> How can customers expect publishers to refund for games when they (publisher) have no guarantee it didn't work?
Well, under UK consumer protection law, goods normally have to meet certain basic guarantees, such as fitness for purpose. Moreover, the presumption is that if they fail within the first few months after the purchase, it's the vendor's problem unless the vendor can show why it shouldn't be. It might seem harsh, but that is what the consumer protection laws here say, and it's a cost of doing business here.
I don't see why the same principle should not apply at least as strongly to software, particularly given that software is often relatively expensive, very often of poor quality/compatibility in ways that aren't clear to the purchaser up-front, and usually issuing a refund in such cases will cause very little actual damage to the vendor beyond losing the price of the sale. Surely this all goes at least double for a service where the vendor is providing the software entirely on-line, so their actual damage from issuing a refund is nothing but the admin overhead, and where the vendor can see whether the user has actually been able to run the software effectively as a defence against fraudulent refund claims.
Comments
> How can customers expect publishers to refund for games when they (publisher) have no guarantee it didn't work?
Well, under UK consumer protection law, goods normally have to meet certain basic guarantees, such as fitness for purpose. Moreover, the presumption is that if they fail within the first few months after the purchase, it's the vendor's problem unless the vendor can show why it shouldn't be. It might seem harsh, but that is what the consumer protection laws here say, and it's a cost of doing business here.
I don't see why the same principle should not apply at least as strongly to software, particularly given that software is often relatively expensive, very often of poor quality/compatibility in ways that aren't clear to the purchaser up-front, and usually issuing a refund in such cases will cause very little actual damage to the vendor beyond losing the price of the sale. Surely this all goes at least double for a service where the vendor is providing the software entirely on-line, so their actual damage from issuing a refund is nothing but the admin overhead, and where the vendor can see whether the user has actually been able to run the software effectively as a defence against fraudulent refund claims.