"Nothing new, I already knew the information", Valid Refund Reason?

If the promo presented what it was correctly, the person should have already known they knew this information.

If the promo was vague, then yes this is probably valid.

However, valid or not, I refund people quickly in business because it is just less hassle and gets them out of your universe.

What goes around, comes around so I figure if they are just cheating by getting the info and then asking for refunds, they won't do well in life anyway.

It's always tough to justify a refund no matter what the reason really.
I guess as a successful online marketer, you already know it's probably best just to honour it, even though it drives you nuts.

Regarding this one, it's a tough call I guess. It would depend what kind of information the product is offering. If it's basic entry level stuff, then I guess one could justify asking for a refund, but I doubt that's the case in your situation

IMO, the marketing hype can get so intense and seemingly exaggerated that the buyer thinks it's the Holy Grail when in actuality the product may be basic and already known to the buyer so he feels the purchase was a waste of mony since he was expecting something more powerful and new so he feels a refund is appropriate.

If there is a satisfaction guarantee on it, there would be no line.

If I bought a course advertised as "How to make a bizillion dollars online," and it turned out to be all about how to use Aweber, I would want a refund (unless it had a really helpful, unique strategy) because I already use Aweber.

If the salespage for it talked about it being "the" way to use Aweber, I probably would not have purchased it.

A guarantee should help you as a seller have a higher number of sales, but some of the buyers will want a refund. It goes with the territory. If your salespage says "there is NO guarantee, fewer people will buy the product.

So in theory, with a guarantee the number of additional sales should outweigh the few refunds - providing it is a good product. Twenty years ago I put a written guarantee in a Yellow Pages ad, when my competitors were all afraid to offer a guarantee. The guarantee caused a larger number of potential customers become actual customers.

I can count on one hand the number of times I had to refund.

:-Don

How about turning around to the customer and saying, "ok, you're obviously smarter than me, so tell me what I don't know"!

Maybe some kind of JV or backend product could come from it and worst case you're going to find out if he's lying or not

Frank

It's hard to say without knowing details but in general you should expect that a lot of stupid people will buy these kinds of products so you should expect also stupid reasons for refunds.

It doesn't matter how good or ad a product is, what counts is the verbiage of the money back guarantee.

If it says "no questions asked refund" or 100% satisfaction guaranteed then, there is no line.

As product creators we set the refund policy.

Sadly, even though they think they know the information already, they are probably not using it! I have bought products which contained information I thought I already knew but which motivated me to actually get off my butt and do it...

I guess that the easiest thing is to just refund as Topkat said as they could cause you loads of hassle if you don't and it's not worth it.

If you promise a no questions asked refund, then you should honor that, no matter the reason. There are plenty of people out there that are refund happy, but by being honest in your sales copy, targeting the right audience AND providing massive value in the actual product, this problem should be significantly reduced. Like TopKat22 said, refund them and move on, no need to focus on or waste any more time with those types of clients.

We all get these. It's a dumb justification.

But in the magical make-believe world of IM, dumb works both ways, doesn't it?

People are feeling cynical, jaded and worn out.

Buyers are measuring and weighing value more carefully than ever.

And there's no shortage of fools who want the world for a dollar.

As long as that remains true, there will always be short-money opportunists who are damn good at separating the hopeful from their cash, proud of how they can do so little for so much.

Some might say that they deserve each other, I wouldn't argue.

I wouldn't have thought so previously, until a few months ago when I bought a WSO on PPC and literally did not learn one new thing. I didn't end up asking for a refund though, making me the typical consumer.

if i offer a money back guarantee, i go and refund immediately regardless of the cause. This how you build credibility.

For most products, the energy it takes to resist far exceeds what it would take to refund and move on.

If this exchange is really bothering you, you can ask the purchaser to elaborate a bit. In my early days, I was able to plug several holes in my sales copy just by asking the unhappy customers why they were unhappy. Since most unhappy customers just sit and stew, this can be an opportunity to find out if there is anything you could do to tweak your copy.

