5 ms·

There's a fundamental power imbalance: if you do this to any service, they will likely ban your account. So the monetary reward has to be enough to merit movin

There's a fundamental power imbalance: if you do this to any service, they will likely ban your account. So the monetary reward has to be enough to merit moving all your data and workflows off them in advance and never using them again.

lokar 6mo ago
They won’t ban you for going to small claims court?
- pxx 6mo ago
  maybe. but somebody has to manually ban you if you do that. whereas banning everybody who charges back can easily be done in batch on the billing side
  - lokar 6mo ago
    Good point. one off banning by hand may not be worth the effort, but some code to automate it probably is.
  - andylynch 6mo ago
    Retaliating against someone for asserting their legal rights also gets way riskier what they have already won in litigation.
    - 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
      Good luck surviving a real court case against any faang company. They could bleed any individuals bank account with delays and forcing you to pay hundreds of thousands in lawyers retainer fees for years. The guy who invented the windshield wipers went bankrupt and had to wait something like 20 years for his case. He won but it probably wasn't worth it.
- criddell 6mo ago
  You can always ask the judge to add include in the judgement an order that Steam not retaliate by banning or limiting your account.
pbhjpbhj 6mo ago
^ This. I naively disputed Steam not honouring a refund (it was for about 0.5% of what I've spent with them up to that point), a couple of £pound at most. I'd paid by PayPal and as Steam refused to abide by UK law (Consumer Rights Act says broken stuff has to be fixed or refunded), I raised the issue with PayPal. I expected Steam would refund me, instead they did not dispute that they'd unlawfully failed to refund me, so PayPal - Steam's provider - cancelled the charge. In response, Steam 'limited' my Steam account - effectively closing it temporarily. Now it's limited so they won't use PayPal to sell me anything now, so I haven't bought anything from them since [I have cashed in CS skins, and used that cash to 'buy' games]. It was an interesting lesson in 'might is right'. PayPal were able to refund the transaction because Steam want them and had no argument against the refund. Steam were able to cut me off because this appears to be a loophole in UK consumer law - sellers who break the law can just dismiss buyers who ask for refunds. Lesson learnt. From Steam's point of view, they pissed off a customer and probably burnt 30mins-1hour of support time in answering my requests, way more than the cost of the refund. But selling games, which I later found Steam knew was broken, and then not refunding because I had the tenacity to try and fix it - meaning that the game sat open for longer than their auto-refund time - is not on imo. Petty of me for sure. Crap of Steam too.
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  I'm surprised UK law doesn't prohibit retaliation against the customer for insisting on his legal rights. Not petty of you IMO. It's what everyone ought to do but it's inconvenient so most people don't.
  - Ekaros 6mo ago
    Why should they? Freedom of association is key Western principle. Steam chose not to associate with them anymore. If the user don't like it they should have sued them in court instead.
    - Cpoll 6mo ago
      Being able to freely threaten reprisal against people exercising their rights circumvents those rights. Freedom of association applies to individuals; it's a non-sequiter here.
boh 6mo ago
No that's not how that works. This stuff is a non-event. You refute the balance, they have a period where they can defend their claim (8/10 times they don't), you get your money. This is a very basic transaction that happens every single day to every major company. "Banning" you costs more than your refund and has additional legal risks. I know being helpless against tech companies is a major trope in these comments but this is basic everyday transaction stuff. Plan on being on hold with your credit card company but not being a central target for a trillion dollar AI startup because you asked for a $100 refund.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  Yeah unless you refute ebay. A scammer went to the trouble of creating an entirely different ebay account registered to literally "pirate[xxxxx]@..." using my same name. Then they found a tracking number to my same zip code. Then they bought (fake) items from a second scammer account using my stolen credit card to "wash" the money. When I filed a chargeback ebay came back with a fat stack of paperwork and absolutely fucking buried me. They had the tracking number to "me", they had "me", they had the invoices to "me", they had my credit card, and their lengthy report had all the right words in all the right places and dressed up in all the right banking mumbo-jumbo and they convinced my bank so well that my bank suggested I was a fraudster myself and then my bank closed my accounts. I couldn't even sue them because at that precise time I moved cross country and couldn't get to the court to sue them in. I ended up eating the better part of $1000. Ebay is absolutely fucking savage at chargebacks. They appear to have people trained specifically to bury in paperwork anyone that tries to challenge fraudulent charges.
  - boh 6mo ago
    I'm sorry that happened to you, but that's a <1% event. I don't know why I'm getting push back for suggesting a simple credit card refute request. It's almost as if the people responding are suggesting not doing anything is the way to go or you'll get banned--which of course, regardless of how many one off stories people may have--is a ridiculous assumption.
  - mjcl 6mo ago

lokar 6mo ago

They won’t ban you for going to small claims court?

