Absoulutely No Refunds For Any Reason!

Why not just make the ordering process require them to provide information AND accept clear TOS?

i.e when they press 'buy' they get your TOS in their face before their payment is accepted.

You could also deliver the rewritten text as a JPG (or any picture format) for review to the customer... if he's satisfied he gets the TXT if not he can keep the JPG.

I have some sympathy but if as a business you're relying on T&Cs to refuse refunds something has gone wrong in the first place.

You said that:

"The main issue seems to be confusion about exactly what they will receive for their payment, simply because they don't read the information provided. They order without reading the "fine print" so to speak."

It may be they're not reading it properly, but for whatever reason there is a breakdown in communication.

Whether they're entitled to a refund or not, if they don't get one people will quickly spread the word about not being happy, which is the last thing you want.

My view is spend more time on making the customer journey and understanding as clear as possible - and less time thinking about T&Cs

Honestly, when you deal with services or products, your price will set your customer.

If you have a cheap service or a cheap product, you're going to deal with cheap and low down customers. There are some people out there who will purchase a product with a refund policy just so they can get a free product after promptly opting in for their refund.

Personally, I wouldn't include a refund policy at all. If it hurts your sales, at least you won't have to deal with a refund percentage rate. The people who read headlines and order something are generally people looking for an instant solution or quick button to solve their problems.

When it comes to writing articles, you should get 50% of the payment upfront so you're at least paid for half of your time if it comes down to a scumbag client. I used to hang around Digital Point to obtain writing clients, so I thought $1.00 per 100 words was the norm, and it was quite possibly worse than a McDonalds job.

The clients for that price are a nightmare, they're picky, most of them don't speak native English and they want rockstar writers for a bum price. Once I picked it up to $3.00 per 100 words, I've seen a major improvement in the clients that I usually obtain. It's still considered peanuts, but I'm just building up a portfolio and it's something I do on the side as I enjoy doing it.

For future reference, I would never include a refund policy for writing material for people. I wouldn't write for cheap rates unless you want to deal with cheap people and I would always get 50% of the payment upfront so you're never completely screwed out of a deal.

Corey

You could always get the copy to do a better job explaining what you actually do. If the headline is misleading enough and causing enough refunds that you're concerned, why not fix it? Start at the source and all that.

First off .. Joseph makes some great points and being the accomplished writer he is .. you might need to listen to him.

Second .. supply a license with all paid orders. Without the license the article still belongs to you. If they use it without paying for it you still own the rights and can have it taken down in short order.

Another way to do this is to have them fill out a questionnaire before they order or after they order, if you don't get the desired answers you won't be able to process their order. If you do this on the backend, you simply send them a cut and paste reminder that if you don't hear back from them within 24 hours, you'll refund their funds because you have other orders on queue.

Ideally you'd want it on the front-end, but hey, at least with the questionnaire it will be clearer on what the customer wants and you'll know if you can deliver the services.

RoD

I second Joseph in that refining your copy is a good way to start.Have others proofread it before you make it live to make sure it's completely clear and concise.

After that, the next step is to make customers pay in full upfront. No deposits, no "pay after you review them" or any other nonsense. I have done that with my writing services over the years and have never had any issues.

On top of that, I can literaelly count on one hand the amount of times I've had clients come back for a rewrite or a quick tweak. When you get as many details upfront and ask your clients questions, it's easy to give them what they need.

I've also found that accepting only a full upfront payment also weeds out most of the troubled clients you don't want to work with in the first place. You pay upfront to get everything else, so why should writing be any different?

Try the upfront payment model and see how many potential headaches you eliminate. Sure, your overall order volume *might* go down a bit at first, but the quality level of clients you attract will rise significantly.

Its one thing to provide a 100% money back return policy, but charging clients after you deliver is just asking to not get paid even if you are providing quality deliverables.

Just one more thing ... and this is from someone who has spent some money on rewrites ... what if your rewrite sucks?

Here's a question to you. In one, no more than two sentences tell us what the major misunderstanding is with the majority of your customers. I've read your OP and replies and have no idea what the hang up is.

I don't think making them read the TOS is the answer because the majority of people out there simply click that they've read it when they haven't. Then you've got them on a technicality but forcing it creates bad will and PayPal disputes.

I have had several offers up for wholesale PLR product lots and state there are no refunds on these offers. I put it in 16 pt bold type right above the buy button. I've never had a problem with it because people see it and know going in there's no refund. Maybe something like that would work for you.