I'm thinking whether to provide "n-days refund guarantee" for my game. But how do you judge whether the requests are honest? You know, customers who wants play for free can just say "hey, I played your game for one minute then it crashes! I don't know why, and it has no error message so I cannot give you details. But since it doesn't work, I want my money back pls." Have you encountered this before? Any opinions?
Ask for details. Almost all people who claim 'bug' 'crash' 'virus' and other nebulous complaints will disappear and not come back if you ask for more information (eagerly, helpfully trying to solve their problem.) If they DO come back with more information and you can't solve their problem, then give them the refund, it's not worth arguing about. Someone dedicated enough can *always* find a way to screw you over.
I just refund them too. If they want to screw you over, they'll just issue a chargeback, so you might just as well refund it.
It's not worth the bad word of mouth by pissing off the customer by assuming they are lying. Just issue the refund. In reality, refund requests are few and far between. Anyone wanting to steal your game will likely go out and get the warez version in the first place. Buying the game and requesting a refund is a lot more work. Although, I will agree with Papillon as well. Asking for more information is useful because often if you can get the game to work for them, they won't want the refund anymore. The "I demand a refund!" email is sometimes a knee jerk reaction to simple technical difficulties.
I always just ask for more information and attempt to help them. After this they will either go away, chargeback (very rare) or I help them and they don't end up wanting a refund. This way is optimal as keep as many sales as you can, without messing about a legitimate refund request. Just make sure you don't make your reply too hostile even if you know they are taking you for a ride.
The only time someone outright asked for a refund from me was a very very very computer illiterate mom who was trying to install software for her son... huge mess. With Regnow and Esellerate I think customers can bypass you for a refund too; I know it happened with Regnow anyway.
Isn't it the right of every customer who bought something electronically to get refund regardless what his reasons are or what you say on your website? So that "n-days refund-no-risk-guarantee" is nothing more than offering what is already available to him? Besides that, I think it's a very good idea to ask for reasons because it's an opportunity to learn about your customers (well, almost-customer ).
When I used to run online and mail order sales (which I dont anymore) I always used to offer refund if a digital or physical item was faulty or generally if the customer had a problem with the software... I did usually ask why first mind just so I could track returns to some degree. Adrian.
In the U.S., the credit card company is required, by law, to take the costumer's word over the merchant's in a dispute. So they will always win a chargeback, if they ask for one. I have heard anecdotes of software sellers showing indisputable proof that the customer was still using the software and still losing the dispute. I would offer the customer a refund, but also make it clear that I am willing to do whatever it takes to make it work on their computer. But if they want a refund, just give it to them. Much cheaper and easier than a dispute.
Indie developers need our own civil rights movement. It's too easy for one Russian to buy your game, get a refund an hour later, and then put up a bittorrent of it. I had a refund put through on ZSX2, reason: fraudulent. What on earth?
"Send me your error log, a file you can find at...". They either disappear, or come up with an authentic log. I also point them to our refund policy, that clearly states we give refunds only if there is a technical problem we can't fix. I think it's only fair.
I'll teach you to our method gmirror1. First year we weren't promissing refunds from our site at all - "want money back - issue a chargeback". That's just helped us to not get nervous from such decisions and actions. Later when we weren't care about any specific order any more (we had enough income in general) we have written that "standard" statement on our order page. And to not waste the time on such issues I just issue refund immediately on any request. And ask the person for a favor to give me some details if I feel them necessary for the software. That's all really. REM: We've got probably 5-6 such (very reasonable btw) requests in last year - so there is nothing to worry about. REM1: I denied to fulfill one request from the person who purchased the game by year before and felt at a moment that she get no enough points in the game. Again I just recommended her to issue a chargeback if necessary.
In my current day-job, I do a large amount of consulting, and create tools for specific clients for specific projects, so I don't deal with refunds. I am, however, making a lot of progress on my first game, and assuming I decide to release/sell it, I will probably do something like this: * Have a 30-day/first activation (see points 2+3) money back refund policy for technical problems * Issue an Armadillo (buying it on Friday) key that expires on a date that is 30 days away from the purchase date. * Have an activation system that issues them with a non-expiring, hardware locked key. They will be warned that by activating, they certify that the product works on their system, and they waive what is left of the refund period. This is to help me have less refunded keys on the stolen-keys list. I'll most likely allow multiple activations with different hardware keys for a single purchase - basically allowing the user to do multiple installations without contacting support. I'll probably have to code a bit of fraud-detection in the server-side activation php page. Activation will happen in-product, or via a web page. Option two is to just say "install the demo and don't buy the game if it doesn't work - no refunds without justification" Edit: oops - forgot to say, all my programs (and my first game-in-progress) writes very complete logs. Technical problems can easily be diagnosed/(dis)proved using it. I do the logging with a framework I built specifically for this. It can optionally also upload the log file to my server automatically. In a game environment, I think that by loggin each time a user plays a game and does various things to show they like the game / played / enjoyed / finished it, or chase a high score, you could possibly try to detect if they simply got bored of the game and are trying to get their money back, if this is the sort of policy you want to follow.
From the sounds of it I think refunds are one of those problems that look a lot nastier than they probably are (similar to the threads about piracy). From most of the info I've seen it happens in a negligible percentage. Worrying about people 'screwing' you over is similar to worrying about growing older (its going to happen irregardless of your attempts to stop it). I think the bigger issue is the issue of the amount of days to offer for your refund guarantee. I see a lot of 30 day refund policies, a few 60 and even less 90 day policies. Has anyone done any research to see the relationship between increased sales and potentially increased refunds? From anectdotal evidence it appears as if most people who ask for refunds are the people that would have problems that occur before the 30 day mark. Does increasing it to 90 days have an effect on whether they attempt to refund the game after they have had their fill of it? Are there enough people who would be so cheap as to refund a 20$ game they beat months afterwards to make it worthwhile to use a lower amount of days in the refund. A very interesting question...
We simply give the refund, promptly. We notify the person that he needs to uninstall the game and we also mark his registration key "stolen" and update our game. If he later wants to install the game it won't work. But basically, don't worry about those who "are NOT honest"... that will eventually lead to nowhere. If somebody wants to get your game for free he can do that by using cracks or issuing a chargeback... money-back guarantees are incentives for those who are not totally sure if the game offers enough playing for them... Put it working. You can always take it away if you think it harms your business.
I wouldn't do this, because it's far too complicated for the average gamer, especially casual ones. Don't forget: in an other thread on this forum they're discussing if using 2 mouse buttons in a game isn't too overwhelming for the players Considering the other posts, refunds don't seem to be a problem, so it's probably not even worth the time needed to implement a complicated system.