Google Re-Refunds Video Purchases

holymodal writes "In a new post to the Google blog Bindu Reddy, the Google Video product manager, admits that only offering refunds via Google Checkout was a bad idea: 'We should have anticipated that some users would see a Checkout credit as nothing more than an extra step of a different (and annoyingly self-serving) kind. Our bad.' Google now plans to issue customers a full credit card refund, while allowing them to keep the Checkout credit and extending the life of purchased videos another six months."

Comments

Good job Google

[GweeDo]

This is again an example of how a company should deal with their customers. Thank you Google.

(man...I wish I had bought around $4000 in Google Videos :( )

Re:Good job Google

[Cyberllama]

Yes, I'm sure if people had known they were going to get a check-out credit and their money refunded, they'd have actually used the service. As it stands, however, google will be out about 10 bucks for this decision.

Re:Good job Google

[whoever57]

This is again an example of how a company should deal with their customers. Thank you Google.

Companies should offer difficult-to-use refunds and only when called on it should they do the honest thing and provide a proper refund?
It's good to see what Google is doing now (and espcially so given that there is effectively a double-refund), but really, they should had done this at the outset (it would have cost Google less also).

Re:Good job Google

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you'd get $8000 back ($4000 credited back to your card and $4000 is Google checkout). 100% ROI for 1 year is not half bad. Plus, the money bought your entertainment for the year in between.

Re:Good job Google

[Film11]

I wonder if you (and others) would accept the apology if it were Microsoft instead of Google...

Re:Good job Google

[mr_zorg]

Granted. They probably just weren't thinking about a possible negative reaction. Using Google Checkout for refunds makes sense because they no longer have to worry about expired or cancelled credit cards, etc. Not to mention, by keeping the money all in house, it would cost them less. They probably figured all the Google Fanboys were already using Checkout anyway. :) At least they admit they screwed up. And keeping BOTH refunds? Wow. Extremely generous.

Re:Good job Google

[Chyeld]

I don't expect everyone to make the right decision every time. I do expect the ones that want my respect to be able to correct their mistake when it's appearent to them.

They get kudos from me, though as another person joked I doubt the $10 extra they are now out is going to hit their bottom line that hard.

Re:Good job Google

[TheRaven64]

It's good to see what Google is doing now (and espcially so given that there is effectively a double-refund), but really, they should had done this at the outset (it would have cost Google less also). Everybody fucks up. You can judge their character by what they do next. My (very cheap) hosting company screwed up a few times in the first few months I was with them (a couple of billing problems and some unscheduled downtime), but I was happy to stay with them because they refunded me a month's payment and doubled the amount of bandwidth I was allocated. Apple lost my laptop when I sent it in for repair, and it took them four weeks to admit this and then two to replace it (with one that was DOA, and needed sending in for repair immediately). In both cases, better procedures could probably have avoided the initial screw up, but this what these are is only obvious in hindsight. Something will always go wrong, and people will always make the occasional wrong choice. They can do nothing better than act quickly to correct their mistakes. I will always recommend a company that is willing to admit their errors and fix them.

Re:Good job Google

[thetagger]

Yes, I'm sure if people had known they were going to get a check-out credit and their money refunded, they'd have actually used the service.

Ok, I am the guy that actually tried to buy one of their videos. Unfortunately I couldn't because I needed an American credit card. Brilliant.

Buying stuff on the Internet is hard as hell. I don't mean buying stuff that gets delivered in a package - that is easy enough to do over the Internet and works just fine worldwide. But when it comes to buying bits and bytes, nobody wants to sell you anything. None of the music stores support my country. None of the video selling/rental stores support my country. What the hell? Limiting your availability geographically is harder than just doing nothing. They walk the extra mile to have _less_ customers? I think the only stuff I can actually buy online that gets sent electronically is Virtual Console stuff on the Wii.

Re:Good job Google

[Cecil]

Unfortunately, they have international trade laws to deal with. Or, more likely, they just want to charge everyone a different price and haven't decided how much money they can milk your country for, and setting the wrong price would poison future sales.

Re:Good job Google

[pokerdad]

I wonder if you (and others) would accept the apology if it were Microsoft instead of Google...

Why don't you spend a few dozen hours looking for a time Microsoft publically admitted a mistake then forked over cash and you can enlighten us?

