I had to refund a purchase...

The only little thing I don't like about refunds is that you have to refund 100% of the total price. So if you sell something for $100, you get your $70 share, and when you give a refund, you pay back $100, meaning you lose $30.

Not really a big reason to lower prices, but it's something to keep in mind. As if you put bigger prices, you get less sales, and on top of it bigger chances of refund, right?

It's just one thing you have to be ready for, it's in the terms and conditions. I think for a 70% share Asset Store is a pretty darn good deal, so this is not a major setback (unless you estimate a lot of refunds).

 

What, are you serious? This is beyond insane if true!

 

I remember reading it in the terms of conditions, doesn't it work this way? I'll double check just in case.

Well apparently it only applies if your asset is defectiveor if you remove your asset. Maybe for fraudulent purchases you only give back the 70% share?

tbh I don't think it's something to be worried about. Unless of course we're talking many refunds monthly.

So overall it doesn't impact profit a lot, but it's "conceptually annoying". For example I have an asset priced at $30 right now, but it was priced $50 like.. 10+ months ago, and it showed up last month a full $50 refund for it, it's a refund for an old purchase. Not only I've lost the $30 profit I made last year but an extra $20 to refund full price.

It's rarely happens I think. Only 2 times in my personal experience. But the concept of refunding something after a long time, and having no tags or comments to know what went wrong, is a little confusing.

 

Well i could understand if it did in cases where you chose to refund (not that i agree, but i "can" understand), but if unity is the one deciding on the refund, and they get to keep the money and you pay for it, this is insane.

 

That's not true.

It's subtracted from the gross sales, and the 70% net is calculated on the gross after all credits/debits are added together.

 

I just got a new "chargeback".

getting a refund here or there is not a problem, but if this issue is not addressed (yes, I know they're working on it) and their chargeback policy is not publicly stated, I will have to start re-thinking the asset store as business.

As has been stated before, there needs to be some improvements in the entire asset store process FOR SELLERS specifically... Below is a quick list of issues I would want (need) addressed in order to continue this as a viable business and not simply an interesting diversion...

1. Transparency on refund requests/chargebacks from UT to the seller (prior to initiating refund)
ideally this would include an email notification from UT to the seller that a refund has been requested, along with any relevant details. This not only serves to give the seller a chance to respond (say, a 2 day response window), but even if there is no problems with the refund request and everything is legit, this gives the author vital feedback on their product... which I think any responsible seller would take to heart. Currently this process is exclusively one-sided and shuts the asset author out completely.

2. Publicly stated policy on chargebacks, including a maximum cutoff date.
I would think this timeframe would be limited to the 15 day grace period between the end of month and payment initiation from UT. Otherwise I have a hard time understanding what this grace period is used for if not for a refund period. Anytime I've had a problem with fraudulent charges on my own credit cards I've been notified within 1 day of the charge, and the entire issue is taken care of immediately. I see no reason to have any more than a 2 week grace period for these chargebacks / refunds.

3. Sales analytics and customer access
There is no feedback from Unity as to who your customers are. I don't need names and emails, but its important to have customer data such as localization stats, Unity version usage stats, time of day/week sales comparisons, pageviews vs sales conversions etc. etc. It would also be great to have the buyer the option of "opting in" to news updates for the particular asset they are buying. This could be as simple as a "keep me informed" checkbox next to the asset.. emails could be sent out from the seller through UT in order to keep buyer information confidential.

4. Opportunities for visibility
I would love to be able to opt-in to asset store sales, or at least know in advance (as a seller) that they are going to be happening. I've noticed my asset sales plummet when the store is running a promotion. This is somewhat expected, as buyer attention is diverted to specific items, but it is jarring to have a monthly-madness sale and have your sales percentages plummet for an entire month. As far as I can tell Unity promotions seem to be invitation only.
In addition to Unity promotions, I think the rating system could be definitely improved. I've found only about 5% of my customers actually leave reviews and I'm sure this "review culture" on the store could be encouraged considerably. Having a "latest reviewed" section, or seller / buyer review stats would be one way to start.

