Table of contents
Ratings and fair use guidelines
What is this all about?
Here's what you need to know about how refunds work on CodeCanyon and ThemeForest:
- Refund requests from customers may be sent to you to approve or decline.
- You need to know what your obligations are when a customer asks for a refund.
- For most cases, once the customer receives a refund, the rating they provided for your item will be removed.
- You can resolve issues with customers relating to a refund request via the dashboard.
- If you and the customer can’t sort things out there is a disputes resolution process managed by Envato.
- Refunds you approve will appear on your monthly statement.
- When an author approves a refund, the purchase will be reversed. Envato and the author will divide the cost of the refund in the same way revenue is divided for a sale.
- You can contact the Help team if you have questions about the refund process.
What do I need to do?
There might be any number of reasons why a customer feels like they are entitled to a refund. Depending on the reason, the refund request might come directly to you to approve or decline.
When you receive a refund request there are a few things you need to do:
- Regardless of your response, you must respond within five days. If you don't, the customer will be able to raise a dispute through us.
- When responding to a refund request you must follow the Envato Refund Policy.
- If your item is marked as supported, you must follow the Item Support Policy.
It is important that you regularly respond to any queries from customers.
Your options
Once you receive the refund request, you will have a few options available via the dashboard:
- You can work with the customer to resolve the issue.
- You can approve or decline the request.
Approved
We will process a refund for the item and notify the customer via email. Once the refund is processed the customer’s rights to use, download and rate the item will be revoked.
Declined
Declining a refund request will notify the customer and close the refund request. The customer will have an opportunity to raise a dispute at this point if they disagree with the decision.
Timeframe
You have five days to respond to a refund request. You can use this time to provide support or look for alternative solutions in an attempt to resolve any issues.
Once a request has been approved it may take 3-5 days for us to process the refund.
Ratings and fair use guidelines
Our refund policy creates an open conversation to help customers get the most out of their purchase. We expect our community to be fair and follow our guidelines at all times.
Our policies can be found here:
Rating removal
Once a refund has been issued for an item, the rating for the item will also be removed. If a customer has purchased more than 1 license for the same item, only when the last remaining item has been refunded will the rating be removed.
Refunds via the dashboard
You have access to a refund management platform in your dashboard to:
- Review and approve or deny refund requests.
- Communicate privately* with your customer.
- And more! Click here to learn all about the new dashboard features.
*Conversations in this channel are visible to you, your customer and Envato and are accessible to you during the refund process.
You will have the option to approve or decline a customer's request based on the communication and resolution reached.
Envato’s role
We ask customers to communicate openly with you as soon as they experience an issue with their item. There are some issues which may be out of your control and in those cases, we direct customers to our Help Team.
When handling refund requests for items purchased on ThemeForest and CodeCanyon, the typical enquiries we receive are:
- Problems with making payments and completing purchases.
- Items that have been removed from a customer’s account.
Types of enquiries you may receive are:
- The item is broken, malfunctioning or not as described.
- Mistaken Purchases.
- Problems with item support.
There may be times when we will decide to refund a customer using our discretion (i.e. we are not legally obliged to do so). In these cases, we will cover the cost of the refund.
For refunds on Markets aside from ThemeForest and CodeCanyon, the refund request is sent directly to us.
We provide a Help Center for commonly asked questions, issues and marketplace guides.
Disputes
If a customer is having trouble reaching a desirable outcome, they may choose to lodge a dispute with us. They may do this because:
- Their request has been declined and they disagree with the decision.
- They are not getting the support they need.
- They have not had a response to their request.
We will investigate all disputes and may reopen a previously closed refund in order to resolve a dispute.
In order to resolve a dispute, we may ask for more information from you or the customer.
We will;
- Review all information provided.
- Attempt to engage you to provide support within our Item Support guidelines.
- Make a fair decision based on our author, customer and refund guidelines.
- Pass the refund onto you if you are legally obliged to provide it.
If we need to contact you or a customer for further information and we don’t receive a response within five days, we will make a decision based on information we have available.