Re:Good job Google

[Bishop923]

After reading the blog post, I felt like it was an honest apology. They thought that it would be easier for all involved to just give a google checkout credit instead of going through the task of tracking down everyone and making sure that their credit-card information was still up to date. I could see myself making a similar decision and I empathize. Ultimately, refunding the money AND letting everyone keep the checkout credit is a nice thing that they simply didn't need to do. On top of that, most companies are so afraid of getting sued that flat out saying that they screwed up is a very brave move that I respect.

I feel like if Microsoft was in a similar position, they would make users jump through a bunch of hoops just to get part of their money back, and they would some how spin it as empowering the consumer. I could NEVER imagine Microsoft coming out and saying "we screwed up" without 10 paragraphs of legalese attached refuting the previous statement.

Re:Good job Google

[Sj0]

Once again, you have failed to learn the most important lesson of all.

Slashdot: Not just one person. Duh?

Re:Good job Google

[pmatchstick]

Buying stuff on the Internet is hard as hell. I don't mean buying stuff that gets delivered in a package - that is easy enough to do over the Internet and works just fine worldwide. But when it comes to buying bits and bytes, nobody wants to sell you anything. None of the music stores support my country. None of the video selling/rental stores support my country. What the hell? Limiting your availability geographically is harder than just doing nothing. They walk the extra mile to have _less_ customers? I think the only stuff I can actually buy online that gets sent electronically is Virtual Console stuff on the Wii.

I get where you're coming from, but it's more complex than that. I believe most online music and video stores would love to sell to anyone willing to pay. Unfortunately each new country is its own market, with applicable taxes and other regulations. There's also an issue of provocative content; many countries have strict and even strange definitions of obsenity (that includes the USA) that means content has to be screened for local sensibilities.

But more importantly, the stores are just that, storefronts. They don't own the rights, the labels and studios do, and they make the ultimate decision when and where to distribute their product. Unfortunately the system they have in place puts a lot of emphasis on dividing the world by regions... For example just about every deal a musician makes with a label has provisions for foreign markets. Amplify that times a hundred contracts for television and movies: writers, directors, actors, music rights holders, and maybe a dozen others who get paid every time a product is released (or re-released) in a new region. I'm oversimplifying in a big way and there are a ton of other factors but the point is, in many cases if there isn't an obvious profit to be had it just isn't worth it to release at all.

Yes, this does suck, and it should be legal for anyone to purchase from a store based in any other country online, but that's not the system we have in place (a system which was based on theatrical releases, video tapes and vinyl records.) And yes, it does need to change. But the point I was trying to make is... Don't put all the blame on the stores, there's plenty to go around.

Re:Good job Google

[zigziggityzoo]

Don't forget, you're also keeping that $4000 worth of entertainment, bringing your total ROI to 200% (provided the content purchased was actually worth the cost... Google didn't seem to think so. In fact, they essentially paid you to watch it).

Re:Good job Google

[Mr2001]

Copyright is to blame in both cases. If not for copyright law (and laws like the DMCA that reinforce it), everyone would have access to all the material in existence, no matter where they lived. Google doesn't want to sell a particular file to you? No problem, buy it from someone else, or download it for free.

Re:Good job Google

[Ohreally_factor]

But who will refund your childhood?

Re:Good job Google

[yesteraeon]

And keeping BOTH refunds? Wow. Extremely generous. Seems that way. But they may not have had much of a choice. Presumably the alternative to giving both refunds would have been to take back the money paid into customers' Google Checkout accounts and issue a credit card refund instead. Ok. But what about people who already spent the money that was refunded into their GCheckout accounts? No cash for them?? Google could assume that because they spent the money that those customers were fine with receiving refund in that form. But inevitably some people would complain (in some cases probably justly so) that they spent the money on what they could using GCheckout, but would rather have purchased something else with that money if Google had given them cash. Since Google is essentially trying to reverse a PR screwup, having all those people filling the intarweb's tubes with bitching would exactly be considered a resounding success.

Re:Good job Google

[cbhacking]

I work for the e-commerce section of a company that has an international online store (of bits and bytes, not physical products). The effort to add an additional country vastly exceeds that to check somebody's country and deny them access. We're trying (hard) to support more countries and payment methods, but it's not trivial at all.

