Steam and Refunds - Don't Ask, Don't Question

[Vaiti]

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

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.

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.  

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   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.  
Dark Souls is 39.99€ right now, I got 26.79€ credit  

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

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

edit: spellings

[Yegolev]

The Digital Age is here.

[Vaiti]

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.

[Trippy]

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

[Vaiti]

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.

[Thrawn]

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.

[Paelos]

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

[Vaiti]

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 - 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  With It

[Vaiti]

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

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 

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

[Paelos]

I get your point there.

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

[rattran]

Seems totally Nerf to me 

[Ingmar]

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.

[Vaiti]

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

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 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.  

[jakonovski]

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!

[Miasma]

460 millinerfs.

[Ingmar]

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.

[Lantyssa]

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

[brellium]

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.

[Gets]

Valve UK does.

[dusematic]

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.

[Vaiti]

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.

[jakonovski]

Victoly!

[Fordel]

Is it really?

[Pennilenko]

I am disappointed. I was expecting a full Nerf.

[Gets]

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.

[Ragnoros]

[Reg]

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.

[Tebonas]

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. :)

[Gets]

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

[Tebonas]

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 

[jakonovski]

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

[Tebonas]

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.

[jakonovski]

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.

[Vaiti]

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. 

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.

[jakonovski]

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