Can we have faith in the Marketplace and its content?

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Firstly, this is not to bash anyone in particular but I think it’s a discussion we need to have…

On 1st October I purchased MM Sims’ Liege from the Marketplace. Installed it but, whatever I did, I just could not get to do a flight in or out of there without it crashing the sim. So I got in contact with support (who were very helpful), who helped me raise a Zendesk ticket specific to my case (a refund request, basically).

The response concerns me. I was told that my three refunds in eight months was “excessive”. The first refund, back in April, was for content I didn’t actually purchase (some sort of MP error which ended up downloading the wrong product). The other two were more recently, for content that basically did exactly the same as Liege.

Now, my question is: how can we have faith in purchasing from the Marketplace when the after-sales support is non-existent? I’m lucky in that I can escalate my request to an ombudsman, because UK consumer law is among the best in the world — however some of us elsewhere in the world simply don’t have that level of protection and support.

In the UK, the sale of DLC is governed by the Consumer Act 2015, which states that any DLC must function as advertised and to a degree satisfactory to what the average person should reasonably expect. When I buy an add-on airport, it’s reasonable for me to expect it to function with the sim. The response I got suggested deleting all my WUs (I only have 4 installed) and any other games I use (none, I use MSFS exclusively). Now, is this a reasonable expectation? And if so, why do the other 60-70 airports I have installed work without consistently crashing the sim?

As I say, this will get resolved, one way or another; however I have a hard time swallowing the fact that a huge household name like Microsoft can continue operating an online store in this manner. Ultimately, they are responsible for what’s for sale in the MP, and if some of it doesn’t function as advertised/expected, the customer should have every right to a refund or exchange/credit note. It might not be MS’s fault the content is dodgy but, by the same token, the customer is not at fault either.

So should MS adhere strictly to the rules of each country in which it operates, or should there be a blanket policy of satisfactorily addressing customers’ concerns about below-par content? From a conscience point-of-view, the latter is the better way to do business — but that would of course involve a more stringent vetting process and, therefore, even longer wait times for third-party content to appear in the MP.

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This actively discourages people from buying from the MP. Seems counter-productive for sure!

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AFAIK the fact that you do not actually buy products with money, but only buy tokens who then get exchanged for products seems to work against the stringend EU and UK laws until someone actually dares to take MS to court about that loophole.

Considering that MS has the perfect way to simply cut access to refunded downloadable content and that the user cannot simply copy and keep it due to copy-protection, I find the whole practice of using this legal loophole highly shady and only buy from the marketplace if I have absolutely no alternative

The issue you are raising isn’t anything new though, and has been discussed many times in various forms.

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I’m not entirely convinced, because it’s no different to buying gift cards or vouchers. If the product you ultimately end up with doesn’t function, it’s quite irrelevant what method was used as payment.

Highly shady indeed. And it will only discourage users to buy from MP. Which ultimately benefits no one.

I have 62 other airports. This one doesn’t work. But it’s the fault of the way my sim/console is set up, apparently. Occam’s razor disagrees!

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Three being excessive, wouldn’t fly in North America retailers, aka Walmart, Amazon, et al., etc. if the consumer caught wind of these big stores doing this, they’d be out of business real soon!

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I would say the 3 Defective market Plane item was “EXCESSIVE”

and 3 out of how many in total , 3 or 30 …
BIG DIFFERENCE

and how many other wanted to return any of the above defective items.

Why don’t you just submit a request for a refund, along with your Itemized Market Place Receipt, that clearly itemizes what you purchase !! Just as you would to any other retailer ? :rofl:

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Had my hopes up but dashed again. Updated some add-ons though so that’s a plus.

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No, you cannot have faith in Marketplace content.
Do your own online research, watch reviews etc. on any product before you purchase anything.
Also, better to buy direct from developers websites, unless you are on XBox and have to buy from Marketplace

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I’m on Xbox, so at the mercy of the official Marketplace. They have now offered to issue the refund but that’s not really the point…

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Unless it’s a Marketplace only exclusive and you have to have it, otherwise just buy from external vendors. Don’t let anyone here guilt you with the whole “blah blah blah support marketplace because it’s so beneficial for MS/Asobo profits and the general direction of the sim” mumbo jumbo either. The same energy isn’t being reciprocated to customers, and it isn’t your obligation as a customer to worry about profits. We did our part when we made our initial MSFS purchase.

