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

[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?

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.

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.

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.