Spent a load of money buying and downloading movies and TV shows from Google Video. After canceling DTO/DTR (Download to Own/Download to Rent) feature of Google Video which allowed users to upoad their videos, choose how much they want to show online, and then offer customers to download the video and watch until their subscription expired, or to just purchase a show to keep for life, Google made an announcement that you would no longer be able to watch those videos on your computer. Of course they got complaints about this (I would have complained if I would have bought anything), and so they derided the easiest thing to do was to just give everybody credit on their Google account that could be used in Google Checkout. This seemed like the best thing to do because some credit cards might have been out of date, meaning Google would not be able to refund the credit cards if they were out of date. Still, people complained at this as just another way to keep people Googlized (yes, thats my own word). So instead, Google ended up offering the refunds by putting the money back on the credit cards. Along with that Google made the following announcements on the Official Google Blog.
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. 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. Here's how we're hoping to fix things:Yes, everybody got back double of what they payed becasue they recevied both Google Checkout credit, along with money back to their credit cards! Absolutely amazing!
- We're giving a full refund -- as a credit card refund -- to everyone who ever bought a video. We'll need you to make sure we have your most recent credit card information, but once we know where to send the money, you'll get it.
- You can still keep the Google Checkout credit that you've received already. Think of it as an additional 'we're sorry we goofed' credit.
- We're going to continue to support playing your videos for another six months. We won't be offering the ability to buy additional videos, but what you've already downloaded will remain playable on your computer.