5. More strict review process / Store organization
I understand that some assets are very complicated and require a good amount of time to review. This is fine, and good, and the way it should be. It would be nice however to have some additional info during a long review process, such as a more detailed status update other then just "pending", or a specific review number that you can use to email the asset store for progress updates. Additionally there seems to be a developing glut of lower-quality assets in the store. I'm all for democratization of development, but at some point the mass of assets starts to weigh down the store and browsing becomes a chore... but perhaps this also is an issue with the store layout. Browsing should be an enjoyable experience, and an easy one. Cross-selling would be a good start... as a seller I'd hate to have competing packages displayed on my page, but as a buyer I would LOVE that. When buyer's are happy, ultimately, sellers will also be happy.

 

+1 it is maddening when we give a refund with no notification from Unity. How do they expect us to better our product and fix the problem if they don't give us any information on what caused it.

Better analytics would be great too. I can't believe they haven't added a single new feature since the Asset Store started.

Unity seems to rely too much on the buyers rather than their sellers. We are the reason the make money in the first place. If we had the support and tools as explained above I can guarantee we would have improved sales, improved assets, and an overall improved Asset Store. Unity's lack of professionalism sometimes is frustrating.

 

+1 for these two, in particular some analytics could be really useful...

 

Got another "chargeback". Is this still a problem for other people or has it been quieting down lately, in general?

 

+1 agree with pretty much everything. It needs a big push across the board, including the review process. Too bad we don't have any serious alternatives.

 

I'm not a seller but buyer, and I spent around 1K in buying assets on average every month. But I'm going to spend less on AS because as a store, they do not protect buyers.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/186274-Unity-refuse-refund-when-package-did-not-work

I would recommend sellers setup their own store. You can do so with Fastspring or bytecommerce easily. I bought from sellers who used them, and they are great for buyers because they provide links which we can get updates. Also, FastSpring charges about 8% and bytecommerce is 5% instead of Assetstore 30%.

http://www.fastspring.com/mas.php
http://www.bytecommerce.com/

Review
http://www.rwe-uk.com/blog/comments/reflections_on_fastspring_vs._mac_app_store

 

Just had do 2 chargebacks today, no reason given. After a year of only having to give 1.

 

today I had another refund.
the sad part is that is my most expensive pack, my complete music collection at 100$.
i feel it was sold in may.
dam it!

no reason given, anyway... I will write asset manager soon...

 

And the crappy part of that is you aren't upgrading it like other assets usually so they now have the music plus their money back.
That is so wrong.

 

Another one bites the dust. Meanwhile 0 official answers on this thread ...

 

Had one chargeback today, as well as one at beginning of this month.

 

I had two chargebacks this month, on my Flow shader, regardless I have free version also.. I even have not received any notifications from those people, about their problems.
I feel that I was just fooled.
It will be good if asset store notifies us about charge-back reasons.

 

I only come across this thread now despite the issue has been going on for some time. I'm just going to add my 2 cent here.

First there are now two circumstances in which you could lost the sale you already made, refunds and chargebacks. As far as I understand refund are the one approved by the selling party and chargebacks are the one forced by the buyer via legal means. The selling party has no say at all in the later case. In regard to both cases on assetstore, while it's true that the process is not transparent at all since there's no additonal info has been given by unity other than the number of occurance, I personally would give unity the benefit of the doubt.

I have had some of refund/chargeback, it's not really an issue given the ratio to sales. But I do feel the pain when it involve people buying the ware, refund it just to post it on warez site. I've seen my asset appear on several sites in several different languages. But again, it's extremely difficult to combat this. No refund policy? That's a scary thought too as a buyer. I've seen stuff on the store that has barely any explaination, or has been over-stylished-packaged that it's almost certainly a miss-leading presentation. And There's no guarantee the publisher is going to provide support... Thing is, I believe most of the time the reason of a refund is just down to people who are too lazy/ignorant to make any effort to research or ask for support. In the end, you just have to accept the fact there's no perfect solution and that piracy, or lazy people is going to happen, regardless of unity's policy.

