Banning Refunders

Brad, I do use it but it's not 100%.

The email address ban? They can use a different email address.

The IP address ban? They can get a different IP address.

People who are determined to steal your stuff will find a way to do it.

Fortunately, the majority of your customers will be honest. At least that
has been my experience.

Ultimately, it's not something I worry about.

In any business you will find some dishonest people who just want something for nothing. Chances are, these people are just getting products and not using them anyway because they did not pay for them so they do not feel the need to recoup their money. Such people are not making any money because if they cannot be honest, they are unlikely to build a list of honest buyers as they do not know anything about honesty. I would not worry about this handful of thieves too much as what goes round comes around. Karma is a bi....

Never used DL Guard but I had a funny email the other week where this woman claimed she had bought my product could not download it wanted her money back plus extra for her trouble. I went to paypal and there was no payment there. I emailed her back to say I never received any payment from her and then she told me she had bought the product from someone else. Weird!

I would love something that would take people like her out.

I have to agree with Steven you can never stop the person who wants to steel your stuff - they will use some other persons email or IP.

I think you should ban anyone your suspicious of.

I've had suspicious refunders and good honest refunders
and some that have refunded have gone on to buy bigger
products of mine that were a better match.

Had I banned them... It woulda been a bad decision

Like everyone is saying... Don't even worry about it.

So that you keep your percentage of refunds down, have you considered just doing an authorization versus a sale? This feature is available with PayPal. That can give you time (up to 3 days) to check out the buyer before giving them access to the download. Sometimes the buyer may be using an E-mail address that is already on a blacklist somewhere.

Hmmmm...

This is an interesting thread...

The ole hamster wheel is turning...



Greg

I just banned a person yesterday. She started going crazy about a refund that she got for free. Then I started looking at her email and she had bought everyone of my products and refunded every one. Banned.

Shannon

I ban every refunder. I have no problem with serial refunders now. The only refunders I've ever had were asswipes that refunded on a product that they've already seen the full demo for and they issued the dispute within minutes after getting the product.

My products are websites and there have been quite a few that try to "buy" as many of my sites as they can to resell them and get a refund to boot for them.

I agree. A great resource indeed. Can you imagine a site where the emails of the 'serial refunder' is there. Cool.

There must be a way to lock up the products better.

Anyone see Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels...

just offer your refund this way...

All refund requests must be sent in to a PO Box in written form.

They must provide their real name and address.

All refunds will be processed minus payment processor fees and postage plus $1. (got that from CB)

Show a close up picture of a blank check that they will receive.

The blank check will hot pink with a raunchy, vile, extremely pornographic logo with an equally vile company name HUGE across the top.

Lastly, tell them to expect 6-8 weeks for delivery of the refund check.

Most of the problem solved.

Greg

Some of my refunders have gone on to become very loyal customers.

I only ban them if they have a history of refunding very soon after the purchase, but wouldn't ban on the first instance.

That is why it was installed and that said.... While you ban one email and one IP they go to gmail and get another and use a proxy.... A thief is going to take because he is a pile of trash! You build a product and they just are to damn greedy to pay for it....

Yup you can ban someone using DLguard, you can choose the email registered with you or even the IP, you'll know it from the download stats, I've use it for a year and never had problem with it, i love it too..

There is no real way to stop everyone who has malicious intent, because this would require some sort of ESP to the umteenth degree.

What can be done is you factor this in to your price. Hold on, I'll explain.

It was recommended to me by an attorney once, past career of contracting, to 'build it into the price'.

What that means is, if with all the protections and safeguards in place you can, you still expect, or should expect, a 5% refund rate. Still not bad. May be high, might be conservative, depends on the vendor, the sales page, the product...etc.

If that is the case and you are selling a product for $27 add 5% to that. The $1.35 is not going to drive people away from you.

If the 5% drives people away from you, 1 of 2 things is going on.

You have not done a good enough job of associating the 'value' of your product to the customer
or
They cannot see the value of the product for the price (the 5% is NOT making the difference!).

If it is the latter, you probably do not want them to be a customer anyway. Those people probably have a high rate of returns anyway!

If it is the first, well, redo your copy or make your product better.!

So round up your sales price to $29 and you have 'built in' the loss.

If you sell 1,000 units at $27 = $27,000
If 5% is refunded $27,000 x 5% = $1,350
Leaving you with $25,650

If you sell 1,000 units at $29 = $29,000
If 5%is refunded $29,000 x 5% = $1,450
Leaving you with $27,550

Even though more goes out to refunds ($1,100)...
You make MORE money even if your refund rate stays the same. Now you can do things to lower your refund rate.

Change the sales page
Change the product
Place restrictions on the product access - if it is an ebook make it visible online only through a membership site (many plugins for WP - even FREE ones)
If they refund, cancel the user immediately. Limit access to one IP, if they are blocked (if they have an IP change) they must request another password by submitting their email to the system.

and I am sure their is another dozen things that can be done.

*2 cents deposited*

Greg

The best way to ban some one would be to ban their paypal email address, if some feature that is available.

If you sell on PayPal, do they have that feature? To add a PayPal email to a 'blacklist'?

Wouldn't that be something.

Greg

If you find this to be a large percentage of your buyers, you might consider who your market it and who you are marketing to.

I believe that you should do this if you see a reapeat pattern.

One valuable thing I have learned about having control of your own business is that you do not have to accept someones elses business, especailly if you know they are going to be a pain.

Even if you think you can potentially make lots of money from them, it's usually never worth the risk and hassle.

I don't really have a simple answer to this question.

My first question to you, however, would be whether or not the person gave you a reason for wanting the refund (and how long after purchase did he wait to request it). Did he download the wrong item? Did he steal your content? Was he genuinely disappointed with it?

With PLR, I have a clear no-refunds policy on my site.