Meta Needs to Respect Australian Consumer Laws and Address Time Zone Issues
I want to share my frustrating experience with Meta Support and highlight an important issue regarding consumer rights and time zones.
I live in Australia and recently participated in Meta’s referral program. My friend activated his headset on December 25th, but Meta Support is claiming he activated it on the 24th, likely due to their system operating on US time zones. However, here in Australia, our time zone is ahead, and the activation clearly happened on the 25th.
Despite providing all the evidence, Meta has dismissed my claim, which I believe is unfair and shows a lack of understanding or consideration for international customers.
As a company selling products in Australia, Meta is required to comply with Australian Consumer Law (ACL). Under ACL, promotional incentives like referral programs must be honored if the conditions are met, and customers should not be penalized for issues like time zone discrepancies or technical errors on their end.
I believe this is a case of Meta failing to meet its obligations under Australian law, and I urge the company to review their processes and provide better training to their support staff to handle international cases fairly.
Has anyone else in Australia experienced similar issues with Meta’s referral program? Let’s discuss and hold them accountable to treat their Australian customers with the respect and fairness we deserve.
Is the problem that Meta are refusing a referral because they say the referral happened after the account was made?
If so, apparently you can still get the referral up to 7 days after creating the account, there's instructions here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VRGaming/comments/1brneqc/how_to_get_referral_bonus_after_activating_meta/
(I've never tried that, so no idea if it really works)
The link above says to go to a website but the link is outdated, it's now https://auth.meta.com/settings/my/devices/ instead of https://secure.oculus.com/my/devices/
From what I can see, basically the process is to factory reset the headset, accept the referral, then re-setup the headset.
