Envato makes it clear that refunds are not easily given and tell you to resolve questions before purchase.
I did a LOT of research to find what I was looking for. I found, what I thought, was the perfect piece of software for $58 (a wordpress theme). It turns out that the "Live Preview" of this theme included 2 additional software packages that were NOT included in the purchase price, nor disclosed. This was not clearly spelled out - I purchased the software, installed it, and then tried to configure - when I realized it was missing key functions. I contacted the author and they said I had to purchase the 2 packages - which would have cost me another $100+. (They were unprofessional in their communication.)
Their description on the Envato online system does NOT clearly spell this out and their software demonstrationis misleading, at best.
I contacted Envato and they are refusing to give me a refund, but only giving me a credit that is only good for a year. I want my money BACK. There is nothing on Envato's site that I found which suggests you get a credit instead of your money back.
Here is the quote from their website: "Envato Market will generally only offer refunds where the item you purchased is broken, malfunctioning or corrupt, or doesn't work as described."
I am livid. This company seems to have a monopoly on selling these types of products and their 'policies' are predatory and they don't honestly represent 'refunds'.
I understand a tough return policy, but if they are trying to present themselves as THE place to go to buy tested, functional, quality software, then they should insist that all demos and descriptions include ONLY the product for sale and not accept the 'bait and switch' "Live Preview".
Envato allows false advertising and refuses to honor their refund policy.
eTheme is a theme development company that falsely advertises and sells very defective and buggy themes for wordpress, magento, open cart, presta shop, and many more ECOM platforms. They offer to provide support for their themes, but if there is an excuse they can make to take the obligation off of them for having to provide support, they will use it in a flash. Of course you will have to wait over a week, most of the time, sometimes 3 or 4 days to receive an answer from them and ultimately you will receive an excuse. They offer several themes and all of their demos have very cool features, like search auto complete, a fancy product image zoom, A really neat color swatch feature for product options, built in chat, etc. etc., However all of these fancy features that you think come with the theme you are buying, actually do not come with the theme, a matter of fact they come at an extra cost. They advertise that their theme comes with all of this, but NOWHERE does it say there is an extra cost. You ultimately find this out after they have taken your money, wasted your time, and you have been out the cost of installing the theme on your server. At this point you’ve spent more money and time than it would be worth finding a new theme and asking for a refund. I believe they know this and use it to their advantage. As for the bugs well, there is just way too many to list here, the main issue is the speed of the theme, It is very slow with load times at the best being 20 seconds and of bigger pages like the home page being at a whopping 45 seconds. Can you say bounce much? Now I have fixed this issue by hiring a developer at $100 an hour and 6 hours of his time, so $600 but hey its fixed, but expect if you buy one of etheme’s themes you ultimately will have to have a developer fix it.
Now let me tell you what I did and how they reacted.
After a number of attempts to rectify my issues peacefully and without conflict were ineffective. I made a review. If you dislike a product or service you have the ability to objectify and review said product or service. So that’s what I did I gave them a negative review based on my opinion of their company.
After I gave the review I was told this:
“1. As fas as i know you have rated our theme with 1 star. But our support is still replying to your requests and trying to resolve your problems (not ours). I think it is unfair from your side to rate in such low rating and require support from our side. Please, rerate our theme at least with 3 star and we will proceed making support. In other case i don’t see the reason why we should reply on your tickets”
The above was directly from etheme themselves and you can view this by going to this link: http://themeforest.net/item/megatron-megaflexible-responsive-magento-theme/8177432/comments
Now not only is this just terrible business practice its illegal, its bribery.
Now for themeforest or (Envato) they seem to have similar business views because this is what Envato support representative Brad McDougal has to say about the situation.
“It may not be ideal but it certainly isn't unreasonable for an author to request that you reward them with an improved rating, for going above and beyond their obligations to you, by volunteering their time and efforts to try and assist you.”
Since then ThemeForest (Envato) has erased the majority of my comments that included any wording that would make a buyer weary of purchasing from etheme and have removed my negative rating.
Now why would they do that? Well, see Envato is a developer’s marketplace and every sale that goes through Envato takes a percentage of that. So by a developer having a negative review or comment not only does it hurt the developer's sales it hurts Envato’s sales as well. But Envato is such a large company and has many developers that sell on there and I am not saying that all developers on Envato are bad, but if Envato is always covering up any negative reviews or comments that customers post on developer’s products how are we the customers supposed to know what is good and what isn’t.
So in my opinion, I don’t see how I can trust Envato to provide quality products or stand for a customer when there is an issue.
