Bad Refund Policy

Hi guys,

I can't be the only merchant that is getting annoyed with the Tradebit refund policy. It seems that, rather than offer support, you just refund people's money. This seems lazy and wasteful. As you know, there have been a number of occasions where I have solved the customers problems very quickly, yet you guys have fired off a refund a few days later!

This seriously needs to be addressed because it is hard enough to sell in the first place without you giving people's money back - along with our products for free. There are now a lot of people using our sound effects for free, completely unlicensed - and this is not acceptable. I would much rather deal with support issues myself and I can do this very quickly.

Leigh
Big Fat Audio

Hi Leigh,

we suffer from a lot of refund requests on tradebit and I said that we will solve these issues. The problem is the connection between Paypal and Tradebit and we have code some pages so we can easily transfer the download info from our logs into the paypal dispute window!

We are not lazy, just not enough people here... I am working on improvements!

Ralf

I understand the difficulties, especially when Paypal disputes are started. But I guess the problem is that unlike a normal store, where goods can be re-sold if they are refunded, these non-tangible goods are still out there. I know that some people take advantage of this and request a refund so that they can keep the file for free. Personally, unless a file is corrupted or the download fails, I don't think refunds should be given and this would stand up fairly in a Paypal dispute. How many people get in touch because they can't find the download on their own PC? Loads - but that isn’t Tradebit's fault and it doesn't require a refund, just a bit of friendly advice. How often do people miss the download email? All the time because they no longer use their Paypal email address. They get angry and think they've been conned - so it's really important to reiterate that the download links are sent to their Paypal email address.

I do appreciate that this is a lot of work for few people at Tradebit, and I apologize if I sounded snappy in my original message there. But I do think it would save you a lot of work if customer support queries were re-directed to the merchant and the merchant was given joint authority to offer refunds, or at least consulted first. It is undoubtedly better for you to receive the Paypal payments and pay us weekly as you're doing, because the Paypal fees are so high on small transactions. Besides, you could spend a lot of time chasing invoices if merchants had to pay you commission. But I guess the problem with the current system is that it leaves you open to disputes in your Paypal account. I would certainly always act fast to help. But I don't think anyone should fear them and refund money automatically - it's worth seeing them through if they're unreasonable I think. Anyway, good luck with the future developments!

Cheers

Leigh
Big Fat Audio

Leigh, no problem - you have solid sales and with those the problems are higher than with the average seller. It is good that the top sellers on tradebit speak up and complain. We have to improve on such feedback or we are not good.

My approach for the next days is to take the paypal refund/on hold notification for merchants and spawn an email to the merchant with the details. So you can act much faster. It will be kind of a hassle to integrate it with the ticket system, but we will do our best!

Ralf

Same problem here... so easy complaint/refund... equal free product for many buyers!

I never got any of that PayPal email Ralf... Impossible to act soon and give full satifaction to buyers!

we are currently creating new support pages internally, where we see, if the file was accessed by the buyer and if the buyer tried to download at all or never touched the file!