I think The Dude said it best: "You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole."
I don't know IgnitionDeck, but this makes me want to never do business with them.
We Do Not Negotiate with Terrorists
51–56 of 56 posts
Re: We Do Not Negotiate with Terrorists
#52This is quite pathetic.
When your customer is not happy just find a way to make them so. Start from solving their problems, then free license extension and get down to the refund.
If you are actually losing worthy money at the end of the year due to refunds, take a hard look at yourself, your business and the unreasonable expectation you set while selling your software.
We apply these principles to selling a software with $6K price tag and it works just fine, it should work much better and easier with $300.
P.S. If your policy is not to make any refunds (which is a bad policy) then make it clear, and when someone tells you stuff like this tell them to "Sorry you agreed our sales terms, no refunds. Thanks." And if they are aggressive, don't answer. Also don't blog about it, so at least rest of the world doesn't know that you are charging people for something they can't use and then announcing them bunch of terrorist because they told you that they'll write their bad experience about your product in various forums -even when they choose a bad way to express this-.
Re: We Do Not Negotiate with Terrorists
#53As a counterpoint: I have the opposite policy for refunds, and have for the last 8ish years. The official version, to satisfy my accountant [+], is a full refund with no questions asked for 30 to 60 days. The unofficial version is that I will give anyone a refund in (basically) perpetuity. I think my current record is 70 months after the transaction. My refund rate for BCC is 2.7%. That's the easiest one for me to ca…
Wow - Patrick, I assume that £500 isn't your entire reserve, just the one for refunds? Natural variability in sales would make that a game of financial russian roulette!
Re: We Do Not Negotiate with Terrorists
#54As a counterpoint: I have the opposite policy for refunds, and have for the last 8ish years. The official version, to satisfy my accountant [+], is a full refund with no questions asked for 30 to 60 days. The unofficial version is that I will give anyone a refund in (basically) perpetuity. I think my current record is 70 months after the transaction. My refund rate for BCC is 2.7%. That's the easiest one for me to ca…
Wow - Patrick, I assume that £500 isn't your entire reserve, just the one for refunds? Natural variability in sales would make that a game of financial russian roulette!
I honestly do way, way too much cash flow juggling and should just bite the bullet and build up a larger cushion than I have, but you're right, both in the "that isn't the typical cash-on-hand" and "if it were, that would be crazily risky."
Re: We Do Not Negotiate with Terrorists
#55I can't possibly imagine the time and energy wasted on this blog post and back and forth with the customer is worth $300. Not to mention the PR implications... you're calling your customers terrorists! Good god. You have an unhappy customer, give him his money back and move on.
It's not about $300. It's about everybody else from now on who will discover getting $300 from Ignitiondeck is as easy as threatening some bad reviews. Think of the bad PR as an investment. These people will hopefully move on to easier targets now. Not saying I agree, but I think that's the rationale.
The angry customers aren't "getting" 300$. They're getting their money back. Virtuous giant lose virtually nothing in the process (perhaps the cost of the transaction and some man-minutes for processing the refund).
And customers wouldn't threaten some bad reviews if VG agreed to refund: They'd just get refunded and move on!
This is a pretty bad PR move in my opinion. In fact, it's worse than the threats that the original customer would have carried in my opinion.
Re: We Do Not Negotiate with Terrorists
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have the same refund policy specifically for chargebacks. Here's a fun side note: despite the fact that I always issue a full refund, I had one customer chargeback a purchase. I decided to contest the chargeback and, amazingly, I won. I still don't know how that ended up in my favor but I feel like I just saw a unicorn and wanted to share.
Here's my unicorn: CEO Bob buys the service, uses it happily for 6 months. Bookkeeper Cindy wonders what this strange recurring bill could possibly be, assumes it is credit card fraud, and initiates six chargebacks. I get on phone. Bob brings Cindy on call, explains the situation, and tells Cindy to call bank and cancel chargeback. We document the conversation over an email, which I file with my credit card processor…
I think our files must have gotten switched at the credit card company. What I don't understand is why Cindy didn't remove the chargeback. That should settle things for you, right?