Of course there are always serial refunders, liars and cheats but I still like to believe that the majority of buyers are good people.

Your question is difficult to answer without seeing your sales page.

Was this a blind offer? If so, then I'd say the refund request is valid.
For example, your offer could be "How to make $5,000 a month on the
internet." Your offer explains the benefits of the business model, but
never actually says what it is. The customer purchases and finds out
the business model decribes how to start a free webhosting company.

Maybe the customer owns a webhosting company OR has no desire to
start one. Since they couldn't make the judgment call up front because
it was a blind offer, the refund should be considered valid. My opinion,
of course.

Second issue, as stated in previous posts, you should honor your refund
guaranty to the word. No questions asked? No questions asked.

I don't do blind offers and I'm the most anti hype marketer you will find. I have never made any false promises in my sales pages ever.

Also, I totally agree, if you offer a refund, honor it. That's not being disputed at all. I also agree that you just send it and move on.

I guess I'm just venting because people take full advantage of things on Clickbank. I had a clown buy one of my products on clickbank which does offer a refund. He'll get it too. But his reason was "I already knew all this, nothing new here".

That's fine, maybe he does, (which beckons the question why buy it in the first place unless your goal is to rip me off from the get go which it clearly was). Anyhow, the kicker is he bought it and 4 minutes later asked for a refund. He said he "browsed it" and found it elementary information that he already knew.

4 minutes to read something over 255 pages and then he's got the balls to call it "elementary" when he didn't even so much as open the pdf yet. He went right back to clickbank and filled out the refund form immediately.

That spells scam artist to me. At least humor me and ask for a refund a week later AFTER you've actually read it and can form an educated opinion on it.

Anyhow, I'm just venting more then anything. There really needs to be a blacklist sharing site where we can all post our blacklists of idiots who we'll never deal with again ever.

I get it all the time with my IM related products listed on Clickbank... Really begs the question why I sell my IM products on there.

My non IM product do get this problem.

James Scholes

LOL that's awesome.

Costco is the same, I had a buddy take back one of those gigantic patio umbrellas that had blown over in a storm and totalled it. It was 12 feet around and covered a huge area.

He dragged it back to Costco and told them it wouldn't open anymore.

No questions asked, refund instantly.

May I ask the reason why my posts were deleted? I didn't know you can't voice your opinion on this forum ...

Anyways, offer quality information (not old, worthless stuff) and you won't receive any refunds.

I won't ask why my post was deleted .. when you feed the monkeys and know better .. you have to leave the zoo.

I've always liked Apu of the Simpson's policy...

http://www.richmolnar.com/Sounds/Apu...%20Library.wav

I personally do not care if a customer has a good reason, bad reason, no reason, or if they just want to steal my info.

If the customer wants a refund, the customer gets the refund. Period.

It is part of doing business and hopefully creates good will.

Over the last 20+ years, I have had to take a couple of items back to Office Depot and get a refund.

Because they were so good and no questions asked, I have been a loyal customer for them and they have made thousands of dollars off of me.

If a business gives me a hassle when I know that I am right, I will boycott the business, bad mouth the business, and try to discourage anyone from dealing with the business.

Some IM'ers may say that I am wrong and a bad customer, but I believe that a business that doesn't give good customer service is a bad business - and sometimes borders on being a thief by taking someone's hard earned money in exchange for an inferior product.

Should be totally fine if they have a money back gaurantee. If they don't you may not get your money back no matter what.

The line is drawn based on what you promised in your refund policy. If you say no questions asked, then you give a refund PERIOD. It's simple.

My very first online product taught a secret about
getting traffic and no one ever asked for a refund
saying that they knew the secrets because I was the
only one who knew the secret. I ran into it accidentally.

But I did get some people say that now they knew the secret
they didn't want to implement it so they wanted a refund.

Sometimes we use "secret" loosely and get a backlash and
sometimes people just have buyers remorse. There are
a multitude of reasons why people ask for a refund and you
should be faithful to your refund policy.

