One of my mentors once said:
“Never, ever be surprised at anything another human being does…”
In other words, what I am saying is this: some of your customers will bring tears of frustration to your eyes! Giving refunds is never fun, but it’s best just to do it – if their request is within the terms of your refund policy, don’t give it a moment’s thought, just process it without thinking.
People can file disputes saying that either they never received the item they purchased from you, or that it was “significantly not as described.”
There are a few reasons why this is bad:
- If the dispute goes against you, you lose that money (that one is obvious)
- You will waste time dealing with the dispute which is a disproportionate impact on your busy day (you should be doing something productive / creative for your business!)
- I suspect (though this is just conjecture) that it impacts the reputation of your account in PayPal, the risk they attach to your account, and the chance they will limit the account or shut it down
However, I have some good news to share with you…
PayPal offers you the ability to show a customisable message to any customer of yours who starts to file a dispute against you. Log in to your PayPal account, navigate to “My Account” then “Profile” then “My Selling Preferences.”
On that page you will see a heading: “Getting Paid and Managing Risk” and in the drop-down area underneath it you’ll see “Customer service message.” Clicking on the “Update” link next to “Customer service message” will allow you to enter a personalised message. I suggest you write something like this:
Your satisfaction is our TOP priority!
As you know, we run a {state your refund policy} REFUND POLICY. There is no need to open a dispute – we will refund your purchase, period. Just email us with your PayPal email address and we will attend to your request immediately.
If you have had trouble contacting us, please do so at {insert your email address} and we will respond to you immediately.
Our offices are closed at weekends but aside from this you can expect a reply within 24 hours.
[your usual sign-off]
Of course, you may want to word your message differently. You may even want to point out that intangible products are not covered by PayPal’s buyer protection policy, and that therefore their dispute will be unsuccessful. For an even stronger message, state that your refund offer is invalidated if they file a dispute – that you will NOT refund them if they do file a dispute.
It is up to you, but in this way, you will hopefully dissuade some people who were in the process of placing a dispute from actually doing so.
Even if this customer service message is successful in preventing disputes, you’ll still need to give the refund (in accordance with your refund policy) – but you will save the time otherwise spent dealing with the dispute and also, I believe, keep your account in better standing with PayPal.
The first step is really to save you the small amount of time and effort which is required to deal with the dispute. However, for almost all products which we sell in Internet Marketing, you will NEVER lose a dispute so long as you know the PayPal Buyer Protection Policy.
Why?
Because the PayPal Buyer Protection Policy does NOT cover the sorts of products typically sold by IM’ers. Specifically, the policy does not protect a buyer who has bough an “intangible” product – in other words something that is not physical. Digital products such as pdfs, mp3 files, videos etc are intangible.
Here is an abbreviated extract from PayPal’s policy:
- PayPal Buyer Protection only applies to PayPal payments for certain tangible, physical goods that can be posted. Payments for the following are not eligible for reimbursement under PayPal Buyer Protection:
- intangible items
- services
- businesses
- custom made items
- licences
- access to digital content
If you consider almost anything you are likely to sell on the Warrior Forum, it will almost certainly fit into one of these categories, What that means is that the dispute filed against you will not be successful.
Let’s look very briefly at the course of events which occurs during a PayPal dispute and what to do:
When someone files a dispute, it will be claiming that the item was never received, or that it was “significantly not as described.” PayPal will send you an email to your primary PayPal email address, notifying you of the dispute and asking you to go to the resolution center in your PayPal account.
When you go to the resolution center click on the button that says “Resolve” next to the dispute listing, and you can enter into correspondence with your customer. I suggest you address the possibility that they didn’t ever receive access to a digital download for example, or respond as is appropriate according to their comments.
If this correspondence is unsuccessful in getting your customer to drop the dispute, I suggest you click on the link shown which allows you to “Elevate” the dispute to a claim. It is only once either you or your customer elevate the dispute to a claim that PayPal will get involved and will assess the claims made. So it is important that you tell PayPal some important facts about the case, counter the customer’s complaints, and tell PayPal what type of product was involved.
If the product is of the type excluded from their Buyer Protection Policy (examples listed above), then the dispute will be awarded against the customer in favor of you.
Job done. A bit of a hassle to have to go through this, but better than losing the sale to a possibly dishonest customer, who is pretending that he never received a product which he did in fact receive, or who claims falsely that the product was “significantly not as described”. This does mean, of course, that you should be honest and up-front in your sales copy!
It’s my firm belief that if you handle your business with integrity, you will not have to waste a lot of time dealing with disputes, but there will always be some…