First time buyer.... not really impressed.

I’m not a coder, I’m a webmaster (and affiliate marketer). I buy lots of premium themes, I use free ones too when they are clean.

I’ve just signed up to themeforest and bought my first theme about 36 hours ago. I don’t want to name the theme and author, but my whole experience has been pretty rubbish.

I purchased a four star theme for $30 (well, $32). Yes, I know that $30 isn’t a lot of money for a theme, but if you build something special and offer good service you can make a fortune – e.g. Thesis.

Anyway, four stars, got the be pretty good right? I liked the preview, it looked good, had some sweet features, so I bought it.

That’s where my problems start. The theme in the download file is NOT the one in the preview. How can that even happen? If this website doesn’t have the theme file that it is advertising, then I don’t want to hand over my hard earned cash.

They haven’t bothered replying to my ticket, so I’ve paid $30 and got a theme which I didn’t even pay for. Apparently you can sell a second version of the theme on the basis of what the first one looked like (completely different).

If I walk into a shoe shop, try on a pair of shoes, and then get home and they have given me the wrong ones out of the stock room…. I can expect the correct shoes or a refund, right? I wouldn’t be happy if they said “tough, keep the ones we gave you”. If I pay for brogues I don’t want them to give me boat shoes.

If they refuse to respond to your complaint what do you do? Settle for the boat shoes? Or rant and rave some more? I’ve tried settling for the brogue shoes, I hated them, so I’m ranting some more.

Seeing as ThemeForest didn’t reply to my support ticket, and have probably spent my dosh on Starbucks by now, I decided to check out the theme that I didn’t want to own.

I can safely say that it was the most awkward paid theme that I’ve owned. Not widget friendly in the side bar (its widget enabled, but loads of errors, very buggy).

It is 0% compatible with absolutely every facebook like or facebook share plugin, it corrupts those too (I tried disabling all other plugins, its the theme file). It screws up all recent versions of one of the most widely used browsers (when I say ‘recent’, I mean every versions from the past 18 months).

Yesterday I read a blog post from an author on here complaining that you lot don’t make enough money. I am going to give the site one more try, I hope I am impressed and can become a loyal customer, but the reason that people are unwilling to spend anymore than $30 or $35 per theme is simple….. they run the risk of having to buy five until they find one which functions the way that it should.

The theme I bought (well, the theme that I didn’t buy but was forced to own) LOOKED better than any of the free alternatives, and the could was ‘clean’ I’ll give him that – even if dysfunctional – but I have to wonder how many of you give consideration to what webmasters and small businesses NEED rather than producing something which is pure inspiration but completely non-practical.

No webmasters these days can do without facebook widgets, it’s a crucial SEO element, and no webmaster can afford to lose every user of X browser.

I really hope that the next theme impresses me, again… this one LOOKS amazing. I will give you all that, this site is eye candy for me….. wish me luck. This theme is effectively now going to cost me $69 instead of $37….. if I don’t walk away with a functional theme after spending $69 then I would be better served sticking to my monthly memberships from rival sites and filling up external drives with unlimited themes!!

ps. Don’t say I should fix theme code myself, if I could do that and was willing to do that I’d be a seller and not a customer

Hi Ryankitt – wow it really sounds like you are having a rough time indeed – let’s hope this gets sorted out quickly and if you are correct about the download not being the same as the one advertised that seems VERY odd – reviewers use the download file to review items and so if there was something like this that had happened – I’m not sure how… however, it needs looking in to and I hope someone from Envato support sees this forum post.

I presume when you say you sent a ticket to support you mean Envato support? Or did you attempt to contact the author via the contact form on their profile page for assistance – if not there then did you check the comments on the item in question, was there any indication the theme was not functioning?

