The best way to handle customer refunds 💰

Let's talk about an unsexy topic that's often not discussed enough - handling customer refunds...

When I was an 18-year-old student, an assignment required me to provide a reference from the most recent of a textbook.

You can bet I wasn't impressed when I had to spend $80 on a digital version of the textbook, only to paraphrase one quote.

The day after I purchased the textbook for a reference, I emailed the publisher asking if I could get a refund.

Their response?

They didn't offer a refund, as I'd already viewed the content within the book.

They knew exactly what I was doing.

This week, I had a customer purchase one of my no-code courses.

Each one of my courses has a detailed landing page, outlining the exact content within it.

To help share an insight into the quality of each course, I even share half of it for free on YouTube.

On Monday, a customer had purchased my course.

The next day, they emailed me demanding a refund.

Of the 42 people who had purchased this specific course, this was the first negative review I'd ever received.

What I found hard to believe was that the customer seemed to love the first half of my video, but not the second.

Ironically, this whole course was recorded as one entire video, then broken down into separate modules...

My response?

I blatantly told the customer that they weren't eligible for a refund.

As a maker, I'm confident in the value I create and the expectations I set for each course.

While having a refund policy can be an effective way to help drive initial sales in the early stages, it's likely that sooner or later, someone will take advantage of this offer.

By setting clear refund policies with the pricing information of your product, you can proactively prepare yourself for these situations.

What's frustrating, is that people like this don't understand the impact it has on the creators of a product.

I spent most of the next day re-evaluating everything I've created.

If you found enjoyed this post, I'd recommend checking out my Twitter profile where I share regular tweets about indie hacking.