Mooooore Refunds? Yippee Ya Yay! Anyone else?

Want my advice?

here's some:

Get over it.

Consider you didn't have a refund in 4 years, be grateful for this and you
might have less.

The way I look at it is, anyone who asks for a refund is probably not going to use your product anyway.

Anytime someone gets something for free it kind of takes away their will to act on what was given to them. In their mind they instantly devalue your product so they won't put much effort into doing whatever it is you suggest.

And if they do act on it...you can bet it will be a half ass attempt.

Refunds happen - and they do suck, that's for sure. It's just a cost of business IMO.

As an affiliate I had noticed this too. In fact my sales trends right now are very similar to what they were last September/October. Last year I put it down to the meltdown of the banks but now I'm thinking that it could be something more seasonal.

Steve

Is this a "taboo question"?

No Stefan, but an increase on refunds could be a couple of things. If your products are really good and priced right, your refund rates will be held at a minimum. But you will still encounter refunds but it's the price of doing more business.

Always review what you are giving the people who buy from you. Give them as much value as you think that they need and they will quickly feel secure in their purchases from you and probably not seek a refund. But some individuals are out for free information and they will seek a refund regardless.

Welcome to online marketing!

An option is to sell these items privately on your own site and provide a very long term return period, like 365 days. Give an individual more then 3 months to return it, and they will normally not return it. Unless again, you are selling a stinker product or not.

Sounds weird, but it works good.

Frank.

I'm not a big Clickbank seller, but I do know for sure
that for some reason, the same product sold through Paypal
gets 95% less refund requests than for Clickbank.

Listing a Clickbank product is like inviting refund requests.

I wish I knew why.

-Ray Edwards

I just logged into my account and went through all my reports. Haven't had a refund in a year. If it wasn't for this thread I wouldn't have went to go take a peak.

I'm proud ;-)
Overdeliver is key.

I haven't seen any increases lately at all, actually they have been quite low. What I do love though, is for subscription services, if the customer opens a ticket with CB the "Refund" button is automatically selected instead of "Cancel". I love that...

No, I am NOT.

I had a higher than normal refund request volume this weekend. Could be the beginning of the month financial issues, people broke after paying the rent.

Hi Stefan,

You will notice certain refunds come in waves. They are usually from two distinct groups:

people who are at the beginning / end of a pay cycle

pirates who have been discussing your product.

Then you have the nice legit people, who for whatever reason your product didn't suit - and that is totally normal and you should treat this people very well.

Stefan, no it is not taboo, it is just frustrating for some to deal with.

Stefan, with the economy in the shape it is in and will most likely get much worse before it gets better, you can expect to see an increase in refund request, although CB is so easy to get a refund through, that anyone with any reason whatsoever, and not just because your product may or may not have issues, now are asking for refunds.

And yes, it is also a part of the online business model, so it is something that you will need to become accustomed to, but it is always a good idea to take a closer look at your product to see if there are things that you can do to either improve or upgrade your product to make it better or to make them an overall better offer.

Hope this helps.
Ed

Thank you all!
As I start to understand it, this phenomenon is related to the recession and the beginning/end of the month issues. (People don't know how to pay the bills, so they remember they made a purchase that went with a 60 day no-question asked refund and apply for it).
For those of you who don't see any increase in refunds at all, I was in your shoes about 2 months ago (and "Yes", just like you, I do over-deliver and I do provide some excellent quality products). This "refund surge" is a sign of the hard times, make no mistake about it!

I have to say that I have noticed an increase in refunds over just the past 3-4 weeks. Also sales have dropped for me. Traffic has increased steadily as it has done as I grow my business so I don't know if it's just that the increase in traffic and sales that I saw over the past couple of months is just catching up with me and now some of the refunds from when my business just started to grow are hitting. I just wish that sales would pick back up. It would make it all seem worthwhile but today, with the rain and gloomy weather here, I'm just a bit bummed and having a hard time getting motivated to do anything. Don't want to write or plan. It just seems sort of fruitless when sales are down in spite of more hops being up and traffic being up, but when I get a sale and look later at transactions and see a refund from a product sold two months ago that wipes it all out and puts me in the hole for the day. It just gets me bummed out. I hope it passes...

This is what makes our business the best business. Its not like a store where if someone buys a product, uses it, doesn't like it, then returns it.

Now you have a used product, the packaging is probably damaged, that you cannot resell.

Unless you are Walmart or Costco or someone like that, you can't return it to your vendor so you are stuck with this product that you paid for and can't do anything with.

On the other hand, if I sell an ebook and someone wants a refund, thats fine, I can still sell a hundred more. The only thing I paid for are the graphics, hosting, etc but I would have paid that anyway.

I think I'm saying, just realize that it doesn't matter. Without a liberal refund policy, you would probably not have made as many sales anyway.

I used to never get refunds but on one product I promoted recently, I had to give about 3 - losing me near $300. Ironically enough, each person gave the same reason, and it wasn't a "lazy" one.

you mean you actually make money with clickbank?! lol jk. I think one tool that adds a lot of revenue to this is twitter. Glad to hear things are doing well.