Premium Member Repeatedly Asks Questions for Coaching Plan

Hello,

When that doesn't work, he then mentions that he's been a "paying customer for several weeks" and so therefore implies (without saying it directly) that being a member of your lower plan for several weeks entitles him to your coaching plan (WTF?)

Just tell him to pay for the premium member or to leave: this sort of customer is going to steal your time and your energy.

I won't even give him the refund.

He thinks you don't need money to live or what ?

I know he's not entitled to a refund.

A bigger reason why I offer a refund is to prevent the member's filing of a paypal dispute/chargeback which is more messy... and I wonder of Paypal counts how many disputes/chargebacks are filed against you and if that may affect your standing or something..

These sort of customers are your biggest time wasters. They will drain your business of time and resources you could be using elsewhere.

It's ok to fire a customer. That's what I would do in this case.

If you value your time at greater than $25 an hour then get rid of him.

That is appropriate. Your training video may not have been clear enough and if you have a Knowledgebase/FAQ set up for your course, you could add his question and your answer for others who may come up with a similar question.

Your polite referral to the coaching program was also in order. If this happens again in the future, perhaps you should add an explanation to your reply email that explains the difference between a video course and a coaching program.

He doesn't want to be direct? Fine. An appropriate response would be... None. Just ignore future emails. He will either continue your course, cancel his membership, or file a dispute. A Paypal dispute, is essentially a refund request. In this case, simply refund his latest payment and disable his access to your membership site.

There is absolutely NO penalty against your Paypal account. They have the payment history. It's obvious from the payment history that the customer has been satisfied up to this point, and are well aware that subscribers often use a dispute simply for canceling a membership

Thanks for the replies Will Sid, and Christian. RESULT see below...

I ended up politely saying I would end his membership within the day and would put him on my "Non-customer List" (i.e. blacklist) to "protect" him from misinterpreting my product offerings and mistakenly purchasing my products again, LOL!

@Sid, instead of adding it to a knowledge base, I added his question and answer in the comments section below the training video, so others could benefit from it. The difference in video access and coaching is included in the welcome email (but of course he may not have read it, or still chose to be pushy anyhow)

RESULT: He emailed back very quickly apologizing for his "arrogance" and "mistake" saying he "was just wondering if I could help him with this" (what ??? so coaching or not?) and said he thought I may already have the answers on hand (ummm... this is a specific homework problem)...

...and told me not to cancel/refund his account and that he would continue. He said to let him know if ever my coaching program is open again (Although he didn't apply for it when he was trying to get free coaching, I had previously indicated it was full, which is true)

Sounds like you handled it perfectly. Don't think you could have done a better job of it. Best you can do is explain it nicely and move on.

It all depends on you, if you do not have a support desk who can answer these questions then, either get him to upgrade for a more personal service, or help him with his concerns one time then if he wants more one on one then he knows what to do otherwise you have to focus on the paying clients.

Time wasters do more harm than good in the long run.