But sometimes you wish that you can get a refund
request with no reason than a foolish reason for sure.

-Ray Edwards

I think it's a give and take myself. I've not yet bought a product that I felt the need to return, even if it was rehashed, though there were a few that I wanted to return.

I however try to see both sides of the coin, and what I feel would be a fair compromise would be a 50/50 refund, or even to favor on the side of the customer slightly, a refund policy if giving a customer a guarantee, should be something like 70/30, this way, the customer is aware that if they buy an ebook, course, etc, and they "already knew this stuff", then they know up front that they are only entitled to a partial refund (it takes funds to get products out, and the customer should understand this as well).

There are probably some IM'ers out there that make nothing because everyone wants to claim the "I knew this stuff already" course. Granted, there are some sketchy IM'ers out there also that do promise you to make $43,564.88 a week in less than 30 days after taking their course, yet their courses don't say much of anything as to how they do it.

So again, a give and take, depending on the content, the refund policy, and other factors. But yeah, if you are a profitable IM'er, and you have one or two people who want a refund, then best to not ruin your rep and refund them, no questions asked.

Just my thoughts though.

Ken, Umm... Is this in the thread you intended? Usually, your bilious comments are at least somewhat relevant to the OP, or something that follows. I'm not seeing the connection to bogus refund requests.


Paul

I probably refund 50% of my clickbank purchases. But it's not sinister. I just know their lax refund policy so it pushes me to make purchases I normally wouldn't. In other words, if a product looks interesting but it's hard to get the full picture from the salesletter, I'll buy it with the intention of browsing it to get a closer look. I usually determine if I'll refund by asking the question "Knowing what's in this ebook, would I have spent $47".

I don't feel bad for doing it. If you look at somethign like the fitness industry, the salesletters are intentially vague so people will buy. And when they do, they probably realize that it's a complete rehash of a popular (free) program that's already in PDF format. It's stuff like that where you'll see refunds like crazy.

I see that there are many mixed feelings on refunds here, many seem to go personal because of the fact that you put in a lot of yourself into the product.

What I see is that there is frustration from the product creators because you KNOW or at least perceive that they are just taking your product and ripping you off, without recognition of your hard work and effort, more than any dollar amount.

And we could talk all day about bad customers and bad products and refund requests, The user that posted this stated he needed some support and wanted to let it out with people who understand and have been through similar situations. I guess this has been addressed wouldn't you agree?

He gave him his refund (deserving or not ) for whatever reason, unreasonable as it might sound which is like the OP said about the lawnmower.

As Internet Marketers we have to be business minded, if one unreasonable customer doesn't get his refund this can cost you big time specially online where so many people look for reviews prior to buying.You may have a large feeling of impotence or rage by doing so but its best for business. Give the refund move along, if by any chance this person was not a serial refunder he/she will speak highly of you and your service which can turn out as something great for your business. So the next time somebody wants a refund do it as fast as possible and be polite as any sarcasm can backfire even if you process the refund.


hope this was helpful.

As a seller, I have used Clickbank and honored the refund policy. I have had very few refunds, but the funny thing is that in the few cases, the people ask questions that make it clear they don't understand the subject matter, yet claim the reason for the return was "it's basic info" - and it rarely is the case.

As a purchaser, I will only ask for a refund if i truly feel that I was truly misled by overly zealous sales copy. Even before asking, I give the seller the benefit of the doubt and ask myself "did I pick up any new information or resources on this subject matter?" Information has value, and helping me find the information has value, so I make sure that is in my equation.

~ ak

YES without doubt. If it's genuine then their sales copy should have alerted you to the strong possibility of this being the case. But so much "blind copy" these days you have no idea what you are buying until you read it.

You have to draw the line yourself. If you give a money back guarantee no questions asked kind of offer then there is no bottom line. But if you say that guaranteed to work or you get a full refund, then you have a chance to contest that the plan given in the book was not implemented as per your instructions and you don't owe them anything.

