DISQUS

@Hilda - I don't know what Michel would say because obviously I'm not him. But I think there's a CLEAR difference between a person who honestly tried and didn't make it and a person who is refunding just because they need $1000.

As far as where someone mentioned an overreaction - if this was a case where a person was refunding based on not getting what they paid for, that's one thing. OR one isolated incident of someone hiring you to take your time to do something and then bailing, fine.

But someone hiring you, benefitting from your work, clearly benefitting, and then refunding, sad to say it's becoming a trend. i am sub-contracted on a project now where someone started a movement to publiclly defraud a company in the form of refund requests. In public! A company that didn't do anything wrong. They made a contract with someone, and filled that contract. At no point did they lie or mislead anyone. And now they must spend a fortune on reputation management based on one person's experience - a person they REFUNDED by the way - because refunding and doing rap man is cheaper than dealing with a bunch of small law suits.

I don't personally believe we should put more focus on it than is needed to vent and/or address the issue, but thinking of it as an over-reaction is a mistake I think. because it's one we all pay for in higher prices of goods, one way or another.

MOST of the time refunds are legitimate. And my company has yet to refuse one, in fact we make it so customers can refund without involving us so we don't have to deal with the issue. But when they're not, it's a hard pill to swallow that one should just bend over and take it.

A belief in lack does strange things to people. The only time i was married, it was to a guy who bought his favorite cologne, Drakkar, used the bottle until it was almost empty, and returned it to Sears. Same person who could spend $60 on a night at the movies thought it was worthwhile to go back to Sears every month and get another free bottle of cologne, because "sears could afford it.".

Needless to say we didn't stay married long.

I wasn't aware of the serial refunders until my first big hit in 2005. From then until now, the only way I've been able to deal with them is to bundle things that can't be stolen with their purchase. People who return don't get unadvertised bonuses or my time. If it's a legitimate return, I've had so few of those for it to be immaterial. The fraudulent returns are also few in number but still quite upsetting. If you teach someone something and they fail to act on it or absorb it, it's not like you get your time or efforts done on their behalf back.

It's a difficult issue. If you build it into the cost of doing business, your clients suffer. If you ignore it you become an easy target. If you address it you're feeding into the negativity. Can't say that I have an easy answer.

I agree with @Justin that Clickbank is the worst enabler. I've never had a refund rate higher than 7% for a single product or 1% across the board, but I will say that when we got to 7%, it was when we were on Clickbank. Immediately after pulling that product off Clickbank, it went down to less than one percent.

As far as a serial refunders list... it's gotten to the point where my time is really precious. Not that anyone else's isn't... I can't work a whole day anymore is what I'm saying. So I have to really pick my battles. So though I think it might help, it's too much of a time investment for me to keep up with it or contribute to it.

Good topic.

In the sense that effective use can help make sales that otherwise wouldn't have been made, possibly. Directly as a sales tool, perhaps not, at least, not in the way, say, advertising a special discount would. But does that mean we have to change our minds about social media, or about what makes people buy?

Even with straight-up advertising, there's that old adage that "half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I don't know which half". On the other hand, some people absolutely swear by word of mouth, but can't quantify its impact.

And how about this - the fact that you're writing about it is going to make me look it up, because I hadn't heard about this campaign, and I want to buy a new car this summer. If I buy a Fiesta, or some other type of Ford, does hearing about the campaign from your blog count as a yes or no for social media influencing a sale? Because technically I wouldn't have known about it if you hadn't mentioned it... but maybe the fact that you had to mention it means that it isn't working the way its supposed to... and yet, by blogging about it, it IS still being spread through social media.

Definitely linking to this. I have my whole FB spam thing up and this complements it perfectly.

How have I not ever been to your blog before? Do I just not get up early in the morning.

Let me be the first to say BRAVO. Then I'm gonna say something controversial, prefacing it with the fact that I am in full....

FULLL FUCKING AGREEMENT

with all that you have said, right down to the word SOME not all in reference to the black man.

Here's my controversial piece. I know after some hard self reflection that it's true of me, that I struggled with it, and that once I came to embrace it as truth, I started getting treated much better by men.

