How Strong Is Your Refund Policy?
Speaking from personal experience here: what people see in our online storefronts is oftentimes, quite literally the tip of the iceberg of the work involved. For example, one of my contract templates? It may look like just a few pages of text to the outside eye or someone purchasing, but what remains unseen? The, on average, 15+ hours of drafting involved (not to mention the research, client feedback….the law school).
In short: nothing we purchase, nor any course we participate in, is as simple as it seems. We don’t see the hours of work it took to get that product or course to that place- but as business owners and creators, we know.
This is precisely why we value the importance of a valid, strong refund policy. Not a string of words loosely tied together that says we don’t like refunds: language actually prohibiting them.
The Shop’s Terms & Conditions of Online Sales and Online Courses both contain strong language regarding refunds, and there are a few pointers I want you to keep in mind as you evaluate your own:
Is proof of delivery required?
For courses, is proof of partial completion required?
Let’s break that down further: proof of partial or full completion? Or, adversely, proof that they have not accessed the course yet?
What specifics are required to enable refunds? Language regarding what is to be expected in the digital download, etc.
In short, it’s crucial to remember: while your terms and conditions may feel like default language that you’ve been told you have to include in your website, they in fact play a giant role. Your terms and conditions (whether they be on your website in general, for online sales, or online courses) all bind your customers or users of your website to those terms. Therefore, it’s crucial that you know exactly what language is included; and equally crucial that you know exactly what your refund policy entails, and you’ve taken the proper steps to strengthen that language the best you can, in a way that best suits both you and your customer (after all, you don’t want to be unfair).
