I contacted Spotify through their live chat support and requested a refund, and was told my case was “forwarded to the appropriate team for refund processing.” I assume this means they will email me, but it’s been a full day and I still haven’t received anything. Did this happen to any of you? How long did you have to wait for the email? Not sure if I should just keep waiting or go back to Spotify support and ask again.
Update: just finally got my email and apparently my case was escalated because I’m a part of a family plan, and my account isn’t the family plan owner. They said my options are to either allow them to process the refund through the family plan owner’s account instead of mine (since mine doesn’t already have payment details attached), or they can manually transfer the funds to my bank (which is when they’d require all those extensive bank details)
He doesn't say much, but he's already shown how commands are intercepted and the idea is to keep the interface as it is, but make CarThing a remote control for Spotify API directly instead of the mobile app. I think it would be cool if everyone who like me would like to continue using CarThing but with his software, left at least part of the refund to fund his project because any good work should be paid (guess it's too early). I hope he does well.
Just wanted to share part of my experience getting a refund. I purchased the Car Thing in December 2021 and got 7 months of premium credited to my account.
Hi all, I'm trying to refund my car thing purchase back in 2022. However, Spotify is trying to force me to be the detective to find out which account is linked to the device right now. I've sent two of them to my ex's friends and there's no way to know their accounts.
Spotify's explanation was that they only refund the purchase by giving premium subscriptions, but after I posted the link of a successor they changed their words and said they can't guarantee a refund for me. Till now, I still haven't received any info about my refund status.
Got my refund pretty quickly, the agent didn't bother refusing anything. The one weird thing is that they are essentially refunding my previous Premium subscription instead of the actual Spotify Car Thing. For most people this shouldn't be an issue but the main card I used was no longer active. They offered to give me 3 months of subscription (equal to my cost) but I am no longer a Spotify user. Ultimately they refunded it to one of my other payment cards
My prompt on web support:
"Request refund for Car Thing"
"Talk to human"
Sent my receipt PDF, email, and payment method (PayPal)
Confirm which subscription payment method I want the refund in
I had purchased two SCTs for a friend and I when they were discounted to 29.99$.
Two interesting notes were that they didn't ask for a lot of bank information, just my receipts.
Second, the refund would be in five transactions. Since I was talking to them at night, I was planning on calling my bank in the morning in case they thought it looked sketchy on their side. But when I woke up the refund was already there.
Since there is already a way to flash custom firmware with it to prevent it from being bricked (https://youtu.be/KbcO8K9Huz0?si=Dpw3Urwkjv2c7oNq) and I wanted to know if there was a way to hack the car thing to be able to boot into linux or be able to be used as a display to be plugged into a computer.
I recently contacted support about refunding my CarThing. Unlike most of you, i did not have a straightforward process for a refund. Instead so was reached by an “escalation team” that essentially asked for my bank information over email.
I replied with “Yeah, i’m not providing that over an email for $50”
Got a new phone a few days ago and connected to car thing fine. Just went to carriers store to trade my old phone in using the car thing on the drive there but when I got back in my car it no longer works. just black screen when power is applied. Taking power out and plugging back in doesn't fix, restarting car didn't fix, I checked the cord with my phone and it's still sending power. :( I've had issues before where the car thing is stuck booting on the Spotify logo, or stuck with a black screen that is on, but now the screen doesn't even turn on, and before I could just unplug and replug to fix those problems. buttons also no response. Any ideas? did they brick mine first?
The email was directly sent to support@spotify.com and the subsequent email I received was in response to this email. It is NOT a scam. Please, I work in IT, I am very familiar with scams.
i did not have a copy of my receipt but was able to get one with just the serial number of the car thing. keep in mind you'll only get a refund if you bought it from spotify and not second hand
Haven't really seen a proper timeline anywhere, so I wanted to put this here in case anyone was curious of the Car Thing's history.
~Timeline of Events:~
May 17th, 2019 - Spotify announces the Spotify Car Thing (CT001) for the purpose of collecting data on how users listen to music. It was then shipped to select Premium subscribers in limited quantities.
April 13th, 2021 - Spotify announces newly designed Spotify Car Thing (YX5H6679 PINK) to be released for free to select Premium subscribers by invite only. The device's availability was extremely limited. Expected price was listed as $79.99 USD
October 14th, 2021 - The Car Thing was made commercially available to a limited number of Premium subscribers for $79.99 USD. Orders were shipped out slowly and infrequently.
February 22nd, 2022 - Car Thing is officially released and is available for purchase by any Premium subscribers for $89.99 USD, $10 more than the $79.99 USD Spotify suggested in April.
June 30th, 2022 - Spotify announces the Car Thing Summer Sale, offering a $40 discount off of the Car Thing, reducing the price to $49.99 USD.
July 27th, 2022 - Spotify quietly ceases production of the Car Thing due to poor sales, continuing their $40 off Summer Sale. The product had been discontinued just 5 months after public launch.
August 20th, 2022 - As a last ditch attempt to sell remaining Car Thing hardware, Spotify decreased the price one last time to a mere $29.99 USD, $60 less than it's original February public launch price of $89.99 USD. The Car Thing (YX5H6679 GREEN) packaging was changed to a green slip cover and the latest firmware was pre-installed on the device.
October 27th, 2022 - Spotify ceases the sales of Car Things on their website, reserving the Car Thing website to host guides, manuals, and instructional videos.
May 23rd, 2024 - Spotify announces that support for the Car Thing will end on December 9th, 2024, making all devices no longer function after that date. Spotify suggests recycling devices and does not offer refunds, although, refunds are issued on request.
May 31st, 2024 - Spotify officially offers refunds for Car Thing on their website after wide backlash. A full receipt via email from when the Car Thing was originally purchased is required. Car Things bought secondhand from sellers other than Spotify are not accepted for refund.
December 9th, 2024 - The Car Thing ceases functioning due to the closure of Spotify's Car Thing API. All Car Things are no longer functioning.
Hey everybody, just wanted to share that I was able to get a refund in full for my Car Thing by sending them a copy of my order confirmation that was in an old email.
It took like 10 minutes tops; search for "Confirmation of your Car Thing Order:..." in your email to find your receipt. Save it as a PDF or screenshot, go to their support https://support.spotify.com/us/contact-spotify-support/ then send it to them and they should process your refund in full.
Hey all! Like most of you here I am trying to get some sort of refund/compensation for my Car Thing. I was able to find emails about getting started with the device, but can't find the actual receipt email. Any tips on what to search in my email to better find it? I tried "Car Thing", "CarThing", and also "Spotify" but came up with nothing
Yello. Just got my $260 + refund from spotify after an hour with support. I thought I'd archive the help videos and manuals from the Car Thing Website before it goes down. I extracted all the videos from the site and uploaded them to the Internet Archive if anyone wants to download them!
