Refunds, Disputes and Tough Clients

Today I wanted to talk about refunds, disputes and tough clients. I think it is a common question for people selling beats to think, how do you go about handling a situation where a customer is asking for a refund? What happens if the customer simply won’t budge or is being unreasonable? Well today I wanted to discuss some of my own experiences to help you in understanding these unwanted encounters, what you can do to fight back, and when you should budge.

First of all I want to discuss services because I think that a lot of people do custom work, etc, for payment and the word “refund” can come up. For me I think that with services it’s always best to do half down, half after in terms of payments. That way nobody feels cheated and the conversation of refunds never has to come up. If somebody pays half down and you do your best to satisfy their needs, which you should do anything and everything to try to make a bad situation right no matter what, then you shouldn’t feel bad keeping their money.

For services it’s considered a deposit scenario. Major credit cards, debit accounts and even PayPal advocate no refunds for services. The reason is because you receive payment and begin work, so you’ve been hired to complete a task and it’s your job to simply do that task. If you’ve begun working it’s your job to do everything in your power to satisfy the needs of the client you’re working for. But having said that, don’t put in ten hours of work and then when they ask for a refund, comply.

Having said that, if you are selling any sort of service your refund rate should be extremely low. There’s a big problem if one out of two clients end up asking for a refund or being pissed off about your experience with them. For me it’s probably one out of every fifteen clients will end up asking for a refund when it comes to services. I like those odds because if the vast majority of people you work with are satisfied then clearly you’re doing something right. Don’t be the person who sells services and gets refund requests constantly because you don’t have the skills or resources to complete the tasks they’re asking you to complete.

When it comes to items that are ship-able, and non-services, the ability to get a refund for a client is higher. It’s harder to win any dispute when it comes to these situations, but I have a trick up my sleeve for this kind of thing. If somebody is dissatisfied for any reason I like to try to make the situation right. Usually this can be done through bribing, by giving the customer some free extra goodies in exchange for ending the dispute.

I like going this route because it is the only way to make sure even the majority of your disputes can be solved with everybody being happy in the end. Realistically there’s almost always a way to get to this point and it should be your first priority whether you’re selling beats online or selling other products.

If you’re actually shipping an item, sometimes you can still make the situation right by actually offering to send another item, so it even works with those situations. But if somebody does ask for a refund for an item shipped, the dispute will begin and you will indeed have to deal with it. However you can request they send the item back and you’re certainly not responsible for paying for the shipping and handling going the other direction. If a customer wants to go this route, then that’s their choice but they have to get your item back to you, so don’t let them keep both if you can help it.

Hopefully this has been an enlightening article for those of you who sometimes come across tough or even impossible clients. You can’t please everybody, and if somebody is insulting you and your work, asking for a refund when you’ve already done tons of work for them, now you know what to do and how to handle each particular situation.