I’m having trouble understanding the site, but it appears to me that the problem is possibly that Steam doesn’t refund game purchases after they’ve been released. But again, I can’t really tell. I never thought such a beloved company could have such a low BBB rating.
A BBB rating is worthless for any company with a nationwide or international presence (some may say it’s completely worthless, but that’s a different debate).
Your rating drops with unresolved complaints or complaints that aren’t addressed at all. The problem is that it’s the BBB that determines if a complaint has been properly addressed or not.
So beyond the legitimate complaints, you’ll end up with the usual hundreds, if not thousands, of nutjobs who have no valid gripe but gum up the works anyway. And any sufficiently large company is just going to ignore the BBB anyway, which reduces their BBB ratings still further. It’s not like they will hire enough PR or troubleshooting people to interact with the thousands of BBB agents across the country for every little thing.
Also, it’s a dirty little secret, but the BBB is known to be a little more forgiving in ratings to companies that purchase BBB accreditation. But again, any large national company isn’t going to bother with that.
Missed the edit window, but I guess I was wrong about large companies and BBB accreditation. Samsung does (A+). Sony does too (A+).
Google doesn’t have it (B-). And Apple doesn’t (A+). Sony Computer Entertainment America doesn’t - though the parent company does (F).
I’ve recently had customers at my small business demanding discounts up to 75%, money for gas to come to our store, and other forms of small scale extortion, invariably followed by the threat of either reporting us to the BBB or dissing us on-line. I’m pretty sure that was NOT the intent of the people who set up the rating system, but let’s just say I don’t view BBB ratings quite like I used to.
No surprise there. Valve and Steam are awful from a consumer perspective. For example, people who paid for the in-game ticket of a cancelled Dota tournament had to contact support on their own initiative to get a refund instead of just being issued one. All video game retailers treat their customers like dirt, so Valve isn’t alone. Not that that is an excuse.
Almost all of those are “Problem with Product/Service”. I would bet a considerable sum that most of those boil down to “I bought Skyrim and it only got 12fps on my Win98 computer and Steam wouldn’t give me my money back” or “SpecOps was only 7 hours and it sucks but Steam wouldn’t give me a refund.”
I hate just linking to a youtube video, but check out this 20/20 clip about the BBB.
The TL;DW of it is that BBB trades money for a better rating.
Probably.
But when it comes down to it, Steam is DRM and not too consumer friendly. They took ages to get offline mode working properly… and even when working “properly” it leaves much to be desired. As far as I know, there is still no way to turn off updates for specific games (like if you wanted to stay on a specific version for use with mods, or didn’t want to use the bandwidth on the update, or because a new version breaks the game as has already happened before). You may think you turned off updates, but Steam will still check and lock you out of the game if you go online. But if you stay offline, you can’t update or download other games.
I have nearly 100 games on Steam because considering price and convenience they have been the best. But that’s because of the generally dismal anti-consumer practices of the industry, not because Steam is good.
I’m not going to try and defend Steam. I’m just saying that gamers can be an exceptionally irrational and whiny bunch. Spending any time on Steam’s forums is evidence enough of that. Any number of people blaming Valve because they can’t work a computer or avoid getting scammed or whatever else.
I filed a BBB complaint because Valve won’t release Half Life 2: Episode 3.
Okay, not really. But I’m thinking about it.
I have never had more trouble with a service than I have with Steam and Valve, so I’m not remotely surprised. I’ve waited three days for a forgotten password email before. I’ve still never gotten a response to any request for help, most recently when Steam stopped connecting for no logical reason.
All the problems I have had lead me to want to go back to physical media games only. At this point, I don’t think it’s possible, sadly.
See, I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Steam, and think Origin is the devil. 
Well, not the devil per se, but certainly not fun - and I wouldn’t put any credence in an F rating from the BBB for them, either. The Internet is a great opportunity for people to go frothing-at-the-mouth insane over stupid crap or average problems.
I once, entirely through user error (although I still blame them for making the links look so similar), purchased a $74.99 bundle of games instead of a $7.49 individual game. I emailed Steam, and they said, “We don’t usually do this, but okay, here’s your refund.”
I think they rock.
A product that doesn’t work on your system when you thought it would is a legitimate reason to want your money back. Honestly, as long as you didn’t actually get to play it, it shouldn’t matter why you need to get your money back. Unlike box retailers, they know when you haven’t played it.
Steam shouldn’t have allowed that download to happen in the first place. At least, no without having to find some option to override requirements checking.
Nonsense. Once you activate the key, it’s yours (and purchasing a game without saying it’s a gift for inventory automatically activates it). Valve has no way of knowing what system you plan to play a game on when you purchase it. I can buy games off my tablet or cell phone.
So really, it comes down to people not reading or understanding the terms of the sale and then saying it’s all Valve’s fault. Like I said: Any number of people blaming Valve because they can’t work a computer or avoid getting scammed or whatever else.
But who cares whether you’ve played it or not if you ask for a refund in the first, say, 24 hours?
I see NO reason -none- that Valve could not just refund purchases that have, say, less than 24 hours since purchase and less than 4 hours time logged. After all, they have that information, and they have the power to deny you access to ANY game at ANY time - they don’t even need an excuse. So what’s the problem with removing a title from your library and refunding you, hell, they could just give you ‘steam dollars’ to discourage people.
Frankly, it shouldn’t matter if people ‘can’t use a computer’ or somehow got scammed - Valve got money from them, and they can and SHOULD refund it for any reasonable reason within a well defined time window.
Also, Left Hand of Dorkness, word on the street is that Valve will issue one refund per customer ever, so… well, you got yours. 
They’re not exactly breaking new ground with the “no refunds” policy, though. Gamestop doesn’t accept returns on new games (they do on used). My local Best Buy also won’t accept returns on games. Walmart and Target also don’t on paper, but they’re more likely to cave if you complain loudly enough.
You’re free to feel that it would be nice if Valve did this or that. But you’re agreeing to the current terms when you buy a game from Steam today. Which means you have little room to go back and complain to the BBB later when you decide the terms didn’t really apply to you or your problem is special.
Of course this doesn’t stop people from going to the BBB which is why I take the “F” rating with a large dose of salt – it’s people thinking they’re special snowflakes and should have gotten different treatment than everyone else who agrees to the same terms.
I think Valve could do away with many of it’s complaints if it allowed a limited trial period for games. You purchase a game, you’ve got 1 hour of game time to play it before the sale is irrevocable. Not an hour since they charged your credit card, one hour of actual gametime, in-game.
The problem is that it’s likely that if Valve were to assert itself and tried to put forth some basic requirements, developers and publishers would lash back.
For a comparison here, I would submit that Amazon has extremely good service. When I had a minor issue with one-click ordering, Amazon responded to me cry for help within hours, completely and immediately resolved the issue, and provided contact information if I needed it. At that point, I wanted to know who actually did it so I could send a collection of assorted baked goods to the office in celebration. I’m not saying Amazon is perfect, but they absolutely understand the relationship with the customer.
Edit: The intersting thing here is that, oddly enough, this was for a Steam product. In fact, Amazon gave me infinitely better service than Steam would, for a Steam product.
Valve has no such attitude, and it could easily backjfire on them some day. The irony is that Origin and whatever the hell Ubisoft is trying to use could easily smack Steam down the tubes with aggressive customer service; Steam is basically a discount service, and there’s usually a strng market sector for higher-tier services. Steam took a very long time to become remotely worthwhile, when MicroSoft had a strong platform already and could have built on it, or even Sony might have come from behind. Neither happened, and to this day nobody really is trying to create the kind of competition needed.