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."

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

[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).

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: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:Company admits Mistake: film at 11

[ScrewMaster]

Hell, our foreign policy could learn from that, even.

Hell, our President could learn from that, even.

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.

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.

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

[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: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.

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

[Afecks]

Everything stands in my comment [slashdot.org] 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?

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: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.