Refund

I am posting this here because the email response told me to.”… If you continue to have trouble with s2Member, we ask that you please continue this conversation in our support forums. We’ll be happy to assist in any way that we can.”

I’ve read through your terms and policies and understand that you will consider a refund within 30 days “if the Product fails to perform basic functions, as designed”. I have used the free version of s2member on a couple of projects in the past and really see the usefulness. However with this project I needed to have separate forms for registering for each of my access levels. Because of this I needed the pro version. When I installed the pro version I began seeing a few glitches occur. While these glitched were displayed by other plugins, it is obvious that the s2member pro is what is causing the problems. When I uninstall s2member the other plugins work correctly. This is an issue only with s2member pro installation. I understand that you cannot guarantee the plugin compatibility with other plugins, but you do guarantee installation and in this case it does not install without breaking other aspects of my site. These other aspects were part of the site before I used s2member and they worked fine with the free version. I cannot have s2member pro on my site and am requesting a refund. It is well within 30 days and it fails to perform basic functions as designed. Not only does it not protect my site as is, but it leaves my site broken and ready for vulnerabilities.
I’ve looked and asked in the support forums to try and resolve my issues. I will continue to use the free version on my other sites and will consider s2member pro for future projects.

Thanks for reporting this important issue.

I’m very sorry to hear that. However, we ask that you please review our terms/conditions, regarding our refund policy on digital goods. Please see: http://www.s2member.com/terms/#s2-terms-refund-policy

We will consider a refund for digital goods (within the first 30 days), only if the product fails to perform as advertised on our website. Having 3rd-party theme/plugin compatibility issues does not define a clear violation on our part to deliver a product that provides the features and functionality that we advertise. If you have encountered a clear violation, as defined by our terms of service, please follow-up here. We will be happy to offer you a refund, if we see a failure on our part to deliver.

See also: http://www.s2member.com/terms/#s2-terms-warranty

WARRANTY / GUARANTEE; LIABILITY LIMITATION

s2Member® does not warranty or guarantee its Products in any manner. We cannot guarantee our Products will function with all 3rd party components, plugins or web browsers. s2Member® is not responsible for any 3rd party plugin compatibility conflicts that may occur. It is our policy to support all s2Member® Products as best we can. However, we will only provide support for 3rd party plugin conflicts, at our own discretion; as time allows. Please report any known conflicts in our Customer Support Forum for review. We may offer suggestions or alternatives.

s2Member® is not responsible for any data loss that may occur as a result of installing, running, and/or uninstalling any s2Member® Product. Please remember to backup your files & database before installing, running, upgrading, and/or uninstalling any s2Member® Product. If data loss does occur, please report to our Customer Support Forum for review. We may offer helpful advice.

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I’ve looked and asked in the support forums to try and resolve my issues. I will continue to use the free version on my other sites and will consider s2member pro for future projects.

If you continue to have trouble with s2Member, we will be happy to assist you here in the forums. I see that you’ve posted two threads. This one regarding a refund request, and one other related to a 3rd-party application that falls outside the scope of our support.

If you are having issues with s2Member itself, please post your questions/concerns, and a Support Rep will address the issue for you within 24-48 hours, Monday-Friday. I also suggest this article regarding common problems with s2Member, a troubleshooting guide. Please see: Knowledge Base » Common Troubleshooting Tips

Related thread: http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/plugin-disables-my-invite-anyone-plugin/

You and I both know this has nothing to do with your terms. You have attempted to have wording in your terms that will keep you from ever having to give a refund. This is bad business. You say you will give a refund if the product fails, then no matter the situation you say it failed not because of the product, but because of some other third party plugin. However you are not clear on what “we will consider a refund within the first 30 days of your purchase, if you are unable to install a Product. Or, if the Product fails to perform basic functions, as designed” really means. I am unable to install the product. When I do it breaks my sites current functionality. Yet you say that is not your fault. What is your fault then? Your terms have created a platform for you to continuously rip people off and they can do nothing about it. You say you will consider a refund, yet you never considered it because you just say it is not your fault. However I have been able to get another membership plugin to work with absolutely no problems. So the problem is clearly with s2member. I respectfully ask one last time for a refund before taking this to the next step.

Thanks for the follow-up :-)

What is your fault then?

If you can provide information that shows we failed to deliver a product that performs advertised, as I said previously, we’ll be happy to offer you a refund. We don’t want to rip anyone off. If we’ve sold you a product which fails to perform as advertised, then it would be understandable to ask for a refund, absolutely.

However, we will NOT provide refunds for digital non-tangible, irrevocable, software — unless there is a circumstance which warrants this, as I just described.

You are right. We VERY rarely provide refunds, simply because we make it a point NOT to advertise something that is not possible with our software. We expect you to get what you paid for. If you did not, we will be happy to give you a refund, and make it a point to change and/or modify what was broken, or what was confusing, etc.

Example Of A Valid Refund Request

A customer writes…

s2Member was advertised to provide “feature X” (at s2Member.com), but this feature is not working properly. I contacted a Support Rep in the s2Member Forums about this. After attempting to resolve the issue, and after I tried all possible solutions presented to me by s2Member Support Reps, feature X is still not working on a clean installation of WordPress with no other plugins (except s2Member), and I’m running a default WordPress theme.

~ Refund granted by s2Member®

I will leave this thread open for you. If you can provide us with a clear violation, please do. If you have indeed been shorted by our product, I would like to know about it. We would certainly issue you a refund in that scenario. However, so far you’ve only stated this reason for your request.

When I uninstall s2member the other plugins work correctly. This is an issue only with s2member pro installation. I understand that you cannot guarantee the plugin compatibility with other plugins, but you do guarantee installation and in this case it does not install without breaking other aspects of my site.

Other aspects of your site being 3rd-party components and plugins, which, as I mentioned previously, are absolutely NOT covered by our terms of service. We sell and support s2Member, not WordPress itself, or other 3rd party components, plugins, themes, etc.