DO NOT purchase fom this company. Yes, I know everyone raves about Theme Forest themes & their website looks like its on the up & up. The back end is an entirely different story.
I received a link downloadable theme that i was not able to set up at all . There was NO access to the sites support center & the site owner was not able to offer a solution. 'Scott' kept referring me to the creator of the theme , " Andon" who was nothing but rude & obnoxious.
After emailing a couple of times asking for assistance & receiving none, I politely asked for a refund & was denied. I then received a very obnoxious email from "Andon" SCREAMING that i did not contact him via the support back end, I advised him that I did not have access to the support backend. He then followed up with 2 'password resets' that got me no where. I received nothing but an alert that stated I was not a customer. I advsied both Scott & Andon of this & they would not hear of it.
Unfortunately i had to escalate this through Paypal, who decided that since they emailed a link to the theme, that i received the product. I just called to reopen this claim explaining that the link is worthless without having access to specific downloads to set it up. Whether or not this is an intangible product, it IS a product. envato received money , I received NOTHING. This is no way to run a business.
If you are so inclined to ignore the warnings here , make sure you pay by a majot credit card ONLY & do NOT go through Paypal. That way you WILL get yor money back when you discover that Theme Forest is not all it's cracke d up to be. These guys are raking in the dough & offering nothing.
My recommendation is NOT to do business with them at all.
Hello Everyone, I am here to report the Envato Scam and the Themeforest.Net Fraud.
I purchased a theme from Themeforest.Net at themeforest and they didnot provide a working download link - we havenot got the files yet and then we submitted several tickets since 30 hours ago - never a response set.
Themeforest.Net by Envato has the worst customer support - they dont respond - they don't respect the customers at all.
We feel scammed and started the paypal dispute and immediately found our envato account locked - then we ended the dispute - that made us unable to start any dispute with this transaction any more - then i continue to ask for help from the Envato Customer support - no response yet - so it is a scam - if Envato have good conscience,they should issue a refund or at least send me the file or a workable download linke to my email. Envato ThemeForest.Net is just scam.
ENVETO THEMEFOREST.NET IS THE WORST COMPANY I'VE SEEN - THEY TAKE YOUR MONEY AND THEN BECOME MUTE.
Envato Reviews
Envato makes it clear that refunds are not easily given and tell you to resolve questions before purchase.
I did a LOT of research to find what I was looking for. I found, what I thought, was the perfect piece of software for $58 (a wordpress theme). It turns out that the "Live Preview" of this theme included 2 additional software packages that were NOT included in the purchase price, nor disclosed. This was not clearly spelled out - I purchased the software, installed it, and then tried to configure - when I realized it was missing key functions. I contacted the author and they said I had to purchase the 2 packages - which would have cost me another $100+. (They were unprofessional in their communication.)
Their description on the Envato online system does NOT clearly spell this out and their software demonstrationis misleading, at best.
I contacted Envato and they are refusing to give me a refund, but only giving me a credit that is only good for a year. I want my money BACK. There is nothing on Envato's site that I found which suggests you get a credit instead of your money back.
Here is the quote from their website: "Envato Market will generally only offer refunds where the item you purchased is broken, malfunctioning or corrupt, or doesn't work as described."
I am livid. This company seems to have a monopoly on selling these types of products and their 'policies' are predatory and they don't honestly represent 'refunds'.
I understand a tough return policy, but if they are trying to present themselves as THE place to go to buy tested, functional, quality software, then they should insist that all demos and descriptions include ONLY the product for sale and not accept the 'bait and switch' "Live Preview".
Envato allows false advertising and refuses to honor their refund policy.
Envato.com Trust Scam and ethemeuk.com cover up.
eTheme is a theme development company that falsely advertises and sells very defective and buggy themes for wordpress, magento, open cart, presta shop, and many more ECOM platforms. They offer to provide support for their themes, but if there is an excuse they can make to take the obligation off of them for having to provide support, they will use it in a flash. Of course you will have to wait over a week, most of the time, sometimes 3 or 4 days to receive an answer from them and ultimately you will receive an excuse. They offer several themes and all of their demos have very cool features, like search auto complete, a fancy product image zoom, A really neat color swatch feature for product options, built in chat, etc. etc., However all of these fancy features that you think come with the theme you are buying, actually do not come with the theme, a matter of fact they come at an extra cost. They advertise that their theme comes with all of this, but NOWHERE does it say there is an extra cost. You ultimately find this out after they have taken your money, wasted your time, and you have been out the cost of installing the theme on your server. At this point you’ve spent more money and time than it would be worth finding a new theme and asking for a refund. I believe they know this and use it to their advantage. As for the bugs well, there is just way too many to list here, the main issue is the speed of the theme, It is very slow with load times at the best being 20 seconds and of bigger pages like the home page being at a whopping 45 seconds. Can you say bounce much? Now I have fixed this issue by hiring a developer at $100 an hour and 6 hours of his time, so $600 but hey its fixed, but expect if you buy one of etheme’s themes you ultimately will have to have a developer fix it.