As for the bashing on unity, I agree that there are many flaws in the current system. The important thing is we shouldn't be pointing fingers at certain individual over the issue but unity management as a whole. It's very unfair given that none of us have any idea what is really going on. I do notice that efforts has been made. The asset store team has been actively reacting to the feedbacks given by the publisher in the publisher group. It's definitely not at a pace we all hope for and again the feedback for certain issue is almost non-existant but it's at least something. And finally, this is their store and it's up to them to run it the way they see fit. You can argue that the policy and what not is unfair for the publisher but being on AssetStore does give you an certain edge that you wouldn't get in other website. But this is about business decision and another topic entirely.

Personally I'm just going to keep my faith. I can see in the long run it's going to get better, in term of the backend system as well as piracy prevention. It has to. I can see it the long run unity is going to rely heavily on AssetStore as one of it's main revenue stream. Why they give away mobile license for free? The most immediate benefit of an expanded user unity base is bigger market share for AssetStore.

 

I did get to the bottom of it, turns out the 2 chargebacks were actually fraudulent purchases. Makes me feel better although I am out $40 net but luckily its only 28 gross. It would be nice if unity just sent an email explaining why by default -- without people having to email them every time.

I think unity should simply hire more people to work at the asset store as I think they are probably just understaffed.

 

Did you ever bother to look at your water system and find out it does not work on Android and iOS?
Perhaps that is why it is being refunded.

 

It even says in the description. That shouldnt be a legitimate reason for getting a refund if it says it in the description.

 

the answer to my question about the latest chargeback (100$...) was:

It seems that the charge backs are from fraudulent asset purchases. These purchases can take a long time to be resolved, so they may be quite old purchases.

so it is the same story as above!

 

As mentioned by Aiursrage2k above... it says very clearly on the product page what platforms it is intended for... it is also mentioned on both the product forum and here on the Unity forums. I designed and wrote it from scratch so don't worry EskimoJoe, I know exactly what it is capable of.

But one of my main complaints about refunds and chargebacks is that the developer is not given any feedback whatsoever when these refunds happen (not even a notification of any kind, surprisingly!) I would at least want some kind of explanation given to me directly from Unity so that I can address specific problems and make my products better for customers in the future.

 

wooow - do many US banks do this? seems absolutely brutal/medieval - my bank has a special "Internet Card" which is used together with your main card and can be used for all online purchases. this seems very strange to me that banks would restrict you in such a way

 

I don't know how you put up with it. Chargebacks should be very rare with proper checking and at 30% cost should be handled internally by unity.
Refunds should be done by you not imposed by unity unless they escalate when you can't agree, these policies are insane, makes me go from "i'll probably ship what i'm working on on the asset store" to "i'll probably make a competing store, integrated into unity as a plugin, taking much less than 30% and letting the devs decide on their refund policy".

 

Got myself 2 chargebacks (2 x -100$) for one of my biggest asset - 675 sprites pack. Crazy thing is that from 2 months I sell only 1 of this asset!

I guess its from stolen card or something. But 2 months delay in taking back money is strange ...
Unity should generate some kind of generic email message to seller after taking money as a chargeback or refund because sometimes I'm confused what happened with our money.

 

Ouch! Sorry to hear that reddot.

 

I know the guy who makes amplify had many chargebacks and like the day after all his stuff was off the store. So i assume he pulled them . Unity is meh, it's good workflow wise but what makes it great. If it keeps bashing asset makers like that it'll lose them all

 

What do you mean by this? Unity gets 100% from payment processor, keeps 30% and gives you 70%. When a chargeback happens, 100% goes back to the processor, 30% from unity and 70% from you-ie, the original amount you recieved for the fraudulent purchase is all that you are out.

