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refund request no response for 1 week

A topic by 0313 created May 02, 2024 Views: 437 Replies: 6

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Hi,

I have bought a pixel art tutorial bundle for $30, after 1 hour of the purchase, I found all contents in bundle are provided in developer's patreon for $2 with even monthly new tutorial coming up, so I requested a refund. I emailed the support team again 3 days later, still no response, now it's 1 week to the first day. While waiting, I watched 2 episodes of the tutorial, the artwork is nice, but tutorial itself is not in a good quality, it's actually not worth $30, I would really like to support the developer in patreon at a lower cost. Are these days super busy or it's a regular process speed? Can you actually refund in itch.io?

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redonihunter223 days ago

Not for this kind of reason, no. And the pricing suggests, that you could get updates on itch. Maybe read again what your purchase actually entails. It sounds like the dev set the price to give an alternative way for people not wanting to subscribe.

if the purchased content cannot run, some other issue prevents access to the content, or the product does not accurately represent what was advertised.

https://itch.io/docs/legal/terms#9-refunds

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0313223 days ago

The info of bundle does not say it will get updated. If it's gonna get updated, then it's kind of okay, but still too much price difference, it's unreasonable that a refund request after 1 hour of purchase cannot pass.

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redonihunter223 days ago

This is not Steam. Nor a retail shop. You cannot give back things. There is no try before buy or any buyers remorse money-back guarantee. The time frame has little to do with this.

For that matter, can you get a refund for a patreon subscription? I tried to find out their policy, but I found nothing at all about the circumstances when patreon would grant such a thing.

I agree that they could be faster in telling you, that you have no eglible reason to request a refund.

So my advice would be, ask for clarification, if your one time purchase will give you any of the future patreon content or not. Subscribing for 15 months will cost you more and people tend to forget their subscriptions ;-)

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redonihunter220 days ago

Oh, and it could be that you can get a refund anyways, but it might be, that they would contact the developer first. And since people are complaining a lot again about not being indexed, it stands to reason, that there are delays.

Technically, just because they say something is the prerequisite for an action, does in practical terms not mean, that this is always enforced.

I do not know how itch handles multiple refunds from the same account. But I do know that Steam will block your ability to request refunds, if you refund too much.

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0313220 days ago

Steam will automatically refund if the player play the game less than 2 hours within 2 weeks of the purchase. I don't know the reason itch stays DRM free, but if the itch's policy do not allow players to have a try and see if the game is good, then many won't bother use money on itch. Since the refund process is taking more than 1 week and I still don't know how long it's gonna take to resolve the issue, I personally will be very unwilling to buy anything on itch in the future.

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redonihunter220 days ago

Steam will automatically refund if the player play the game less than 2 hours within 2 weeks of the purchase

If you do that too often, they will revoke that ability from your account.

The response time has nothing to do with your request, but with the fact that itch staff has a lot to do and this is not an ad financed or sponsored environment. By their own policy, every refund would constitute something wrong on the project page that might even require them to take that project down, because of false advertisement.

And drm or not drm is some kind of philosophical question. Itch is promoting pay what you want, has no ads on the page and is a download store, not a client environment that runs the games, like a console or something like steam. Drm is not only technically difficult for the indie devs that do not even make enough money to affort the 100 bucks entry fee of steam, it is simply not fitting for the site. But even there, itch does not require the games to have no drm. It just has no drm of its own.

Also, the abundance of projects here have no pay wall.

https://itch.io/games/store 25k projects

https://itch.io/games/free 900k projects

Implementing drm would only "benefit" less than 10% of the projects and then only in situations like a refund. So why even bother with drm, no matter the philosophical opinion about it.

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