MBA1630 Q&A Wednesday: Is it OK to not give refunds?

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Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. No fluff, just the good stuff every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and a Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at Omar at 100 MBA. Today's question is from Eric and Eric asks, do I need to give refunds? Is it okay not to give refunds? I sell an online course and feel like it's not fair for me to refund customers that have already consumed the course. Is it okay for me to have a blanket no refunds policy? Thanks for all the great knowledge on the podcast Eric. Great question Eric, and I'm going to give you some options for when it comes to your refund policy. If you do not want to give refunds and this is a legitimate stance and it's actually not uncommon, many business owners, especially when they're selling something that can be used immediately upon purchase, do not want to give refunds. But you want to make sure that you frame your refund policy so it is fair, so it doesn't discourage people from buying. How? Well, that's what we discuss in today's Q and A Wednesday. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So Eric asks here on Q and A Wednesday if it's okay for him not to give out refunds. He has an online course and just feels it's not fair. If they've taken the course or if they've seen the course already, then to ask for a refund is just not fair to him. Firstly, I want to say that you are a business owner. That means you get to do what you want. This is your business. You make the choices. So of course it's okay. You can do what you like. But really what we want to find out is, is this really gonna affect our business, affect sales? Will it turn people away? There's a few ways you can handle this even when you state there are no refunds. One way is a do the work refund policy. And I've seen this with a lot of online courses where they say, hey, we will give you a refund if you show that you actually did all the work that this course has outlined. You've implemented everything and you've not gained any results. At the end of the day, your online course is really promising a result. That's really what you're selling. You're not selling the actual videos themselves. And I like this policy. If you're not going to give refunds or you're trying to deter refunds because this deters the tire kickers, they're not going to buy then. Because if somebody's just going to want to step in and dabble in and then leave and ask for a refund, they're not going to buy this because they know that they won't get a refund. And if they don't show their work. Secondly, I think this is kind of like a fair enough situation. Like, it's fair enough that you know, if you actually do the work and don't get a result, happy to give a refund. But if you're just asking for a refund because you didn't get around to do the course, that can be classified as not a legitimate reason to ask for a refund. That's just you had regrets because you maybe bit off more than you could chew, or maybe you just didn't prioritize it, that's on you. The second way you can have this no refunds policy is, is to have it correlated with the amount of content they consumed. Course platforms like Podia, for example, that is a friend of the show, sponsor of the show, they have a way for you to see every customer, every student in your course's progression, which videos they watched, how much they've watched, all that kind of stuff. So you can have a policy that says if you've consumed 25% or more of the course, then there is no refund. And of course, 25% is just a number I pulled out of my head. You could choose the percentage that you're comfortable with, but the point here is that you are limiting the refund based on if they've consumed the content, gotten the content already, and they're just running away, asking for their money back. Another way is to have a limited time for the refund, like maybe a week or two weeks. And beyond that, there are no refunds. Just giving them a chance to get a taste of the course, seeing if it's a good fit for them. These are all options for you. And of course you could choose how you want to implement your no refund policy, but I encourage you to have something that goes along with we have no refunds, you know, or we do give refunds, but under these conditions so people understand where they stand when it comes to buying your product. If you're not going to have any refunds, period, with no stipulations, I do recommend you give them some sort of sample or trial, maybe even a free lesson or a free module. This will allow you to lower the risk. It's sort of like a free trial, giving people a taste of the course without having to commit the money. This could replace a money back guarantee. This could replace a refund policy. And this will allow your customers to feel a little bit at ease when making the purchase and lowering their risk and allows them to feel more confident to buy. You might be surprised how many people are more willing to buy knowing what they're getting into before they do. So you may want to offer the first few videos again, Podia allows you to do this where you can preview a couple of the courses inside of the course or a couple of lessons inside of the course before they actually buy, so they can get a good feel of what it's going to be like. These are all options for you. You can explore, you can tweak, you can change. It's your business.

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To wrap up today's Q and A, Wednesday's question from Eric no, you do not need to give refunds. You could set the policies, but make sure that you package that mess messaging properly for your customers so not to deter them. And then if you want to have some sort of risk reversal, give them a free trial. Give them a few samples of your course so they know what they're getting before they buy, knowing that they won't be able to refund, lowering that anxiety, lowering that fear of buyer's remorse. Thank you so much for listening to the $100BA Show. If you have a question you want to ask, I'll answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. Just email me over@omar100mba.net before you go, make sure you hit subscribe right now. And whatever you use to listen to podcasts, whether it's Apple Podcasts or Stitcher Radio or Spotify, by hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically right on your device. It also allows you to reach all of our archived episodes for free. So hit subscribe right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. You can always experiment. You can have no refunds and then try refunds and see how many people actually refund. When you have a refund policy, whether it's 30 days or whatever you choose, you might want to set out and say, this month I'm going to have this policy. The next month I'm going to have this policy and find out what converts best. Find out what helps your business and keeps as much cash on hand as possible. But often you're not going to get that answer without trying experimenting. Pricing is all about experimenting and your refund policy is a part of that. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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