 

I didn't say anything else, i say when you're taking a 30% cut on sales, and your chargeback handling sucks, you EAT THE COST and are damn happy to do so , eating 30% on all "working" sales. Eating that cost is the least they could do, it's their fault for being so lenient on payment chargebacks.

 

On a 100 dollar sale, they only take back the $70 they gave you. Are you suggesting they take back less, or none at all? They're out their 30%, and you're out your 70% As if the sale never happened, because that's what they are doing - voiding the sale. I hate chargebacks as much as you, but to do otherwise just isnt good business - both unity and the author are victims of the fraud here.

 

No, unity is "letting the fraud happen", you don't see those kind of chargeback rates usually, and they're in control. It's trivial for them to implement better security (having checks on account before allowing payment, since it's linked to your unity account, auto clearing those for pro users or any users who already paid for unity, since they have your license hostage etc etc). There's 0 excuse for the 6 month chargeback issue.

Same for refunds, refunds should be decided by the asset owner (not unity) with escalation to unity when there is no agreement between asset owner buyer. Chargebacks should be exceptional, refunds should never happen unless you can't resolve the issue.

And to be clear, my take is that YES, on a chargeback for 100$, unity should pay back the 30$ (as they do) and ALSO pay you OUT OF THEIR POCKET the 70$, if it was exceptional i wouldn't take that stance, but it "is" exceptional through normal gateaways, and they charge 3X as much (or over 10X in the case you don't need the store just the purchasing) so i feel it's normal that, except in exceptional circumstances, they would take that cost on them and call it a loss, don't worry they would still make plenty from the store, and they'd be more inclined in making sure chargebacks stop happening. The huge chargeback issues are trivial to prevent, with very minor one time annoyances at most on the end user.

 

Ok, i get what you are saying. They should eat the 70%. I'm all for it if they could sustain it.

 

Aye my bad i realise i wasn't very clear.
They definately can sustain it, even more so if they take proper measures (in which case it should become exceptional, maybe 1/1000 transactions?)

 

That does not make sense. I can release a super package that is advertised to make the game for you and even do your laundry while you sleep, and refuse refund to all. Or when the author goes missing, and package does not work as advertised.

Anyway, two weeks and Unity is silent on my refunds. Any longer, I will ask CC to do chargeback.

 

It very much makes sense and falls under what i said before, unity should decide on refunds IF the author is unwilling to refund AND the customer still want a refund.

Basically current (S***ty unfair process)
ask for refund => ok!
Fair process
Ask author for refund, telling him what's wrong => have him come back to you offering a solution => state if the solution is ok or not, and if it's ok if the time to delivery is fine => if not have the author refund you => if he refuses escalate it to unity let them decide.
It would stop one of the whining causes in this thread, that you can buy anything, get a refund within 14 days EVEN IF nothing AT ALL is wrong with the asset AND no one enforces that you drop it.
Hell i could buy everything on the store, and get refunded for it all, isn't that nuts?

 

Not true. My experience with 1 refund before was Unity was very unhelpful in the refund until I kick a fuss. The product was bought less than a week, and I discovered that it has a dependency limitation which was not advertised clearly. This is my second refund request, and Unity has not been responsive.

 

I think that's a bold statement. Alternate hypothesis ... assets that aren't very popular have a high rate of chargeback because people buying on fraudulent cards aren't discriminating, they likely just buy until the card/store stops letting them. Furthermore people who do get a high rate of chargeback are more likely to be posting here complaining than those that are happy with the asset store.

I noticed that Jami chargeback rates were less than 1%, and someone else said that had some chargebacks but that it wasn't significant vs sales. I can add that I'm also seeing less than 1% chargebacks.

Hypothesis only but my expectation is that Unity falls within the normal boundaries of chargebacks for digital goods.

