How do you deal with refunds?

Sorry to hear about your experience. Sadly, there will always be serial refunders who take advantage of generous refund policies.

What are you selling? If its a digital product and you use Paypal, they don't force refunds on digital products. If someone wants a refund "just because" you can force them to do a chargeback. Too many of those and they'll find themselves unable to use any credit cards for a while.

Just be careful, too many chargebacks will also put you on Paypal's radar.

Always stick to your money back guarantee and you will always have refunds you just got to deal with it. Every successful business deals with refunds unless otherwise stated.

Unfortunately Clickbank is used by many people like a self serve candy store: grab what you want and don't bother to pay.

You actually can't do much as Clickbank honors all refund requests automatically.

You can test a $1 trial for 3 or 7 or 14 days and then charge $97. Most people will not bother to ask for a refund for $1 and most serial refunders will not wait 3 or 7 or 14 days, pay the $97 and the ask for refund.

The serial refunders will often buy the $1 trial and cancel in time.

Another option would be to use JVzoo or W+ as they have measures in place prevent serial refunders from playing "kids in candy store". At least refunds are not given automatically and members are screened (W+) or there is a blacklist system in place (Jvzoo).

If you have a 100% moneyback guarantee then it's a 100% moneyback guarantee. Period.

I used a well known service with such a guarantee, but when I claimed my moneyback they refused. Had I been bothered, I could have got them in hot water with consumer law.

it;s only in the I.M. MMO NICHE THAT DOES THIS....probably because most of the products are sh** beyond belief so they work on only 40% asking for a refund.

in the real world they'd laugh if you asked for a money back guarantee. But they are real services/products.

if you accept paypal/c.c.'s you run the risk of chargebacks. |Not much you can do.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Unfortunately, I can't use Warrior+ nor Jvzoo as I live in a country where PayPal does not support Adaptive Payments so I either sell directly through PayPal or through ClickBank.

@brettb it is a 100% money back guarantee and I always give refunds to everyone who asks but I came to a point where I started to find it is being abused...

Here's my two cents on refunds (And I guarantee someone will get mad... Sorry lol)...

First - I pretty much have a one hundred percent guarantee on ALL of my own products. Period. If you don't like the COLOR of my sales page I'll happily give you a refund.

That being said...

I mean when I'm selling my own products... I get very sad when people refund.

The quality of my stuff is top notch and I strive to over-deliver like crazy... So if someone refunds they must not like me.

(Not very smart to take it personal... But I'm a Libra man I can't help it).

On another note... JVZoo has a "tiered blacklist" system where you can actually BLOCK refunders in accordance with a "network-wide" list of refunders. (I love this system).

Also, you can block transactions at the PAYPAL level if you want to block countries with a higher propensity to commit fraud. (Not saying this happens, however perceptions exist that would indicate this to warrant potential attention).

Refund is not a "privilege" as you wrote. Just give people their money back! The people who rule you and control what you are allowed to have of your freedom can shut you down and refund is # 1 way they can shut you down.

If you don't believe in that just do it because it's right. Good luck.

Unfortunately, you have to just give the refund. The IM world is harsh, but people are going to request refunds - for legitimate reasons or not. It's honorable of you to ask if there is something you can help with first, but... I bet 90% of the time that won't work.

I would keep an eye on how quickly after purchase someone requests a refund. If, for example, you're selling a course that would take a rather lengthy amount of time to work through (and your course is decent), I would be wary of someone who is requesting a refund within 10 minutes or something similar (or someone who purchases from you regularly and requests refunds). You can't do anything about it, but if you report that you suspect "serial refunding" to the vendor (clickbank, jvzoo, etc), they may check into it.

I saw a story about this just this week - an excellent seller I know told us she spent a TON of time answering someone's questions about a product only to see him request the refund 20 minutes after the purchase. She reported him and got confirmation that the vendor DID detect "serial refunding" activity.

But... in general, there's really nothing you can do.

One option, depending on the info product you offer, is to drip the content in such a manner that they get part of it but not all of it, and then a little more every so often. A lot of times the courses or training that is dripped out over a period of time is something that many serial refunders will not bother to buy because they cannot have the complete product before refunding anyway.

