As many people are now aware the pinata deal more or less lied when it claimed you won't get a game you already own unless you own everything in the promo. Turns out at least two of the games had limited quantities available, which was not mentioned anywhere on the promo page. But it's all okay, because according to mods in the forums we should be able to get a refund no problem if it messes up. Right?

Well, maybe. Just after the sale had started I bought several pinata's, did not have all the games available in the promo, but ended up getting doubles. I contacted support and very quickly managed to get a refund on the two pinata's I bought that gave me doubles. They gave no explanation of why I might have gotten those doubles though.

Two hours later I tried again. At this point nobody in the forums had figured out the whole "limited quantity" thing yet, so I thought maybe it had been a mistake on the part of the system. Well, I got another "gift" for a game I already owned. So I rolled my eyes, figured something was fishy with the pinata deal, but decided it was no biggy because I could just contact support again to get a refund and then not buy any more pinata's.

Well as of posting this message it's now been roughly 55 hours since I contact support for that second refund attempt. I sent the message right before going to work. I got home seven hours later and had no reply, so I sent them another message asking what was going on. I've still got no reply back whatsoever. Even if they don't want to give me a refund, I'd rather get some lame copy-pasted excuse than be outright ignored.

Now I know that what the mods say in forums isn't legally binding, but you know what is (Or at least should be, to my knowledge)? Public announcements which promise certain services, made by GOG themselves. December 8th 2013 was when they first announced they had begun their refund policy, and here's a direct quote from that page. "There's even more! If you bought a game by mistake, or simply changed your mind about a purchase, you can get a full refund within 14 days, as long as the game wasn't downloaded. If in any doubt about our refund policies, please consult our FAQ. EDIT, link added so you can see the guarantee for yourself, it's near the bottom: https://www.gog.com/news/announcing_our_new_guarantee

Now, of course, on their official FAQ it mentions nothing about a full refund within 14 days for any reason. It only mentions that you can get a refund within 30 days IF the game will not work on your system. But (again, to my knowledge) GOG has never made any official announcement or warning about rescinding that promise of a 14 day money back guarantee.

So now this leaves me in a bit of a pickle. If GOG support won't return my messages then I seem to have no option of getting my money back, even though it seems by all rights they should do so as their various guarantee's claim. And I'm not gonna try and bring GOG to court over this because it's only $6, even though this seems legally pretty shady. Again, unless I'm missing something.

The worst part is, I really like GOG. I love getting DRM free games and I love being able to buy old games and know they'll work on the modern OS my computer runs on. But this whole ordeal has kind of soured the trust I had in them. I guess at this point I'm just venting and need to shut up. Give me your thoughts and advice everyone, thanks.

To my knowledge, GOG Support does not work on the weekends. That plus the difference in time zones means you probably sent your request in too late for it to be responded to yet. Be patient, and don't worry unless you still haven't heard back by the end of Monday or Tuesday.

You know it's the weekend, right?

EDIT: Also yes, timezones. GOG is in Poland, so it's entirely possible that it was already after 5pm or whatever time they go home.

It was not the weekend when I sent that support message I haven't gotten a reply to. And, as I pointed out, that message was sent merely two hours after the first message which very much did get a reply. Though I can see timezones playing a part, perhaps somewhere in that two hour period the support guys got off work and went home. That's a possibility.

It's also worth considering that Support may have gotten a ton of messages during the hours between your first and second tickets, and that could also contribute to a delay in response time. For reference with the time zone difference, Poland's time is 6 hours later than EST and 9 hours later than PST. When you're getting ready for work could very easily be around when they're closing for the day.

Its 06:06pm Sunday in east America
Its 12:06AM Monday in Warsaw Poland

So given the 55 hour thing, sounds like it was the weekend.

Btw, don`t just take a look in the 30 days FAQ, but into GoG policies and user agreement. They have the money gove back without reasons in there, just under different name. And well, it was WE and they won`t always reply instantly. Probably alot of people made a call for a refund, after it was posted by a blue that they can do it, so expect an answer next week, support can be a bit slow ;)

I just did a quick check, and it looks like 55 hours ago it was about 5 PM in Poland. So I think we can safely say that, depending on when Support gets to go home for the weekend, they were closed or about to close when OP's second message was sent.

I'm picturing thousands of people mass-buying those damn pinatas, for a chance to get the game(s) of their choice for cheap, and then attempting to get a refund for all the games they didn't want.

I feel kind of sorry for the GOG support. ( Although part of the blame lies with GOG, or at the very least, with whoever came up with this genius sale idea. :P )

So you feel bad for something you assume it's happening with no info if that it's actually happening?

Be patient. After a while the temperature drops and everything is free and easy.

That would definitely sound annoying. Seems like a really dumb thing to do too.

As for games/limited quantities, it's entirely possible the sale started and a couple games were on the list that shouldn't have been. If memory serves me right, they never listed the games that were on the deal, and they aren't about to pull back games because you got them by accident (or for free) and be a jackass like that, so if republique was never intended to be on the list then that's not their fault they had to take it off once they noticed it.

I wonder how much patience the staff have, or if they have to just walk away for a day and come back to keep their cool from people throwing in tons of requests for support or refunds when they either won't comply with trying to get the game to work at all, or have the trigger finger to hit the SCANDAL!! button and act like the whistle blower...

That's very interesting, thank you for pointing that out. Apparently as long as you haven't downloaded the game or anything you can get a refund within 30 days according to the "withdrawal right" portion of their policies page. "d) Withdrawal Right: we give you the right to withdraw from a purchase of GOG content without charge and for any reason within 30 days after you bought that GOG content, IF it has not been downloaded, streamed, activated or used in any way before then. If any of those things happen then your withdrawal right is lost.
"

That is very nice to know.

I just want to be clear, I'm not doing this. I actually did get a few games from the pinata's that I "didn't want" but those are not what I'm asking for refunds for. I'm only asking for refunds on games which I already had copies of when, according to their promo page, we should not have been able to get.

I'm sorry if it seems that way, but it's really not my goal. I've been a GOG user for a long time now, I love their service, but when this happened it was very distressing and it's hard to find answers sometimes, so I had to ask the community. I think I now have the answers I was looking for.

Trust me, I know how stressful it can be to work in any kind of customer service position. I currently work in that environment myself. People who don't know the rules or act impatient and over react are never fun to deal with, but that's something you have to expect when you sign up for the job. Mistakes and misunderstandings are inevitable on both ends.

They don't do much on weekdays either.