It sucks but I refund people for this same reason. Those people that do "already know" the info you're selling will never be successful BECAUSE THEY DON'T USE IT. Don't let it get you down, its annoying but it happens. To me it's not worth getting my reputation tarnished or creating the bad blood. I want customers that are so happy they bought my products they cant wait for the next one.

What they're really saying is "I read a lot of ebooks but haven't actually done anything with what I've learned - I just keep consuming"

I think you need to have those kind of customers in your numbers. Like:

No matter what kind of product I sell, there's always going to be a 3-5% of pople that would refund.

And from those guys, 1-2% would say is because "there was nothing new in the course for them"

Hi,

I've had that happen. The customer said she saw most of the info for free. She Googled it after she bought my report. I thought it was BS too, but I gave her the refund and suggested a few other reports. She bought two other ones and no refund.

If a refund is appropriate or not would tend more to do with the terms in your guarantee then the description of the product in the sales copy I would have thought. I can certainly think of other ways of increasing my bottom line then sweating over one kind of refund claim. Just my 2 cents.

LOL Love it! And I totally agree!

As someone who's worked in customer service (call centers) for almost 10 years, I've heard the most incredibly ridiculous things. I spoken with a LOT of stupid people over the years. Unfortunately customer service has done almost irreparable damage to my opinion of the general public (NOT good!).

I agree. It IS a B.S. reason ALL the time. Unless the sales letter completely misrepresented the product/service or was so vague (a "blind" ad) that the customer didn't know what he was buying, then "I already know this" is a ridiculous reason!

I know this wasn't the case and that you're just venting PPC Coach. I'm sorry that happened to you.

I've been in IM for quite a long time and rarely stumble across anything really new to me. And I can't remember the last time I actually asked for a refund. I know people refund electronic products all the time, but I've never dared to ask for a refund for any electronic product because I've been taught that's stealing and I just can't bring myself to do it.

Loved the story about the Costco member! Good for Costco!

I fully intend on taking that type of approach with my customers. In fact, my entire business model and business is specifically designed to weed out these kinds of people. I have a membership-based business launching later this spring. (We're in pre-launch now.) The membership benefits package includes electronic AND physical products as well as monthly coaching calls. Studies show that physical products really do increase perceived value and help reduce refunds. So I included physical products.

I'll also be selling information products and other coaching within that membership-based business.

My refund policy clearly states that we'll refund within 30 days of purchase. If they ask after 30 days, then sorry, no refund. Actually though, I think the credit cards will give them a refund regardless. And for business purposes, I'd probably just refund them anyway.

But if their "reason" for refunding seems unreasonable to me, I WILL terminate their membership and blacklist them as a member and client, period. I know that there will always be a certain number of PITA customers and refunds, but the goal is to minimize it as much as possible. I WON'T be led around by the nose by my customers.

My mentor told me a story last week about how one of her coaching clients had the gall to demand a refund AFTER her coaching was through. She'd paid around $5,500 for the coaching and sent e-mails to my mentor praising her work. Later though, for whatever reason, she did a chargeback -- and got her money back, even AFTER my mentor showed the credit card company the signed coaching agreement AND the e-mails from her with the happy testimonial.

I was horrified. I don't think I'd have the nerve to do that.

To me, the worst part of that is that she completely ruined her chances for ever doing business with my mentor again. My mentor is a 7-figure business owner and a lovely, lovely lady. Unless something went horribly wrong, I'd never want to be unable to do business with her again.

It's not about being unable to buy from someone as much as it is being unable to "mastermind" or associate with her again. I'm becoming a bigger fan all the time of Napolean Hill's mastermind concept and have found some truly incredible people to associate and do business with. The opportunity to exchange ideas and do joint ventures with them is such a gift.

My mentor is such a lovely lady, definitely someone I want to mastermind with. I wouldn't want to ruin that. But I'm still aghast that someone would have the gall to request a refund for coaching (or any service) after it was delivered! Sheesh!

Michelle