These sorts of posts are what got that thread locked. You guys should know better.
Well, I gave my opinion of steam, and was then maligned by steam's pushy sales people. Expecting people to put up with insulting behavior over the internet that they would never put up with in person only encourages those obnoxious people to do it more. And they do.
As for the chargeback abuse, you're right that it's wrong. The question is- who should absorb the costs: Steam, or the purchasers on Steam?
I have no issues with banning accounts from buying games, or banning cards. I do have issues with banning games legitimately paid for over a dispute on something else. People who are going to delibrately try to scam Steam, are smart enough to use a different account for each game, so Steam isn't really protecting themselves, just inconveniencing legitimate users.
Suppose you bought a computer and it turned out to be a lemon. The dealership refused to fix the problems or would not replace it with one that worked or take return of it and return your money. The problems were legit and something that the dealership was legally obligated to make good on. But they still refused. The customer charged the item, so was able to convince the credit company to return their money. What did the dealer do? They went to the person's home and took back the defective computer, but then also stole all of the other items that person had bought from them over the years. This is what steam has been doing.
Now in most consumer cases such as the above in the usa, the dealer committed a crime and the customer would be able to seek some sort of legal redress. Though that's changing as corporations gain more control over people's lives through their control of the law makers in the political system. But what sort of legal redress does a steam victim have? This company is more like a mafia protection racket than a legit operation. Did they find a loophole in the consumer laws so they could steal from their customers like this? Probably. Perhaps the way their victims can fight back is with a class action lawsuit, but really, steam should be in criminal court facing theft charges.
In a situation such as this, where a crooked corporation is exploiting their customers in such an obviously criminal manner, it is very foolish to be one of their customers.
Edit:
I own a small business and recently a customer returned a couple of things they bought for repair and modification. The repair was due to something that was my fault, the modification was something the customer changed their mind on. What I did was repair the problem and do the modification all free of charge. I was morally and legally obligated to make the repair at no charge, but not to absorb the cost of the modification. I ate the costs, regardless, because I felt I had inconvenienced the customer enough already because the items went out the door with a fault of my making (the fault was not something that could be determined at the time, but appeared later, but it was something I should have foreseen). It takes time and costs money to return items for repair, as a customer I always hated that I had to eat these costs usually when returning a faulty item. Doing the modification at no charge kind of evened things out and I think was a fair way to deal the situation. And the customer agreed.
Now if I was steam, what I would have done was pretend the faulty items were defective due to something out of my control and either refused to fix them or charge the customer to fix them. I would have also charged the customer for the modification asked for. If the customer objected, I would have then replied "so sue me" and told them to leave while I kept their items. That's no way to run a legit business, but it's becoming more common, unfortunately.