 

I've had one refund, ever, and that was months ago, so way under 1% here.

The general expectation with a store is that it will have consistent policies, and when you buy something from the store, you deal with the store, not the creator. Dealing with stuff for you is one reason the store takes a percentage of sales in the first place. If you buy an app from the Apple store, you deal with Apple for refunds, you don't negotiate with the app maker. It's the same for all stores.

What you should do is make your contact information obvious, so that you can try to work out issues before the buyer asks for a refund in the first place. Of course some people will ignore that for whatever reason—you can't force people to be rational—but you do what you can.

The issue of chargebacks from 6+ months ago seems quite wrong, and is clearly a failure somewhere, but I don't know enough details to be entirely sure if it's actually on Unity's end. For all I know that's something many stores have to deal with. Of course the asset store isn't perfect yet, but it's far better than it was when it began, and I'm sure they will continue to improve it. For example, separating chargebacks from refunds shows that they listen to feedback and try to provide more information where possible.

--Eric

 

Actually no, apple actually directed me to non apple customer report everytime i asked for a refund, and then handled it if things went wrong. And dealing with THAT stuff for the seller is actually a negative thing (as you can see from all those posts) so it's definately not a reason for a % on the contrary. Dealing with marketing / publishing sure, dealing with accepting refunds chargebacks so easily, hell no, asset makers would fight for that money (and if i had been one, i'd currently be fighting unity in court over refunds chargebacks if i had anywhere near as many as some people i know).

Hell the amplify guy showed me his monthly report, he sold many made barely any money from multiple refunds chargebacks!

 

Actually yes, I sell on the App Store and have had a few refunds, none of which had anything to do with me; they were completely handled by Apple and nobody contacted me. Their official policy is that all sales are final anyway; there certainly is no policy about negotiating refunds with the app creators.

--Eric

 

Simply means they do both since we both have diferent experiences. In any case it doesn't change my opinion it's a crappy policy, not so much because they handle it instead of the seller. But because they handle it like a seller who'd just say yes without trying!

 

Hi all,

Chargebacks are due to either credit card fraud or other processing errors and are not the same as refunds.. There wasn't an increase in the number over time, it's just that there had been an accumulation of them over time and our accounting department processed them all at once quite recently, so there was a big wave of them which made many people (ME included) frustrated and confused. However, it is money you have been paid and can look at it like a sale made in advance, credited against future sales, so you don't have to worry about us asking you for money.

We are working on getting finance and accounting to do this over time rather than big annoying waves. Unfortunately dealing with fraud and stolen credit cards are a reality of e-commerce, as is piracy (don't get me started).

Cheers apologies for the trouble,

Caitlyn

 

I understand what you're saying on chargebacks, however you "could" prevent a lot of them since you're not a 1 shot ecommerce place (limit to 20$ per account before validation, lift limit upon sending ID on account + auto lift on anyone who already did a large CC purchase (previous customers with no chargeback history + everyone who purchased pro or an add on).

You'd be preventing most chargebacks while not annoying any current customer and barely annoying any future customer

It also doesn't address the too light refund policy, i still think that a refund should be handled by the asset makers (with an option not to handle it if they don't want to) so that unity only meddles in the refund business "if" the asset owner buyer couldn't come to an agreement.

I see a lot of "hey i did this (totally stupid thing here) and it doesn't work omg!" followed 20mins later by "OMG you suck you don't answez my mailz!!!" on this forum, i'd hate to make an asset and have a random non documentation reading idiot getting refunded because he didn't get his support cake within 20mins!

 

Hi Caitlyn,
I emailed you regarding one asset store vendor who resells other people's assets outside the asset store. Are you doing something about this issue?


I think it fraudulent to mark-up the prices of products 5 to 10 (or maybe 50?) times the price of the original price and claim to make a ready-made source-code product that has nothing but other people's assets inside it.

 

Thank you for your clarification.