Tag: refunds
Amazon is winding down its Halo health division and issuing refunds
Amazon unveiled its Halo Band wearable in the summer of 2020, which represented the company’s first foray into the health industry. The Halo Band was not all that compelling – it didn’t even have a display – but additional products including a more traditional fitness tracker called Amazon Halo View…
Blizzard is reportedly facing a $43.5 million lawsuit from NetEase over refunds
Following their split earlier this year, NetEase is reportedly suing Blizzard over the refunds for games no longer available in China.
Last year it was announced that Blizzard would be pulling games like World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Overwatch from China due to it and NetEase being unable to come to an agreement on a new contract. Services for these titles, and other games like Warcraft 3, the StarCraft series, and Diablo 3, all went offline January 23, ending the 14 year agreement between the two companies. Now, according to a new report from Sina Technology (thanks, WoWHead), Blizzard could be facing a $43.5 million lawsuit for a number of claims.
The primary claim from NetEase is that Blizzard apparently promised refunds to over one million players that wanted them when servers for games like WoW, Overwatch, and more went offline in China. However, NetEase apparently had to cover these refunds as Blizzard allegedly had not covered them. NetEase is also looking for compensation over unsold merchandise inventory and undeveloped games, as the company apparently had to make a “huge deposit for several games in advance, while Blizzard did not refund the relevant deposit when the relevant games were not developed.”
Twitter has a surprising ‘no refunds’ policy for rejected gold check applicants
With the purge of verified legacy checkmarks, Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s attempt to strong-arm users into buying Twitter Blue has mostly fallen flat, likely placing Musk’s goal of profitability further and further out of reach. And users have now discovered another apparent attempt by Musk to not bleed any more money: Twitter’s terms and conditions include a harsh no refunds policy for businesses that apply for Verified Organizations status.
As pointed out by Chris Boyd (@papperghost), users who spent $1,000 in the hopes of earning a Verified Organizations checkmark and were rejected found that they could not get their money back. On Twitter’s help center website for Verified Organizations under “How to Apply,” the site states in bold: “Any account that is not approved will not be refunded.“
Based on the language used by Twitter in the Verified Organizations’ terms and conditions, the initial $1,000 for the gold checkmark must be paid up-front and is more akin to a non-refundable application fee than an actual guarantee.
Some users, such as @CovfefeChan, have already claimed to have been rejected and had Twitter attempt to keep their $1,000.
@CovfefeChan later claimed to have received a refund after getting attorneys involved and further claimed that the details they had been shown prior to their verification attempt did not properly warn them about the policy against refunds.
This process for Verified Organizations is completely different from how Twitter Blue is handled. Twitter Blue is also non-refundable, but those who pay $8 automatically get the checkmark upon payment and confirmation of their phone number.
It’s unclear how new this change to the rules for Verified Organizations is. Based on an archived snapshot of Twitter’s Verified Organizations page from March 24, the change happened within at least the last month.
Credit: Twitter
Credit: Twitter
Twitter’s new paid-for verification system under Elon Musk has been a confusing process during the couple of times major changes have been rolled out. Before Musk, all verified accounts shared the same blue checkmark, but now that anyone with a Twitter Blue subscription can be verified, the platform has been in turmoil.
The business model gets even more questionable in light of a report from TechCrunch found that Twitter is now requiring advertisers to be verified if they want to continue running ads on the app. This means potential advertisers might pay the $1,000 fee, have their bid to advertise rejected, and have Twitter keep their money.
It’ll be interesting to see how companies respond to this change in the coming days, but at least for now, it’s clear that Musk’s Twitter is looking for any possible way to turn the platform into a cash cow.
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Tweetbot and Twitterrific Users Can Support the Developers by Declining Subscription Refunds
Twitter then officially updated its terms of service to ban all apps similar to the Twitter app. Twitter clients that had been operating for more than a decade were all of a sudden banned, with no communication from Twitter, no heads up, and with no way for the developers to figure out a way to carefully unwind their businesses and communicate the shutdown to customers.
Tweetbot and Twitterrific, two of the most used Twitter clients, had subscription offerings and thousands of customers that paid for subscriptions on a yearly basis. With the apps unable to function, pro-rated refunds are set to be automatically issued to subscribers next month, which will heavily impact businesses that had no warning their income stream would be cut off.
Those refunds are going to be paid largely by Tweetbot and Twitterific rather than Apple. As John Gruber points out on Daring Fireball, this is akin to a person getting fired and then having to pay back their last six months of salary. It is a significant financial blow to app developers put out of business by Twitter’s snap decision.
Tweetbot and Twitterrific have teamed up to offer multiple options to customers who are due refunds, and customers who want to help need to do the following:
- Open Tweetbot or Twitterrific (or redownload the apps if they’ve been deleted and open them).
- Choose the “I don’t need a refund button.” Alternatively, for Tweetbot, choose to transfer the subscription over to the new Ivory app for Mastodon.
Because refunds are being issued automatically, Tweetbot and Twitterrific customers who have been happy with their service and want to help the developers out will have to manually opt out using this method.
Customers who do want a refund can do nothing and will receive a pro-rated refund on March 28. Anyone who does not hit that “I don’t need a refund button” will get their money back for the months that were left on the subscription at the time that the apps stopped functioning.
The apps have already been unavailable for more than a month, which means Tweetbot and Twitterific have no way to contact customers who are likely no longer even opening up the apps, or who have already deleted them entirely. Many customers will be issued refunds without even electing to be refunded as it is an automatic process without the manual opt-out.
Twitterrific developers Iconfactory and Tweetbot developers Tapbots both have other apps, but Tweetbot and Twitterrific were their main apps. Apple will require them to pay between 70 and 85 percent of each refund, depending on how long each person was subscribed (70% for those subscribed for less than a year, and 85% for those subscribed over a year). Apple will pay the remaining 15 to 30 percent, as that is the cut that Apple had been taking from subscriptions.
Tapbots has already transitioned to Mastodon and offers the Ivory client on both iPhone and Mac, while Iconfactory is focusing on its other apps like Linea Sketch.
This article, “Tweetbot and Twitterrific Users Can Support the Developers by Declining Subscription Refunds” first appeared on MacRumors.com
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Tweetbot and Twitterrific ask customers to decline refunds in rare App Store exception
Twitter last month officially banned third-party clients, putting a sudden end to popular apps, including Tweetbot, Twitterrific, and others. Now, in an unusual turn of events, two developers this week have updated their shuttered apps with new functionality: They’re asking their subscribers to decline to receive a refund by clicking a new “I don’t need […]
Tweetbot and Twitterrific ask customers to decline refunds in rare App Store exception by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch