In tune with what I posted yesterday about having a strong guarantee with your offer, I had an incident very recently that I’d like to share with you.
I purchased an information product online about getting business credit without using your personal credit. I was looking for the information they were advertising they had and they also offered a 30 day money back guarantee.
Now, I don’t believe in returning products unless I find them completely useless and not what I was looking for. The information was good, but they didn’t have what I was looking for, and the thing that was specifically pointed out in their copy on the site wasn’t really provided the way they advertised. Other than that the product was good, just didn’t meet what I needed.
This product is $370 plus $29 shipping, so after going through everything, I contacted the company and asked for a refund telling them why it didn’t meet what I was looking for.
They proceeded to tell me that to return it I had to submit a ticket, wait for a response which I did. Then, after a couple days I did get a response, telling me that I needed to go download a form from a link they provided me in the response, fill out and fax or mail to them, explaining specifically what I didn’t like about the product, etc…, and only then I will be provided with a return authorization number.
I was out of town for about a week and a half after buying the product and so I contacted the company about returning the product after I got back. This was already 3 weeks after the purchase was made. Anyway, I followed their instructions got an authorization number, sent the package back paying an additional $28 in shipping with insurance, just in case and they got it 2 days later.
After 2 weeks I got a letter telling me that I do not qualify for a refund because the purchase was made on Sept. 26th and they received the item back on Oct. 27th.
One day later, c’mmon. After spending some time on the phone with the customer service manager and supervisor explaining to them that first of all I didn’t get the product on the 26th, but I got it Oct. 1st or something like that, and that I was out of town for a week and a half, and contacted them a week before the 30 days were up and that I had to wait for them to respond, but none of that mattered. I kept getting the same answer, in our return policy listed on our site it clearly states 30 days from the date of purchase, no exceptions, blah, blah, blah.
Ok, I don’t want to spend anymore time discussing this stupidity, but do you see my point? Technically they were right, and I couldn’t do anything about it, but is this how you treat a customer?
Do you think I will ever buy anything from this company again? How about refer anyone to them?
There’s a saying that if you do something positive to someone they may or may not share it with anyone, but if you do something negative they will share it with everyone.
So being right and doing what’s right are two very different things. Keep that in mind when you’re dealing with your customers. Good charma goes a long way and will help you attract better quality customers and resolve issues in a win win way.
I had a customer once purchase something from me online, it was a $150 digital product and after he looked at it, it wasn’t what he thought it was, and he wanted a refund even though he liked the information but didn’t want to spend $150 on something that he didn’t think was for him. I refunded his purchase without any questions. Within the next 6 months, he purchased over $400 more worth of products from me.
Treat others like you want to be treated and others will reward you with more of the same, much more.
By the way, I had to pay another $15 to that company to have them ship my product back that they didn’t want to refund me on. So I did and listed it on ebay, sold for less than half of what I paid, but the person who bought it from me, liked the information and then saw that I had more stuff, and bought additional items from me and is now a customer that may keep coming back for more. So look for the positives in any situation.
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