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How to get a refund for your Google Play purchase even after the 15 minutes time limit [How To]

googleplayrefund

The Google Play app store is a wonder making treasure chest of goodness. We’re long past counting how many apps there are on there, but suffice to say it’s enough to keep you busy for a weekend. However not all apps are as great as they should be, but even when they deserve to be returned you only have 15 minutes to make up your mind, after which you can’t get a refund of your money. Or can you?

One of the little secrets of the Google Play store is the fact that Clause 3.4 of the company’s Developer Distribution Agreement specifically allows for a refund period of up to 48 hours for apps which cannot be previewed.

‘Products that cannot be previewed by the buyer (such as applications): You authorize Google to give the buyer a full refund of the Product price if the buyer requests the refund within 48 hours after purchase.’

This may sound surprising, but it’s fairly logical when you think about it. There are definitely going to be times when it’s simply not feasible to find out about any deep seated problems with an app or game within 15 minutes, especially if they involve serious bugs or worse. So in these cases it’s only equitable to give more evaluation time, even if you don’t broadcast it too loudly.

As you can see from the video above, to take advantage of this little known clause all you need to do is log in to your Google Play account, click on the Ratchet Wheel icon top right and select My Orders. This gives you a list of all your current Play purchases and downloads.

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Once there, find the app you need the refund for, and click on the little dots icon which comes up after you hover over the name.

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Click on Report A Problem, and when the box pops up, select ‘I’d like to request a refund’ from the drop-down list. Right at the bottom of the box that comes up, you’ll find a box where you can apply for a refund outside the 15 minutes ‘due to extenuating circumstances‘. This is clearly there to stop vexatious claims from trolls and other unworthies.

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Fill in the box with your request and press submit and that’s it. There’s absolutely no guarantee that Google will give you a refund of course, but if you do have a decent reason and you explain it properly, there’s also no reason why they won’t give you your money back. After all it’s really the developer’s responsibility to make sure they produce a decent product.

Anyway there you go, hope you find this little tip useful. Let us know in the comments if you’ve successfully received a refund and how long it took. We wish we’d known about this a long time ago with some of the duff stuff we’ve bought on there.

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