Dealing with scammers asking for refunds
Hi everyone, I'm working on a product called Interview Query (https://www.interviewquery.com/) where we help data scientists get jobs by providing interview course materials.
Last week we had a user ask for a refund for our product. Usually we refund them right away but the week before, we had implemented Mixpanel tracking on our site and noticed that this user had deliberately gone through and scraped our entire site to get the course materials and then immediately sent an email asking for a refund.
We're not entirely sure how to handle the situation and don't want to end up in a dispute (though I'm sure we have grounds for them violating the TOS and could win).
Anyone have similar experiences in this case?
Hi @racketracer, You write on your website about the content:
So how do you have copyright on the content if it's not yours to begin with?
What does your TOS look like? Are there any intellectual property (IP) restrictions or copyright notices on the content?
Yep, we specifically try to state that:
You will not modify, publish, transmit, reverse engineer, participate in the transfer or sale, create derivative works, or in any way exploit any of the content, in whole or in part, found on the Site. Interview Query content is not for resale. Your use of the Site does not entitle you to make any unauthorized use of any protected content, and in particular you will not delete or alter any proprietary rights or attribution notices in any content
Does that prohibit downloading a copy for personal use? You could tell this guy unusual activity has been detected on their account & being considered for fraud. Alternatively refund & take it as a lesson. Maybe add something to your TOS about no refund if significant material accessed.
@rab but as the OP writes in his website, if the content is generated
"during interviews at top companies", then how is it copyrighted by anyone?@ycm8 Missed that but I assume not copyright OP is concerned about but abuse of service. Given user signed-up they accepted TOS and therefore are subject to them (copyright or no copyright).
Thanks for the input, I think we're leaning towards giving a refund and ignoring it since it seems uncommon. It's only frustrating because truly we just want to know why someone would actually go through the effort to do so, but then I guess maybe it's because we're actually providing value.
Oh, you're good then. I would just send them that and let them (politely) know that they broke the terms of service and you're not obligated to give them a refund.
If they're scamming like that, there's a good chance their bark will be worse than their bite. I wouldn't lose sleep over it until you get something from a lawyer. Just be careful with chargebacks. It would be helpful to get ahead of the problem and notify your payment processor/bank that you had a customer breaking your TOS.
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Yeah, that's true. It may be worth @racetracer just adding something to the TOS that you can't download anything and just refund this one as cost of lesson learned.
I think even these TOS can't be enforced since the content source is "interview questions asked during interviews at top companies"...
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On principle, you should not refund BUT if it is a small amount and not worth the hassle, just refund and move on. Update your TOS to add "no scraping" policy as well going forward and next time if someone does that, you can try letting them know.
The point is that when you have such services, there always be a few bad actors no matter what. If they are not causing significant issues to your business, consider it cost of doing business. Build that in your pricing as well.
I'd refund them, it's not worth the distraction this early.
Is this the first time something like this has happened?
If yes, maybe it's too early to worry about it?