It's up to you as to how long you want to spread out the info. I have seen some people structure it so that by the time the customers have all of the info, they are beyond the refund period.

Just one perspective, and it may not be the most practical one for every product you have. But there are solutions that will allow you to automate the process somewhat like a one-time-payment for a membership site.

What world do you live in?

I can go down to Wal-mart and get a full refund for something I bought three months ago and don't even have a receipt for.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts guys. I really appreciate it.

If you give a money back guarantee and they are in the refund period then you have no choice but to honor it. Just know ahead of time that around 2% of your buyers will ask for a refund. Even though there is nothing wrong with their purchase. As for why they buy if they are going to refund anyway? Who knows.

You have to honour every single refund without asking any question, of course your way of providing extra helps to those requested for refunds is a good move and is encouraged.

You can't change your refund policy. Your refund process is handled by Clickbank which gives an unconditional 60 days money back guarantee so if you want to change your refund policy, you will have to change your payment processor and based on the fact that you've stated "These refunds increase my refund rate on ClickBank and that's something I'm trying to optimize." means that you won't change Clickbank for obvious reasons (attract affiliates, handles paying them and you,...etc).

What I would recommend is adding bonuses or "extra" chapters if it is an infoproduct that won't be revealed except after 60 days. That will make your members stay till after the 60 days money back period which then if they asked for a refund, you can question the legitimacy of their request and choose to refund them or not.

Also if it is a software, you can always make it by a unique license codes which you give to each customer which you can make it expire if they requested a refund.

The truth is, give them back their money. You have to look at it as the cost of doing business online. You can have the best product out their, your still going to have a certain amount of people that are going to steal from you. I can tell you this most people are honest and if you are selling a good product then the amount of refunds is going to stay around 2% to 5%. This has been my experience anyway.

Having a refund policy can be a good thing. Some people will buy your product who wouldn't have bought it without a refund policy. If they like it they won't ask for a refund.

So you can look at it both ways so you shouldn't be too bothered about it i guess..

At times, I provided "100% no questions asked money back guarantee" and at times I provided "Money back guarantee only if the product does not work as advertised." I do agree that buyers should make better decisions when purchasing digital products but the truth is people ask for refund for many reasons including double purchase.

Whatever the reason is and whatever my refund policy is I think I am inclined to give a refund if a customer asks if it is asked with good will and not as a way of abusing my policy. Because even if the customer is wrong, if I don't refund, probably that customer will never buy from me again and may speak badly of me to others telling them I don't honor a refund request. If I refund on the other hand, that customer will be happy with me even if he/she was not happy with that specific product of mine and will consider buying from me again because he/she will know that I care. If a customer is not happy with my product for whatever reason, there is no point keeping their money. I don't like refunding for unacceptable reasons but I sometimes do that because a lost customer may be worth a lot more than that refunded money.

Just refund the money and move on. For every refund you get, advertise more and go out and bring in 10 new sales.

I sell templates, plugins, etc. and I do not have a refund policy. Not having one, I can ignore refund requests from abusive customers and honor one if I think there's a legit reason. I don't have blind copy. Customers know exactly what they're buying when they buy and I don't make income promises, so there should be no reason for refunding other than the buyer is trying to get something for nothing. I escalate any PP disputes to claims and usually win them. Not having 100% guaranteed refund plastered all over my sales page, I rarely ever get a request for one.

As a social media provider, if there is extreme issues with the order or extreme time delays, I do partial or full refunds. If the order is delivered, I do not offer a refund.

Regarding the WF, some folk will buy and refund immediately without even looking at the product. That is very frustrating.

I highly doubt the same folk would wander into Starbucks, buy a cappuccino, have a few mouthfuls and then say "Excuse me, I don't want a cappuccino. Please refund me although I'll keep the coffee too."

Yet with digital products, people take liberties.

If you are selling software/plugins and so on, and they don't work as advertised, then a refund is a no brainer.

We have our refund policy but with a note: if a product does not perform technically and we cannot fix it. Besides we provide all kinds of trial and demo materials s well as detailed user manual. So, as a result we have a very low refund rate. But refunds still occur from time to time - this is an industry standard, and we're just following the rules of this game..