Whether to Offer Refunds

By Adam  |  20 Aug 2015 17:00:00

What is the refund policy of your eCommerce website? Is it something you've ever actually thought about before? If not, I think that it's definitely something that you need to give some consideration to. It would be a good idea to decide whether or not you are going to offer refunds on your website and to write up a solid policy. There are a few different approaches you can take and I am going to go over which are the best in this blog post.

You might not want to offer any refunds at all. You're a new business and you need to make as many sales as possible; if somebody makes a purchase you don't want to have to give that money back! But I would argue that not offering refunds actually stands to cost you even more money than offering them. Firstly, if somebody has purchased from you but then, for whatever reason, needs a refund, if they can't get one then they are not likely to buy from you again. However, if somebody has purchased from you already, then they otherwise would have had a good chance of doing so again in the future. Furthermore, some people are very cautious and will check a refund policy before they make a purchase; if you don't offer them that might stop them from buying.

So I think that it would be best to offer refunds, but you have to be sure that people are not taking advantage of you. For example, if you sell clothes, someone might buy a fancy dress wear it to an event, and then ask for a refund because they could never really afford that dress. Equally, someone might break a product after having had it for a while and then just pretend that it was not their fault and expect you to refund it. A good idea would be to offer refunds within a thirty day period. That gives people plenty of time to report a faulty product, cuts down the chances of you being taken advantage of and makes you look generous and fair. Ultimately it's down to you and you know what's best for your business, but this is what I think would be best, in regards to refunds.