Problems range from standard internationalization issues that anybody selling software overseas encounters to legal trade limits (usually not something that can be legally circumvented, and yes we're a US company). The most common significant problem is handling payment types. In the US we only have a few credit/debit card providers (less than 5, depending on your definition of "major). What's more, it's usually worth more for us (and less effort) to support the minority payment methods here in the US since this is the primary region where we're known. Internationally, the number of payment methods rapidly becomes quite extreme, and each one requires setting up the client-side support for the necessary authentication data and server-side infrastructure to handle payment authorization with each provider. This is, of course, after price adjustments and exchange rates are taken into account. There's a lot more I didn't even understand - I work on one small project that's one part of a fairly large team - but your complaint that you were unable to purchase online because you "needed an American credit card" doesn't surprise me in the least. Adding each additional payment method/provider adds a lot of cost to the project.

As a rule, companies make as much money as they can. Thinking things like "Limiting your availability geographically is harder than just doing nothing. They walk the extra mile to have _less_ customers?" is a clear sign that you don't know what is involved. I didn't either until a meeting a month or so back; as an American, my credit/debit cards have always been accepted internationally... but most of the names and icons of cards accepted by overseas ATMs and such are completely unknown to me; nothing here in the US accepts them because it's simply too much effort for the level of reward. I'm sure it's worth a bit more to online stores, but it's still a long road for relatively little economic reward most of the time.

Company admits Mistake: film at 11

[griffjon]

This is one thing I do respect Google (and a pitiful few other companies) for - admitting mistakes. So many hassles and PR disasters could be averted by just admitting you FUBARed and are willing to make amends. Hell, our foreign policy could learn from that, even.

Not exactly ..

[ScrewMaster]

... and extending the life of purchased videos another six months.

I think he means "extending the life of rented videos another six months." I wish companies would just be clear on the fact that you aren't actually buying anything, if the seller can revoke your privilege to use it at any time. I'm really tired of government and corporations trying to undermine the idea of "property", of what is mine and what is not.

Re:Not exactly ..

[AusIV]

I have to wonder if the six month extension exists specifically so some third party can create a workaround for the DRM, allowing people to keep their videos forever. Google obviously can't release such a thing without violating contracts with the media providers, but they might be able to make it very easy for such a thing to get produced.

I wonder if it was on purpose

[rastoboy29]

I actually wonder if Google planned on revoking the DRM movies the whole time.  It's not hard for me to imagine myself thinking that way if I was the head of Google--give a first class lesson on why DRM sucks, that even normal people (albeit those who would buy movies via Google!) could understand.

It's like everything you buy has a long, long string literally attached to it; and at any time your new tv could start jerking toward your front door, outside, and back up the street to corporate headquarters.

The reason they used Checkout in the first place..

[bomanbot]

..is also given in the article:

We planned to give these users a full refund or more. And because we weren't sure if we had all the correct addresses, latest credit card information, and other billing challenges, we thought offering the refund in the form of Google Checkout credits would entail fewer steps and offer a better user experience.

Well, they have a point that Checkout credits would entail fewer steps, but I think Google tried to avoid a bit of work here as how I understand it, with Checkout credits, the Google Video users themselves have to make sure the refund gets to them, but with the credit card refund, Google has to make sure everyone gets their refund.

Still, they admitted their mistake and corrected it, which is good.

An Interesting Precedent

[Naerbnic]

I think that this decision on Google's part makes a very interesting precedent for any other vendor of DRMed goods. In order to have good customer service, Google is refunding all the money they've previously gained while they were in business. Although as other have stated, that may not be much, it's almost certainly caused them to lose whatever money they thought they had earned through it.

The message this sends to other companies in a similar business seems clear: "Don't ever leave the business so that your customers can't access their media. If you do, and you plan to ever do business again, it will cost you more than you earned throughout the entire process. Customers are effectively loaning you their money for as long as they can play their content."

What does this mean? I'm going to guess that if they listen to this message that they will glance nervously at each other as they slowly change over to non DRM content. Since that seems to be the trend currently, I would suppose that this can only accelerate it.

Still Not Convinced

[JamesRose]

Yes, the apology and refudnd was good, but as far as I am concerned it should never happened anyway, not as an oversight, not as a policy. Google shouldn't be a company that needs to be told that that sort of thing is bad practice, it should know it anyway. However, the people they double refund is a very nice touch which most companies wouldn't have done to make up for a mistake- I just wander what caused the complete round about turn, sounds like they found someone in a position of power who was too money orientated got replaced.

Re:Still Not Convinced

[faloi]

I just wander what caused the complete round about turn, sounds like they found someone in a position of power who was too money orientated got replaced.

