoid it as well.

Despite my issue eventually getting resolved. I've not made a single purchase with Steam since this incident. Managed to avoid all Autumn sales.

Just left a bad taste in my mouth. I've got enough games on my account. They couldn't be arsed to help me here till I made a huge fuss about it. Dunno, just not feeling the impulse buy anymore. Maybe it will fade by the time the Christmas sales roll around.

I don't think I'm going to react that badly, it's just €3,50. On the other hand, it is just €3,50, and you would've thought they would've had no issue with refunding that just for the goodwill.

But I guess my list of no-buy publishers will have to be expanded to the following list: ubisoft, activision, EA (wololol no new games on steam anymore, problem solved), focus home interactive, stardock interactive and kalypso. I do wish I could exclude whole publishers from the storepages, though, so it would be even easier to avoid games from publishers utilizing their own auth systems, but ah well.

Yeah, see that is the thing. It is JUST a small amount. The stinginess of it makes me a little more cautious with purchases at the moment since I know if I have a problem they won't willingly help out. Good customer, bad customer, doesn't matter.

Sad thing is, to get them to do the right thing in this case and just refund you that 3.50€ that you are going to end up spending with them again anyways, you would have to go my route. At which case you end up in my position of not knowing if you want to give them that 3.50€ anymore.

I guess I can just keep sending them questions about whatever game I'm pondering on buying, and ask them if they can guarantee that it'll be drm/3rd party auth free, since obviously the store pages can't be trusted to keep this information. :why_so_serious:

If you did that and they said "nope, it has none" then it did. I get the feeling at this point the refund would still be a no. It's your responsibility to research the product fully.

In the UK there is a statutory 14 day cooling off period for anything bought on the internet. Don't know if it applies across the EU.

We have something similar with regards to things bought "unseen" on the internet (i.e. through a webshop), but I'm not sure if that's physical items only or if that includes software.

So apparently they've decided to go with the "we don't do refunds, but as a one-time customer service we can issue store credit for the amount of your purchase into your steam wallet", which albeit quirky is fine by me. It'll probably be spent at some point anyways, so it doesn't really matter all that much.

As for "it's your responsibility to research the product fully", I did. I read their page, I googled "pole position 2012 drm" etc, and I found absolutely no indication whatsoever that there was anything of the sort there. The only way I could possibly research this any more thoroughly, would've been to download a pirated copy and run it.

Somehow I don't think that's how the whole process is supposed to work. :oh_i_see:

A pirated copy would have some means of bypassing the third party login screen anyway, so even that might not have helped.  :why_so_serious:

Edit: Spelling on a touch screen is hard.

Only if I applied the crack prior to firing it up the first time.

In the EU, it's the seller's responsibility to represent the product truthfully. How else could it be, if we don't want snake oil salesmen everywhere?

 

Steam just ignores these customer rights.

A law is only any use if it's ever enforced.

To a point the fault lies with us, their customers. How can enforcement happen if no one makes a complaint?

Yeah, agreed. And I'm sure Steam aren't alone in flaunting consumer protection law, by a long way.

I know why I wouldn't give you a refund on Pole Position 2012. Because when I go to the store page for it, it very clearly says "3rd-party DRM: Requires a Kalypso Account" right on the sidebar.

Maybe they added the notification due his interaction with them.  Doubtful.

Oh, so you're saying I'm lying, now?

Listen, I checked and re-checked repeatedly that it did not contain any hint whatsoever that there were any sort of 3rd party DRM or auth mechanism before I sent the refund request, and I rechecked it repeatedly afterwards just to make sure it hadn't changed yet. I'm not sure if it was still missing earlier today, but it was certainly missing late last night.

Now, whether or not it was my interaction with them which caused that store page to be updated is, quite frankly, irrelevant at this point, the important bit is that it has been changed, so that others who are also not happy about games requiring an additional auth system to steam's won't make the same mistake in future.

Every Steam Store page is done on core rope memory and is unchangable  Common fact.  :why_so_serious:

No, just questioning your vision.  :why_so_serious:

I have 2 copies of the store page up here in my browser, one from 26th of november 2012 20:42:17 norwegian time, and one from 27th of november 23:37:12 norwegian time. The copy from the 26th has no mention of any 3rd party DRM, whereas the one from the 27th has the mention of 3rd party DRM.

My eyes are working just fine.

Huh. Yesterday after reading tgr's story about it, I looked up Pole Position on Steam, and there was no "3rd-party DRM" line at all whatsoever.

So yeah, maybe they did.

Screenshot or it didn't happen.

(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/82533/poke.gif)

Oddly specific DRM.

I LOLed.

I see pixels.

Actually if I put my cynical-but-probably-true hat on I suspect the reason their customer support sucks so much is due to flatland (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=22091.0 (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=22091.0)) because Valve probably don't have any dedicated customer service staff and it's whatever poor code monkey drew the short straw that day (but he gets stuck with his tickets until they are resolved - hence long delays and shitty service)!

I just assumed they contracted out everything that wasn't actually making games.