Now let me tell you what I did and how they reacted.
After a number of attempts to rectify my issues peacefully and without conflict were ineffective. I made a review. If you dislike a product or service you have the ability to objectify and review said product or service. So that’s what I did I gave them a negative review based on my opinion of their company.
After I gave the review I was told this:
“1. As fas as i know you have rated our theme with 1 star. But our support is still replying to your requests and trying to resolve your problems (not ours). I think it is unfair from your side to rate in such low rating and require support from our side. Please, rerate our theme at least with 3 star and we will proceed making support. In other case i don’t see the reason why we should reply on your tickets”
The above was directly from etheme themselves and you can view this by going to this link: http://themeforest.net/item/megatron-megaflexible-responsive-magento-theme/8177432/comments
Now not only is this just terrible business practice its illegal, its bribery.
Now for themeforest or (Envato) they seem to have similar business views because this is what Envato support representative Brad McDougal has to say about the situation.
“It may not be ideal but it certainly isn't unreasonable for an author to request that you reward them with an improved rating, for going above and beyond their obligations to you, by volunteering their time and efforts to try and assist you.”
Since then ThemeForest (Envato) has erased the majority of my comments that included any wording that would make a buyer weary of purchasing from etheme and have removed my negative rating.
Now why would they do that? Well, see Envato is a developer’s marketplace and every sale that goes through Envato takes a percentage of that. So by a developer having a negative review or comment not only does it hurt the developer's sales it hurts Envato’s sales as well. But Envato is such a large company and has many developers that sell on there and I am not saying that all developers on Envato are bad, but if Envato is always covering up any negative reviews or comments that customers post on developer’s products how are we the customers supposed to know what is good and what isn’t.
So in my opinion, I don’t see how I can trust Envato to provide quality products or stand for a customer when there is an issue.
DO NOT purchase fom this company. Yes, I know everyone raves about Theme Forest themes & their website looks like its on the up & up. The back end is an entirely different story.
I received a link downloadable theme that i was not able to set up at all . There was NO access to the sites support center & the site owner was not able to offer a solution. 'Scott' kept referring me to the creator of the theme , " Andon" who was nothing but rude & obnoxious.
After emailing a couple of times asking for assistance & receiving none, I politely asked for a refund & was denied. I then received a very obnoxious email from "Andon" SCREAMING that i did not contact him via the support back end, I advised him that I did not have access to the support backend. He then followed up with 2 'password resets' that got me no where. I received nothing but an alert that stated I was not a customer. I advsied both Scott & Andon of this & they would not hear of it.
Unfortunately i had to escalate this through Paypal, who decided that since they emailed a link to the theme, that i received the product. I just called to reopen this claim explaining that the link is worthless without having access to specific downloads to set it up. Whether or not this is an intangible product, it IS a product. envato received money , I received NOTHING. This is no way to run a business.
If you are so inclined to ignore the warnings here , make sure you pay by a majot credit card ONLY & do NOT go through Paypal. That way you WILL get yor money back when you discover that Theme Forest is not all it's cracke d up to be. These guys are raking in the dough & offering nothing.
My recommendation is NOT to do business with them at all.
Hello Everyone, I am here to report the Envato Scam and the Themeforest.Net Fraud.
I purchased a theme from Themeforest.Net at themeforest and they didnot provide a working download link - we havenot got the files yet and then we submitted several tickets since 30 hours ago - never a response set.
Themeforest.Net by Envato has the worst customer support - they dont respond - they don't respect the customers at all.
We feel scammed and started the paypal dispute and immediately found our envato account locked - then we ended the dispute - that made us unable to start any dispute with this transaction any more - then i continue to ask for help from the Envato Customer support - no response yet - so it is a scam - if Envato have good conscience,they should issue a refund or at least send me the file or a workable download linke to my email. Envato ThemeForest.Net is just scam.
ENVETO THEMEFOREST.NET IS THE WORST COMPANY I'VE SEEN - THEY TAKE YOUR MONEY AND THEN BECOME MUTE.