[UPDATE] Humble Bundle lack of keys and EU laws

When Humble offered credit, did you refuse the credit and insist on the original payment method being refunded instead?

I doubt it is illegal to offer store credit, but it is probably illegal to refuse to credit the original payment source if such is requested. That's why Steam and Amazon offer both options, for example.

Well, it looks like Humble isn't offering credits anymore either. I didn't receive 16 keys (most of which will definitely not have any supplies) and this is what they auto-replied (I wasn't the only one who received a letter with similar content; but this is also evident from the wording of the text itself, which clearly does not answer specific questions):

Jai (Customer Service)

Mar 14, 2025, 6:02 PM PDT

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out to Humble Bundle Support! I'm sorry to hear there have been issues with receiving keys for your order.

The keys to this product are temporarily exhausted, meaning we have depleted our current stock of keys. We receive all of our keys manually in batches, and once we acquire more keys, the affected download and store pages will be updated. Unfortunately, we cannot provide estimated times for when we anticipate receiving more keys, but we greatly appreciate your patience.

Rest assured, we are working on acquiring more keys from our partners, and we are very sorry for the delay! If you receive a key exhaustion error on your download page, you will be informed via your registered email address once more keys are in stock, though we recommend you check back on your download page from time to time. More information is available in our Key Exhaustion Errors help article.

Please let us know if you need any additional assistance with this order, as we will be happy to help as much as possible!

Regards,
-Jai
Humble Bundle

No ANY offer to solve the situation, "keep waiting" (I wait a year for some keys and of course they won't be there).
After trying to continue the conversation with them, I only received one more automatic answer:

Hi there,

Thanks for getting back in touch with us!

We are genuinely very sorry for any continued issues caused by this key exhaustion. We also understand that the long wait for keys can be frustrating and discouraging, and we want to extend our apologies for the delay you have had to endure.

Key exhaustions do not have a set time that they last, as some are resolved very quickly while others may span multiple weeks. Therefore, it all depends on how quickly we can receive additional keys from our partners to refill our key pool, and we are sorry for the wait once again. While we cannot offer an estimate of when these will be replenished, as soon as keys are available, an email will be sent to the address registered for the purchase experiencing key exhaustion.

Our internal teams are still working directly with our developer partners to obtain additional keys for all active key exhaustions. We will continue to do so until the keys are restocked; however, we're sorry that members of the Support team won't have any additional information to provide on this specific key exhaustion or expectations for when the keys will arrive.

Your unwavering patience and understanding are greatly appreciated, and please let us know if you need any additional help or action taken on the purchase in question!

Sincerely,
-Jai
Humble Bundle

After which they sent an "Y/N" form asking if I was happy with the support service and it looks like they closed my ticket. х)
That's all. Just "charming".

It is Scam Bundle.
The mods of the reddit of Hunble Bundle are internet water armies, and they delete all posts which are not good for Scam Bundle.

Here from Italy.
About 3 years ago my HumbleBundle account got suspended from payements, I asked the reason without receiving answers, and after the third complain they decided to delete it without stating any reason. (Later here on this site I found out I probably got flagged for receive gift-links from other flagged accounts). But I still had 1 month credit from the monthly choice, so they actually stole it from me.
I did my research here and on reddit and decided to file a case against Ziff Davis, Inc (their mother company) on Better Business Bureau. I had screenshot of all the questions without answers from their support, and the bill for the 12-months credits. In two months I got my money back.

If it can be of any help

I got promises and told off to wait, for the same games where at least one person got (partial) credit for.

They don't even know what they are doing.

Update: Humble bundle replied.

Hi there,

I'm going to escalate your request to a specialist for additional assistance. Our specialists will work as quickly as possible to address all concerns in this ticket and provide a response once they have completed their investigation.

We appreciate your patience while we continue to work to address this issue further!

I expect a huge wait leading up to nothing, although I'd like to be pleasantly surprised for once.

