Greetings everyone. I figured I would share my experience with Steam support following an issue with content purchased back in the Steam Summer Sale of this year (2015).
This all starts with the silliest of things: a simple error in DLC being assigned to the wrong game. However, Steam showed no interest to resolve the problem, even though they are in breach of contract for selling the wrong DLC with the wrong game. Just for clarification: "breach of contract" happens when a fact which 'entices' you to enter into the contract is false. A fact given can be false with no knowledge by either party that it is actually wrong. (Fraud is when a fact given is false, and the party giving that fact has full knowledge that it is indeed false i.e. lying).
The story:
I purchased "Company of Heroes 2" along with all DLC listed on the game's store page http://store.steampowered.com/app/231430/
It turns out that a "Company of Heroes 2 - Ardennes Assault" DLC (Fox company Rangers @ $5 ) is bundled with standard COH2. Both COH2 and COH2 Ardennes Assault are standalone, and do not 'upgrade' the other. For the Steam Summer Sale it only cost me about $1, so I was not too worried about the money. However, this error is still an issue since it will affect thousands of customers, so I figured I was doing Valve a favour by requesting a refund to bring this issue to their attention.
Boy was I wrong.
I triggered a refund request 2 days later that apparently did not take in their system (although it could have been ignored). I figured I would give it some time, and remembered to follow up on the incident a month or so later. I put in another complaint about "other problem with the game" and wrote a detailed ticket of the problem (including that Steam was setup for breaches of contract due to the incorrect advertising). I got a reply back asking me to go back to the complaint page and initiate a claim using another option. I 'requested a refund" and went into the same detail that this DLC was for another game which I do not own, and therefore hadn't played at all. I also mentioned that I had initially tried to request a refund 2 days after the purchase.
Here is where it gets interesting for fellow Steam customers:
My request was denied with the reason given: "Your request has been denied due to you having played this content for more than 2 hours". They did not even bother to read what I had said in the ticket; I obviously could not have played Ardennes Assault for any length of time. Furthermore, both tickets I had replies to simply ignored my mentioning that Steam was in a situation where they are causing breaches of contract. It is still listed as the wrong DLC to this day.
Well some readers will be saying by now: "Well this is only over a dollar!!!". It isn't about that. It is about Steam's apparent indifference to their selling of a product under a false claim to potentially a lot of people.
Enter in a Paypal dispute:
I commenced a Paypal dispute, and things get even more absurd. Surely Steam would consider a Paypal dispute seriously? Paypal gives the buyer and seller some time to work things over without getting involved themselves. Paypal sent details of the dispute to Steam awaiting a reply. No reply was ever given, except I now have an automated 'alert' from Steam support displayed in my Steam client messages section. This alert informed me that everything from the purchase was frozen until I closed the Paypal dispute. Therefore I could not even play COH2 until this is resolved.
Steam essentially acknowledged that some of their funds were frozen...
Naturally, after submitting 3 claims using Steam's system, they had their chance. I am not closing a dispute with Paypal to try their system again. I gave Steam all but 2 of the days Paypal gave to escalate this to a full fledged Paypal claim before it was automatically closed. This was last week. Escalating the issue involved writing a description of the problem to Paypal, and they gave Steam until today to respond which they also have ignored. It is a Saturday today, so I doubt there will be a last second reply from Steam.
The questions now are: Will the impending refund wake up Steam to actually fix legal problems within their system? Will Paypal take objection to dealing with an organization who seems to ignore problems with their transactions?
Stay tuned and we shall see.
*Update Sept 13
Paypal ruled in my favour.
Nearly a week later, I still have a red notification from Steam support asking me to close the Paypal claim. I also cannot purchase any games through Steam. I seem to be able to load the game fine, but haven't tested if I can play multiplayer.
I find it truly moronic that they would punish themselves by not allowing me to purchase anything. I mean there is more than one way to buy a game these days. Steam isn't the cheapest deal in town anymore either. As you guy can see on the Tek Syndicate game deals page, most of the good deals are through other parties such as GOG, Green man Gaming, etc.