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To be blunt, this practice by Microsoft is an embarrassment to the flight sim as a hobby and to the MSFS team who claim they are building this entire platform for simmers.

The teams at MS and Asobo know that Xbox has stability issues with 3rd party content and has admitted it many times. Why in the world are their customer support teams giving Xbox users a hard time for refunds for non-working content they know may not work?

It’s fine to have guardrails to prevent abuse, but 3 or more refunds in 8 months after purchasing a ton of content on a platform known for instability is perfectly reasonable.

Is Jorg aware of this practice? How does this square with literally anything we’ve been told about how the MSFS team prioritizes user experience? Are the CMs aware of this, and if so, why haven’t they flagged this policy for review?

They must also know that this practice likely prevents marketplace purchases, too. I for one am done with the marketplace until this policy changes or stability is finally fixed on console.

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They are aware. There has been a thread here on this forum where a CM has responded to inquiries about a fair and equitable refund policy. I’m struggling to find the thread where the CM made the statement, but if I can find it I will post the link here.

During a Live Q&A session, I personally asked on the Twitch chat about a fair and equitable refund policy for the Marketplace. Jayne asked Jörg about it on the stream and he said they would discuss it offline.

They are aware, however, I cannot imagine that they are in a position to make the decisions about these sorts of Legal and Business department issues and have to defer to those that are.

It would be nice, however, to know what became of these discussions, if anything.

Stream referencing my question:

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In its present form with no trial period or easy refund option, and no detailed reviews for products (a star rating isn’t a review), I can’t have faith in it and will not buy anything from it.

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I’m struggling to find it because the entire thread has been hidden from the forum.

The thread was linked at the bottom of this post, but the link now goes to an, “Oops! That page doesn’t exist or is private.” error page.

The, now, dead link:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/request-microsoft-asobo-to-revisit-consumer-rights-on-marketplace-content/543013

I’m fairly sure my referring to all of this isn’t making me friends with the powers that be, but the thread being hidden along with the silence on the “fair and equitable” refund policy probably speaks for itself.

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Hi,

This is precisely what I did when I entered this Sim for the first time earlier this year, I researched about the Marketplace and the general consensus was to avoid using it (for multiple reasons) and purchase items directly from development teams/other stores where possible.

Of course the Xbox users cannot do this so I sympathize with them and the issues they may face.

Thanks

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Its buyer beware. I know for the most part I shy away from airports for purchase, as well as other content.

The faith in marketplace items is very low, it’s also the reason we see threads such as the one with the list of items that function on Xbox. Should these threads even be necessary? No the products should all work as expected.

I would love to see a trial before purchase option on everything in the marketplace. That would solve everything.

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What they need to do is practically the same that apple does.

  1. Check for quality. If there´s no value for the customer, don´t publish it.
  2. Check for integrity - if there´s no compatibility with a certain hardware-set - don´t publish it.
  3. Check for support - if it´s fire and forget-software, don´t publish it - force the devs to be compatible with future versions of MSFS.
  4. 2 hours of testing should be allowed, with a refund possibility (like steam has).

If not - no buy. Easy decision.

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I agree mostly but point 1 is not the case. There is a constant storm of dross, shovelware and clones on the AppStore. It’s not Apples place to say what is allowed or not for the “value to customer” in the same way it’s not Microsoft’s call for addons.

Absolutely Steam has the very best policy around trust and refunds. It cannot be faulted at all, so I wish it was possible here too but I highly doubt it will ever happen.

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I know what you mean, but they at least sort out the 100th farting or lighting-app. That should happen here as well. Especially when it comes to propeller-planes with airbus-instruments-assets etc :slight_smile:

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Thanks! That’s helpful, and hopefully we can see improvement here heading into MSFS 2024 as that might be a good opportunity to re-evalaute these rules.

My guess is the decision to remove that thread had to do with people making various arguments about the legal merits of the policy in various countries, which I can see being a compliance problem for Microsoft. My thought is we should focus on the merits of the policy (or lack thereof) totally separate from legal stuff so the conversation can continue on this forum.

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