pxx 6mo ago
maybe. but somebody has to manually ban you if you do that. whereas banning everybody who charges back can easily be done in batch on the billing side
- lokar 6mo ago
  Good point. one off banning by hand may not be worth the effort, but some code to automate it probably is.
- andylynch 6mo ago
  Retaliating against someone for asserting their legal rights also gets way riskier what they have already won in litigation.
  - 2ndorderthought 6mo ago
    Good luck surviving a real court case against any faang company. They could bleed any individuals bank account with delays and forcing you to pay hundreds of thousands in lawyers retainer fees for years. The guy who invented the windshield wipers went bankrupt and had to wait something like 20 years for his case. He won but it probably wasn't worth it.
criddell 6mo ago
You can always ask the judge to add include in the judgement an order that Steam not retaliate by banning or limiting your account.

pbhjpbhj 6mo ago

^ This. I naively disputed Steam not honouring a refund (it was for about 0.5% of what I've spent with them up to that point), a couple of £pound at most. I'd paid by PayPal and as Steam refused to abide by UK law (Consumer Rights Act says broken stuff has to be fixed or refunded), I raised the issue with PayPal. I expected Steam would refund me, instead they did not dispute that they'd unlawfully failed to refund me, so PayPal - Steam's provider - cancelled the charge. In response, Steam 'limited' my Steam account - effectively closing it temporarily. Now it's limited so they won't use PayPal to sell me anything now, so I haven't bought anything from them since [I have cashed in CS skins, and used that cash to 'buy' games]. It was an interesting lesson in 'might is right'. PayPal were able to refund the transaction because Steam want them and had no argument against the refund. Steam were able to cut me off because this appears to be a loophole in UK consumer law - sellers who break the law can just dismiss buyers who ask for refunds. Lesson learnt. From Steam's point of view, they pissed off a customer and probably burnt 30mins-1hour of support time in answering my requests, way more than the cost of the refund. But selling games, which I later found Steam knew was broken, and then not refunding because I had the tenacity to try and fix it - meaning that the game sat open for longer than their auto-refund time - is not on imo. Petty of me for sure. Crap of Steam too.

fc417fc802 6mo ago
I'm surprised UK law doesn't prohibit retaliation against the customer for insisting on his legal rights. Not petty of you IMO. It's what everyone ought to do but it's inconvenient so most people don't.
- Ekaros 6mo ago
  Why should they? Freedom of association is key Western principle. Steam chose not to associate with them anymore. If the user don't like it they should have sued them in court instead.
  - Cpoll 6mo ago
    Being able to freely threaten reprisal against people exercising their rights circumvents those rights. Freedom of association applies to individuals; it's a non-sequiter here.

boh 6mo ago

No that's not how that works. This stuff is a non-event. You refute the balance, they have a period where they can defend their claim (8/10 times they don't), you get your money. This is a very basic transaction that happens every single day to every major company. "Banning" you costs more than your refund and has additional legal risks. I know being helpless against tech companies is a major trope in these comments but this is basic everyday transaction stuff. Plan on being on hold with your credit card company but not being a central target for a trillion dollar AI startup because you asked for a $100 refund.

mothballed 6mo ago
Yeah unless you refute ebay. A scammer went to the trouble of creating an entirely different ebay account registered to literally "pirate[xxxxx]@..." using my same name. Then they found a tracking number to my same zip code. Then they bought (fake) items from a second scammer account using my stolen credit card to "wash" the money. When I filed a chargeback ebay came back with a fat stack of paperwork and absolutely fucking buried me. They had the tracking number to "me", they had "me", they had the invoices to "me", they had my credit card, and their lengthy report had all the right words in all the right places and dressed up in all the right banking mumbo-jumbo and they convinced my bank so well that my bank suggested I was a fraudster myself and then my bank closed my accounts. I couldn't even sue them because at that precise time I moved cross country and couldn't get to the court to sue them in. I ended up eating the better part of $1000. Ebay is absolutely fucking savage at chargebacks. They appear to have people trained specifically to bury in paperwork anyone that tries to challenge fraudulent charges.
- boh 6mo ago
  I'm sorry that happened to you, but that's a <1% event. I don't know why I'm getting push back for suggesting a simple credit card refute request. It's almost as if the people responding are suggesting not doing anything is the way to go or you'll get banned--which of course, regardless of how many one off stories people may have--is a ridiculous assumption.
- mjcl 6mo ago