Based on my time in the corporate world, I'd guess they were close to having something else marketable in the video world (as part of their "refocusing"), and that it would hit soon enough that they figured people wouldn't have completely forgotten about their last...faux pas.

My betting money says that if they weren't about to launch something in roughly the same space (or partner with someone in the same space), they wouldn't give two hoots about any lingering bad PR.

Here's how the other companies would've done it...

[sprior]

Sooner or later all DRM companies are going to shut off content people thought they owned.

Microsoft will simply say that your out of luck and what are you going to going to do about it.

Steve Jobs would announce that the devoted will now be able to buy all their content over again, but it'll be even cooler this time (and the crowd will cheer him over it).

Google says "oops, our bad, here's a refund. In fact here's a DOUBLE refund".

Definitely not evil yet

[NMerriam]

I know periodically Google gets involved in things that seem to show they're drifting to the dark side of giant ass-raping corporatism, but amazingly obvious pro-customer decisions like this show that there is at least a significant amount of "not Evil" left in the heart of Google.

This is the kind of behavior you expect from a local mom and pop store or some other small business who wants to make you happy more than they want to screw you out of $5 just because they can.

Seeing that Google is taking care of end-of-product-lifed customers is going to make people a lot more comfortable taking a risk on future Google products. I know that if they do something else I'm not sure will last but sounds good, I'll go ahead and buy. I don't think I would have before.

Re:The reason they used Checkout in the first plac

[Kashra]

Except the blog still says that users have to start the refund process, by providing up-to-date information for themselves. So its still in the user's hands.

Still, wish I'd bought some Google videos, now. :)

Not good enough!

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

If you have invested in time in amassing a collection of Google videos (I know, I know, but hypothetically speaking), neither Google nor anyone else should have the right to reverse that sale at their leisure, forcing you to re-amass the same collection by other means. Even if they compensate you extra -- that isn't the point. A collection-refund-recollection process is not what you signed up for. The only fair thing to do is to offer software to remove the DRM so that everybody can keep whatever they collected. Nothing else even comes close -- not even Google's sweet little maneuver where you cancel a DRM service and threaten Draconian consequences, and then move up the compensation and the disconnection deadline a few days later, so that everyone will talk about how nice they are (gee, being nice is easy, all you have to do is threaten to be a bastard before you do what you were planning to do anyway) -- so that the public will focus on that instead of focusing on the matter at hand: Google just unilaterally revoked thousands of already-completed sales. This is wrong. The amount of compensation is just an attempt to make up for the wrong, but it doesn't make it any less wrong.

Re:Not good enough!

[Firehed]

Unfortunately, the DMCA makes that illegal. Providing software to bypass a copy protection system is against the law (in the US); I believe this applies to even your own products. But regardless, it doesn't matter as they'd have to go to every single content publisher and get their permission to remove the copy protection rather than just pull the license and give a refund, which is logistically insane.

Re:Not good enough!

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

Unfortunately, the DMCA makes that illegal. I'm not saying that Google need to break the law. But it's their responsibility to fulfil their commitment to a final sale. Even if it means going to the content providers and offering to compensate THEM for the removal of the DRM. THAT'S who Google should be trying to run a compensation deal with. And whatever that costs, Google needs to swallow it. If the content providers agree, the DMCA no longer applies. So Google is pulling a switch on entirely the wrong people. I not only believe that Google should do this, but I also believe that the law should FORCE them to do this in order to avoid revoking a completed sale to the consumer, which is the greatest evil in this whole situation. In fact, it's quite possible that law already allows for the making of this argument. After all, it's not the consumer's business what is going on between Google and content providers behind the scenes -- they were told they were getting an infinitely playable file, and that's what they should get, whatever Google has to do in order to secure that. (Which means either keep the DRM running or negotiate a removal with its providers -- no other solution will do.) If Google can't fulfil its legal obligations as a vendor, then a court may ask them compensate the consumers monetarily and that compensation package might look a lot like what they're doing. But that is not for Google to decide; the law doesn't allow the offending party to unilaterally decide what kind of compensation is fair. Nor does that erase the wrong that was done.

This still doesn't change how I feel...

[Afecks]

Everything stands in my comment other than the monetary issue. I still think this is a pretty evil thing to do and shows you exactly what "defective by design" means. Could you imagine Wal-Mart coming and repossessing your DVDs because they don't want you watching them anymore? Would you really care if they slapped some money on the table as they were leaving?