I really hope you get some resolution and I can assure you that the majority of authors produce great themes here – it’s why it’s the largest theme marketplace anywhere – people trust their purchases from ThemeForest and as an author here it troubles me greatly if this is true (don’t take that the wrong way, not saying what you wrote isn’t true, just wondering if something odd happened here)

Anyways, you could try contacting Envato support via twitter with your ticket number requesting a quick turnaround – it can take several days for a reply as there are a lot of users here across all marketplaces.

All in all I wish you the best and please keep us updated here on the forums.

—

Jonathan

Well I am certainly not going to judge the entire community on the strength of one unhappy purchase, there are already three themes that I have my eye on. I’m sure that I’ll be suitably impressed to continue shopping here

I’ve just bought another four star theme, this one: http://themeforest.net/item/motion-picture-wordpress-video-blogging-theme/222214?WT.ac=search_item&WT.seg_1=search_item&WT.z_author=obox

I can tell already that this theme is beautiful. Opened up the theme file to find an instruction manual (nice to see).

Uploaded in WP, everything that you could possibly want in the Theme Options. Opened in the three latest versions of FF, IE, and Chrome….. looks identical in each.

Thank you Obox for restoring my faith, he has a new follower.

I’ve just realised that people aren’t going to reply to this, because they are going to be thinking “is this me?”, well it probably isn’t you, and I am not the type to name names

Well i did a search on our support email for your username and it seems it isn’t us.

Hope from now on you’ll be having only positive experiences with Themeforest.

—

Slobodan

the support link is http://themeforest.net/support

may pass some time till they get to your ticket, but they will look at the problems you mentioned in your first post. They will investigate your claims and if the theme is broken you will get a full refund.

one of the reasons for a theme to look different is that in most cases in preview author uses images that don’t have license for redistributing. So in the download version those items are replaced with other, low quality images or just empty containers.

also, if this is a WP it needs some addition efforts from your part to add the required plugins/containers – the default installation will be quite poor

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for no one, I totally agree with you there is a lot of garbage here, just trying to explain.

seal said
one of the reasons for a theme to look different is that in most cases in preview author uses images that don’t have license for redistributing. So in the download version those items are replaced with other, low quality images or just empty containers.

also, if this is a WP it needs some addition efforts from your part to add the required plugins/containers – the default installation will be quite poor

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating for no one, I totally agree with you there is a lot of garbage here, just trying to explain.

I can assure you that I am no newbie to this market, I own almost 200 developed domains and hundreds more. I use a free theme, if the niche works I reinvest in a premium, rinse and repeat.

What I am telling you here is that the theme in the file was different to the one that I paid for, not that it looked slightly different, not that I didn’t understand plugins. The author has two previews, each for two entirely different themes, when you click ‘purchase’ it sells you one of them – the file does not contain the other script.

I know all that there is to know about Wordpress plugins, my biggest site uses more than fifty. I am specifically telling you that I previewed and purchased one theme, which turned out to be his other theme. Two themes available for preview, one theme available for purchase, they couldn’t have looked more different.

Besides, even if I did buy a theme which required a significant amount of effort by the user – e.g. creating database tables for a function to work, or telling you to install timthumb xx via cpanel, an instruction manual or at least a readme file would be expected by me.

I’ve just about worked out that ThemeForest is effectively just an aggregator of themes available for sale elsewhere by the authors. In future I am going to explore the possibility of buying directly from the authors site rather than via ThemeForest, cut out the middle man as it were, as long as the prices are acceptable.

The theme that I’ve just purchased for $32 (to replace the one that I didn’t want) is available on the authors own site for $50 with a license for unlimited installs. More money for the developer, the ability for me to install on multiple subdomains or numerous domains, and with the ability to cut out the middle man.

If a theme is only available on ThemeForest I won’t buy, I’ll buy when the author/organization who produced the theme has a support forum. That makes my life easier.

I’m sure ThemeForest generates you all a lot of business etc, but I’ll window shop here and buy direct.

I think you’re too smart for this marketplace. Why not leave us in our blissful ignorance while you take your hard earned cash elsewhere.