@joshwent said:
I'm increasingly saddened to see folks welcome government intervention and litigation in a private company's policies with open arms. But I understand. If you want something done, you're happy to have the biggest unimpeachable bully in the room on your side.
Just don't complain when that behemoth crushes something you didn't want it to. You created it.
Look at the anti-consumer hell America has become and you see why countries impose these laws. It's to protect people from companies selling and trading garbage without anyone stopping them. The ACCC does a lot of good when it comes to consumer rights.
Anti-consumer? You not knowing what you're buying isn't anti-consumer, that's your ignorance. It should be on the consumer to educate themselves or to seek out establishments who have the capacity to educate them on products they are interested in. Having worked in certain retail channels, I can assure you that consumers get away with way more than they ever should be able to because they are idiots or ignored staff members or just wanted to cause trouble. Consumers are entitled assholes in this country and it's because things tend to favor them. Not even because of legislation but because of self-regulation and policy.
This sounds like good news. I think moves to stabilise digital goods rights to more closely mirror those of physical products will increase consumer trust (gamers win), lead to more risk taking in purchases and so more upside to taking creative risks (devs win), and a healthier long term store (distributors/platform owners win). Enforcement of these consumer protections on digital stores is a great thing for everyone; it's almost as if, many years ago, people worked out that consumers who felt safe to hand over currency for goods because they knew they weren't going to get scammed made trade easier and everyone better off so they made up a set of rules that best protected equitable exchanges. Then someone decided moving from buying a box (with a load of 0s and 1s in it) to getting that product down a pipe (built to send those 0s and 1s) was a great time to try and roll back those consumer protections. And now there's all this worry about how to avoid being scammed by bad products, how products should be restricted from even getting onto infinite digital shelves to protect people, and so on.
I think this is an idea whose time has come, as I've commented before while explaining exactly how this stuff is meant to make consumers feel safe handing over their money. GOG gives you refunds for 30 days (although they could do more), even EA have some refund policy in place for not-Origin; it's time Steam changed to their "argue with a CS rep using a support ticket and maybe we'll refund you" policy.
While I generally agree, from my experience returns are not always as "equitable" as you might think. I think it depends on the item, the industry, etc. For example, retailers take it up the ass when it comes to returning electronics. They have to A) give the customer back their money B) on their own dime return the item to the manufacturer and C) lose inventory as a result. And more often than not, it's the customer's fault. We had so many people "buying" projectors for the weekend and returning them we practically tried to discourage people from buying them. We were bleeding money from it. You can charge a restocking fee, but customers always got pissed off when we brought it up during the return and claimed they never had been told about that policy. Which of course was never true. Our return policy was fairly limited, and even then most people were able to take advantage of it.
I had one customer buy a fucking laptop, try to set it up IN THE STORE, and then return it because he couldn't figure out how to get it connected to wifi. After having it explained to him he'd need to be somewhere with working wifi to set it up and unless he intended to move into the store, it would be useless to set up our (broken ass) wifi beyond to insure that his wifi was operational.
Valve could certainly streamline the process, but I don't want to see Valve forced into implementing a system that is any more easily taken advantage of. They need to be protected from uneducated buyers and those who would abuse such policies as much as buyers should be protected from unforeseeable and legitimate issues with their purchases.
My point is just that there are two sides to this and I think there's too little responsibility on the buyer's side of things. All Valve needs to do is clarify their policies and maybe set aside some manpower to make things move along a little quicker. I've always been able to get returns on games when I had a legitimate reason (incompatibility, unexpected game breaking bugs, accidental purchases, etc). And I've never had to "argue." I don't expect them to just return my money because I ask them to. If you give them an up front, clear explanation about why you are returning it, they will refund you. They just need to state in a policy somewhere that you can get a return with legitimate cause, so long as you go through the proper channels.
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