--> We women at some point, accept much worse than we deserve and THAT is how we get caught in these bad relationships. For some of us it takes one bad experience to ex-communicate the one type of man, for some it takes dozens.

It boils down to us being encouraged to believe in scarcity (no good black men, no black men period, take what you can get, we're getting to old to be picky in finding a lifemate, you can't get a good lover so if you find a man that's good at sex, hold on to him at all costs, that sort of garbage), and men being raised to believe in abundance (you have plenty of time, *some* women are a dime a dozen, date a lot just to find out what you like and don't like, you have a biological need to spread your seed, it's natural, you can get an orgasm anytime, alone or not)

Makes sense to me, Andy. I think the one place they're missing the boat is that their users don't seem to be as angry about the way Facebook *appears* so much as they are not feeling the *functionality*. If they'd tell people what the advanced users know and take for granted they'd squash a lot of this beef. (Two examples: you can still get to the feed preferences page and tweak what you see, that you can still get to the privacy page and tweak what you share).

Sidebar: Are you aware that in Safari, the comment form is misaligned?

Tinu Abayomi-paul's last blog post..Click Here to Ask Me a Question

Best wishes to Sylvie on a speedy recovery. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help until you're back again. If not, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. :0

Love it. And thanks for the link to the interview. Another thing that works great for me, is typing the goals up and signing my name with the date. It's like a little contract with myself.

The comments are outrageous because Twitter isn't mainstream. Who would have said these things about the phone, the computer, Digg, before the mainstream phase?

And I got 2 clients from Twitter just in this month, December - waiting on a potential third now. Not indirectly, Directly. That's like saying you can't drum up business by using the phone. It's all in *how* you use the phone. If you call everyone you know via the phone up and bang them in the head with your marketing message, they'll probably hang up and block your number.

But if you use Twitter to build relationships, for the sake of relationships, and not solely to get cash out of someone's pocket? Odds are you'll make a lot more money.

As in all social media and communication devices, not being able to get it to work for you is a case of not knowing how to use the tool, not the fact that the tool is broken. I've been extremely guilty of this myself, so I'm putting it bluntly to you because that's what made me see, and what helped my business so much.

Social Media ROI is spectacular if a- you're not desperate for cash right now (in which case you should start with advertising anyway, and b- you want to build a business, rather than a series of one-time customers.

Hm. Want. As an expert/answerer of course.

I've seen a couple of sites that charge users for answers. I only used one once, but I didn't want the answer badly enough.

On the other hand, that would be the key market: if my question was, how do I make this headache stop NOW, or where's the best place to get next-day ezine advertising online, maybe I'd be willing to pay for the answer... hm...

It may be a known issue, but Twitter's app hasn't been in Facebook's directory since that story broke. I complained about that twice. You may be on to something after all.

Definitely what did it for me was that dude's face.

Back atcha kid, you made me double happy.

I just spent two hours on twitter telling everyone about the lyrics and the song. I am outraged - OFF WITH HIS HEAD!

Every drop of my blood is ready to see this movie.

Yes. I want to lick him.

That's the new hotness. Thank you.

bob! it IS simple but on pretty faces it puts the emphasis on you rather than the cut

Hey, thanks for the link. You're definitely doing that conversation thing Well. ;)

Great tips. Andrew Cavanaugh created my best ever sales letter, and it had lovely, subtle graphics.

Girl. This is why I follow you on Twitter. Heart you.

What's making me happy? That I'm lucky enough to be able to work online, at not one, but two of my passions, an area of technology and writing. If you think about it, those of us working for ourselves on the web are living the early 90s equivalent of what a millionaire's lifestyle is supposed to be like.

We can work at times that are convenient to us, on projects we're passionate about, and be paid for it. Plus we can go shopping Wednesday afternoons and to the movies during Monday matinees. And have friends all over the globe. Yay age of technology!

I'm in and I'll bring some friends. :)

The hell you say. I'd seen this before with the Safari browser, but it was far less sexy than what you're describing.

@Mark Eckenrode - Yeah I've got a book describing that effect, I've been using it for years when I first started writing articles - didn't know it had a name back then. You can go back as far as '04 to find me using what I thought of then as the "cliff hanger" effect.

I'm enjoying your blog greatly and will be around quite frequently as well as commenting.