Refunder Rant

You feel better for your lil rank now lo

I hate serial refunders too.

Your post did make me laugh tho. LOL

I just had an aussie doctor threaten a refund for a $10 subscription because he forgot he had a last name and didn't enter it to access his subscription.

It's not just Americans. Cheapskate thieves are on all continents. And they really are thieves when they make up stupid excuses to ask for a refund. They are no different than the people who sneak a cockroach into a restaurant and make a big fuss at the end of their meal to get the meal for free. It's just another form of stealing.

And no, I don't even offer a money-back guarantee. I make an offer and stand behind my offer. They get what they paid for and a lot more. If they ask for a refund, I give it to them and then ban them from ever coming back (just like Gary Halbert).

I don't need or want customers like that. I don't wait to see if they are a "serial refunder." A one-time refunder is enough for me to know that I would rather they buy from someone else. And I hope they tell their refunder friends not to buy from us either.

We did 7 figures in 2009 with that policy. I don't plan to change it.

HAHA

goombah=goomba=Godfather

Hey this is life deal with it refunds are gonna happen just be courteous and even give them a free gift for their trouble the customer is the most important sales will always come but in the end it is Your name.

-WD

ARRR.. SHIVER ME TIMBERS.

I tend to find that disproportionate refunders are
from the Far East..Singapore and Co.

With all that effort, I'd do two things. First of all,
I'd send all traffic for a specific set of articles to a
redirect page. It's therefore no problem to redirect
to another product if the publisher is a rip off artist.

Secondly, I'd build a list first. No matter what product
you promote, building a list should be your primary activity.

HTH

Glenn

Steve - I don't promote a whole lot of IM stuff so I don't know if that makes a difference.

I know that refunds are just part of the business and I feel better for ranting. At least it was one of the products that I promote that only pays like $11!

^several months later would be a huge 0 on my part. no way.

There are a ton of people who do the immediate refund thing but here is a tip.
if you use paypal as your processor Paypal is not going to refund them anything on a digital product tat is how they protect sellers.

working for someone else as an affiliate can be a danting task<spelling

you take a company like clickbank they refund 0 questions asked and the affiliate loses commissions as well as the seller loses the cash but the customer gets to keep the product. that is horse doodoo

Paydotcom.com has a different policy. try using them to promote products but if it is the seller being a dork. well that is something that happens too but really at that point it is not the customer but the seller you should be ranting about
-WD

Funny you mention that. Of the few refunds I gave out, most were to Americans. I only market to the US, Canada, UK, Australia and NZ and a few other countries in Europe. We Americans are too frickin spoiled.

That sucks that a vendor would lower their affiliate compensation. I actually just raised the price of my product to try and attract more affiliates.

That is interesting... Based on the relative customers, my
worst refunders have been Canada and Australia.

Yeah, Imah have to call shenanigans on that one. That makes about as much sense as saying you're going to give your stuff away because your afraid people will steal it. He did it for one reason....to screw his affiliates.

You got me curious - the richest Country in the world per capita seems to be Luxembourg, depending on which website you go off (and what year the stats were taken).

The US was somewhere around 8 to 10th in the list, again depending on site and year.

Anyone from Luxembourg in the forum?

cheers
Sam

If I am selling a product that goes through a service that gives refunds ... Plain and simple .... Give the refund ... don't look back.

If the product starts receiving more refunds than I want to deal with... replace the product.. redirect traffic to the new product .

For your own stuff.

If you state no questions ask refunds ... don't ask any questions just do it .

If you state no refunds use pay pal.

Pay Pal doesn't force refunds on digital products .

What if your product or service is not digital ?

Make it that way .

Put your download page on a password protected page on site .

Make a pdf with the password information and log in url in it .

State in the download now text ... download your personal login information now .

They just paid for the download information which is delivered digitally.

There are two sides to every story. I've both gotten bitten (the last one was an almost $200 loss for me over two months after the sale which was a network marketing how-to product--long enough to study the entire course 3 times over!) and I've also requested refunds when a product really didn't deliver or if I had the same info and it was nothing new.

Digital products are expensive compared to books or CD's you buy in the store and since the customer really doesn't know exactly what they're getting ("secrets", "hidden information", "nowhere else", blah, blah, blah), they are going on trust alone.

When you walk into a book store you can pick up the book, look at the table of contents, read for a bit and see if you really want it. If you do you pay and you keep it. If you don't, you put it back and choose a new one. Online that's not possible (except for Amazon which allows some books to be looked into).

For a country with high living standards there's a ton of very dirt-poor Americans. Many are not trained how to budget (like Europeans) and live on credit. They literally don't know any different. If they can't pay their rent they will look for things to return. It's not morally right but that's just the culture.

I lived in Europe for ten years and returning anything is a big hassle--that is if a shop will even do a return! I'm just guessing that your low rate of returns from Europeans is simply because they don't understand that they can get their money back. The thought likely never occurred to them.

Are you in the online marketing niche? There's a lot of junk out there and people are fed up with the hype and recycled products. I've learned my lesson to not buy the stuff but others are still on the path and don't know how to decipher it all.

I had a guy sign up as an affiliate, then he buys the product and when he doesn't get the commission for his purchase he wants a refund. Also says my product has little content on Internet Marketing.

Good thing since I do OFFLINE marketing. Gave him his refund, deleted his account and decided that as of 1/1/10 NO MORE REFUNDS. I don't care if it cost me every JV partner out there - no refunds.

Tim

I think the PP were correct on the publisher, he wanted to build an army of affiliates providing him traffic and then cut the commission so he gets more. I mean how many peeps don't keep an eye on the exact amount being recieved or don't check on a regular basis, he may have gotten massive sales in the period between doing it and the affiliate noticing, which is scummy. He's killing his long term profits, by going after the short term gains.

Sylvia