Hi All,

I have been looking at various Letters Of Destruction to design one to use for my Money Back Guarantee.

One that I came across said the following:

"I, the End User, hereby declare under penalty of perjury by law, that as of the date of this Letter of Destruction"

I am not sure about including something like the above, it does indicate that it is a serious matter, but is it a bit too much?

Whilst looking at other LOD's and their content it seems that some are short and will be able to fit one page and others are stretched out to 2 pages. Is this a tactic to put the end user off, i.e. they have to read 2 pages, print 2 pages and fax 2 pages?
Is it legitimate to do this, making the user jump through double the loops to get thier money back?

Any thoughts on the above would be appreciated, plus any thoughts on the content and design of LOD's.


Alfie

Jesus do you seriously think it matters? Are you in any position to enforce it? If not, then who cares, you are just going to have to trust your customers.

It is obviously a tactic that can be employed to reduce the amount of overhead that returns generate. For publishers with a lot of titles, processing returns can become a substantial time sink, not to mention loss of revenue. It is in their best interests to reduce the number of returns by having the customers fax legal mumbo jumbo around.

I can't really speak to this being good or bad business from a publisher standpoint, but as an indie developer selling directly to your customer I really think you benefit from having personal, one on one interaction with your customers. With proper treatment you can often turn angry customers in to strong supporters of your company.

I agree. Not being in a position to enforce it, I don't think a lot of legal wording is necessary. I'm not yet using a letter of destruction, but it's one of the things I eventually plan to do. When I do, I probably will try to make it a friendly letter that just explains in plain english what the ramifications are and what it all means:
You must delete all copies...
You must uninstall it.
This means you will not be able to play the game anymore.
You will lose any scores you have submitted to the high scores web page.
etc, etc, etc

In other words, try not to say "you'll be bound by law to obey these rules". Rather just say "were sorry to see you go, because this is what you will be missing out on. Sign here to confirm that you understand this."

"I am not sure about including something like the above, it does indicate that it is a serious matter, but is it a bit too much? "

Originally posted by cliffski
Jesus do you seriously think it matters? Are you in any position to enforce it? If not, then who cares, you are just going to have to trust your customers.

I thought it mattered because including something like the Perjury statement would alienate users.

Lord Kronos seems to have the right idea, a simple and usre friendly document with the minimum of legal terms.

Alfie

This is what I use. IANAL, so it might not be legally binding but I think the main portion is the reason for why they want a refund. If someone goes throught the trouble to ask for their money back you need to know why,

Just be careful not to put a money back guarantee on your site with somthing like "No questions asked" in the text if you do a LOD, because you are obviously asking a question to the customer :

"are you willing to sign this letter to get a refund ?"


pat.

Originally posted by patrox
Just be careful not to put a money back guarantee on your site with somthing like "No questions asked" in the text if you do a LOD, because you are obviously asking a question to the customer :

"are you willing to sign this letter to get a refund ?"


pat.

I thought about this and felt using an LoD doesn't violate the "no questions asked" policy. I interpret the LoD as simply the manner in which a refund is requested. Most people seeking a refund start by asking, "How do I request a refund?" So we just point them to the LoD. But aside from gathering the necessary data to look up the customer's order, there are no questions on the LoD. There's a free-form optional comments section, but we don't explicitly ask why the person is requesting a refund.

I suppose if you want to use a really strict interpretation, it would be impossible to have a pure "no questions asked" refund policy. You at least have to ask the person who they are and what game they want a refund on. And if they haven't made it clear already, you may need to ask if they want a straight refund or an exchange. A good chunk of our refund requests become exchanges. I think the majority of people understand that "no questions asked" means that they won't be asked to justify their reasons for requesting a refund. It means that if you want a refund, you don't have to explain why -- you simply get the refund no matter what.