Posts Tagged ‘refund policy’

This past week, we announced, through a blog post and emails to vendors, an update to the ClickBank refund policy and vendor fees.  As a result, there have been questions regarding consumers who may abuse the ClickBank refund policy that we would like to take a moment to address.

Protecting ClickBank client sales is a top priority, and cracking down on consumers who may abuse the ClickBank refund policy represents a significant portion of our recent efforts to reduce refunds and chargebacks. We have and will continue to actively monitor and block consumer purchases that abuse our ClickBank Return and Cancellation Policy. On a daily basis, we review consumer behavior for refund and chargeback history, block purchases from consumers who have a record of frequent refunds or chargebacks and blacklist consumers who we’ve identified as policy abusers. We do this to ensure that the refund and chargeback rates for ClickBank clients’ products accurately reflect the product and promotions, and are not the result of problem consumers. On the whole, “serial refunders” make up a small percentage of all refunds.

ClickBank clients who act as consumers by purchasing products from other ClickBank clients are also subject to this policy, in addition to the Client Contract. ClickBank clients who abuse the refund policy may be subject to corrective action in accordance with the Client Contract.

As part of our efforts to help clients lower refund and chargeback rates, and in addition to best practices outlined in our updated promotional guidelines (e.g., no blind offers) and other tips available on our blog, we have been trialing additional features through our beta program including:

• Exclusive Affiliate Whitelists — Vendors can utilize exclusive whitelists to select which affiliates are permitted to drive traffic to their site to eliminate problem affiliates.
• Affiliate Blacklisting – Vendors can request that specific abusive affiliate accounts be added to a blacklist, prohibiting the abusive account from driving traffic to their site.
• Partial Refunds – This will allow a vendor to determine the percentage of a refund to grant to a consumer, based on their business rules.
• Digital Rights Management for eBooks – New technology that will allow a vendor to revoke access to their digital product if the consumer requests a refund.

We anticipate these new features will help vendors to manage refund rates as well as improving the consumer experience. We will continue to communicate the availability of these features as they are released from beta.

We’re committed to supporting both our clients and consumers, and ensuring refunds and chargebacks are kept at reasonable low rates is the responsibility of clients, consumers and ClickBank. We are committed to working together to make sure this industry remains profitable and viable for a long time to come.

As part of our ongoing commitment to providing high quality products to consumers, ClickBank is adjusting certain fees relating to refund and chargeback rates for ClickBank vendors. These changes will affect a very small number of ClickBank vendors, and will not affect affiliates.

Starting October 17, 2011, vendor accounts with a refund rate over 15% and/or chargeback rate over 1% over the past 60 days may be subject to additional fees or penalties. Refunds and chargebacks negatively affect everyone, including customers, affiliates, vendors and ClickBank, so it is important that we all work together to keep refunds as low as possible.

For vendors over the 15% refund rate threshold, ClickBank may opt to retain our transaction processing fee on any subsequent refunds, rather than returning the processing fee to the vendor as we do now. Vendors with refund rates significantly higher than the 15% threshold may also be subject to additional processing fees on refunds and additional penalties including removal from the Marketplace or account termination. Vendors with chargeback rates over 1% may be subject to additional fees on subsequent chargebacks.

As stated earlier, this change will impact a very small number of ClickBank vendors, and will not affect affiliates.

To support vendors in lowering their refund rates, we are adding a clear indicator of the vendor’s current 60-day refund rate to the Account Home page so vendors can easily track their refund rate and take action if necessary.

As we begin to implement this new policy in the coming weeks, ClickBank will contact affected vendors individually before any additional fees are applied to their accounts, and will attempt to work with these vendors to lower their refund rates whenever possible.

We are committed to supporting our clients and end customers, and these changes are part of our commitment to keeping affiliate marketing profitable and sustainable for years to come.

Posted by: Terra Goeres, Manager – Client Account Management

There is a saying that goes, “You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” I don’t know who originally spoke those words, but I believe they could have been in reference to ClickBank’s refund policy.

In my 8 years with ClickBank, one of our most controversial policies has always been the refund policy. Our clients tend to love it or hate it. If they hate it, they hate it for one of two reasons: either (1) they think the refund period is too long or (2) they think it’s too short. We have a refund policy that allows for returns within 60 days to protect both our clients and our customers, but we hear from both publishers who think this is way too long, and those that want the refund policy to last 6 months, a year, or more! Obviously, there are different opinions about what is a “fair” refund policy length.

While not everyone agrees on what the refund policy should be, the one common denominator we all share is that we want to reduce refunds as much as possible. With that in mind, this post is dedicated to sharing a few tips to help you in that endeavor.

1) Be easy to contact

• Prominently display your customer service email address on your Thank You page.
• Provide your customer service hours and a time frame in which customers can expect to receive a reply from you.
• Realize that email is not 100% reliable, and take advantage of the area within your ClickBank account where you can add a customer service phone number. This number is not provided to customers after the purchase or on their sales receipt; it is only provided to them by our customer service staff if the customer calls or emails stating that they are having trouble reaching you by email.
• Coming soon- as of September 9^th, you will be able to list a customer service/help desk URL in your ClickBank account. This URL will be provided to customers on the order confirmation page and on their sales receipt.

2) Provide an honest description of your product on your sales page

• Set your customers’ expectations appropriately. Many people are still skeptical of digital products and of buying products through the internet. Make sure you tell them what they’re going to get as thoroughly and honestly as possible, so they feel they got their money’s worth and walk away satisfied.
• Explain which programs or software applications the customer will need in order to download your product. For example, keep in mind that not everyone has MS Word.

3) Provide impeccable customer service

• Autoresponders are efficient, but they are extremely impersonal, and they do not and cannot address each individual issue that a customer may have. While it’s a good idea to use autoresponders to provide customers with answers to frequently asked questions, you should also make sure to provide customers with a way to get answers from a real person if the FAQ doesn’t help them.
• Offer courteous, professional, easy-to-follow answers to customer service inquiries. You may answer all of your customer service email, but if the instructions are not written in a way that the customer can understand, they will say, “Forget it,” and ask for a refund.

Despite our best efforts, it’s highly unlikely that any of us will be able to please all of our customers all of the time. However, following these tips will help you help you please some of the people all of the time, and save a significant percentage of your sales from unnecessary refunds.