Second update:

Thanks so much for waiting while I investigated the issue at hand! My name is Judy, and as the Customer Support Supervisor, I will be happy to address your ticket moving forward.
Regrettably, as our team at Humble Support consists of non-legal professionals, we are unable to offer insights into the laws or regulations specific to your country or region concerning your order. Such matters fall beyond the scope of the support services we provide. We understand the importance of legal considerations, and we apologize for any inconvenience. Please note that we cannot facilitate refunds, compensation, or exceptions to our policies based on requests associated with the mentioned laws and regulations. We offer refunds based on our Terms of Service and must uphold the policies in place here.
Your feedback is valuable to us, and we will relay any actionable input to our internal teams for a thorough review. We aim to continually enhance our processes and policies, and your patience and understanding are greatly appreciated. Should you have a specific legal question or a more direct report, please reach out to legal@ziffdavis.com.

So what I get is:

1. They can't do shit about it.
2. Their ToS is above any law when it comes to refunds.

I guess it's off to Better Business Bureau then.

Expected and fair for users solely want to profit off Humble. Did i say i 100% support HB on this matter?

What gets me when a bundle says one of your keys is temporarily out of stock, and after a few months it is still 'temporarily out of stock', when you go to their store page, guess what they're still selling? That's right. The game they are apparently 'out of stock' of keys for.

Just as an FYI for everyone

You can't get even a partial refund of annual Humble Monthly subscription, if the purchase was made more than 60 days ago.

Sorry to dig this up after so long, but here's my experience with BBB after two months of slow and pointless back and forths.
I'm posting the business (Ziff Davis/Humble Bundle) replies for educational purposes. Long text warning, so steer clear if you hate reading.

First reply:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us about this issue, and we do apologize for any frustrations that may have arisen.  We understand that receiving a message of Keys Temporarily Exhausted is not ideal, and we work to replenish our stock of keys as quickly as possible.  While this is typically a quick process, there are occasionally unforeseeable issues in the supply chain between our partners and the platform-providers.

In review of this BBB contact, the order was placed on 3/26/2024 as part of a subscription purchase.  As stated by the customer, this subscription purchase was for 8 video game titles, in the form of digital keys.  Not every customer wants every game within each months’ subscription.  As such, keys are not provided until revealed.   

This customer did not attempt to reveal any key until April 08, 2024, and contacted us regarding one title’s depletion of keys (for the title Nioh 2 – Complete Edition).   No other titles mentioned.  They did reveal a key for this title on April 24th, 2024.  After this contact, no attempt was made by the customer to reveal any other keys or contact us until January  2, 2025 – 284 days after the order.

As the customer has brought up the following: “According to art. 18(2) of Directive 2011/83/EU on the rights of consumer rights, unless you as consumer and the seller have agreed otherwise on the time of delivery, the seller has the obligation to deliver the product to you without undue delay and in any case no later than 30 days from conclusion of contract. If the seller fails to fulfill his obligation within the agreed time, or maximum the 30-days’ time limit, you as consumer can call him in order to make the delivery within an additional period of time appropriate to the circumstances. If the seller fails again to deliver the product, you as consumer are entitled to terminate the contract immediately. Under the Brussels I (Recast) Regulation - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2012/1215/oj/eng...”
At the time of purchase, all titles had been present and available for the customer to redeem and receive.  As mentioned above, one title did run out of stock in April, but was quickly restocked and obtained by the customer within 30 days. For the titles that are currently exhausted, keys had been available and present months after the subscription purchase, and available for the customer to reveal and redeem.   We are now currently out of stock on 3 of these titles, as mentioned – we are working with our partners to obtain new keys.  As a retailer, Humble Bundle does not create or expire keys; this can only be done by the platform, or the publishers themselves using their tools within the platform.  However, due to a variety of changes within the video game industry, some publishers have been encountering delays or denials by the platforms in providing new keys, or in some cases, the developers no longer exist.  

In cases where we are encountering issues with restocking, we do offer a credit that is proportional to how many keys with what was paid; in this case, the credit provided was over 50% of what was paid for the subscription, despite over 50% of the titles being provided.  At the same time, even with this credit, Humble continues to work with our partners to attempt to obtain new keys which the customer will be eligible to receive should we be able to obtain a restock.

As an end note to the above, I just quit replying, because I've felt no matter how good my arguments were, it'd go nowhere.
Not sure how BBB works, but I've never had anyone from BBB chime. It felt like a legalese shouting match between me and the corpo appointed spokesperson.

TL;DR: Don't do business with Ziff Davis/Humble Bundle! Or do it, but do expect to get reamed up the ass with no repercussions.

That's all. Good luck to whoever finds this thread in the future with similar issues.