Dealing with unreasonable refund requests | Hacker News Reader

Dealing with unreasonable refund requests

3 pointsesw15 comments

What's an appropriate response to a customer who requests a refund for a year of hosting service because they 'meant to cancel'?

View on HN

I run in to this from time to time with S3stat. We have real server expenses processing people's reports, so there is in fact a genuine loss to the business if we refund a customer who "forgot to cancel".

Still, I do it every time. For as far back as they want to go. Even if that's a year. Even if it costs us a hundred bucks worth of AWS expenses.

Why? Because I'm not in the business of taking money from people who don't want to give it to me. Sure, it costs a few hundred dollars every now and then but a few hundred dollars is not a lot of money for a business. The biggest expense in the whole process is my time and attention spent dealing with the situation.

Given that, the quickest and cheapest route out is to open up the Stripe console, click the Refund button a bunch of times, cancel the guy's subscription, then write him a nice email telling him so.

You're right. I issue refunds all the time, and this should be no different.

Without more information it is hard to suggest anything.

If your hosting service is like most others out there ($100-$300 p.a) then it might far less aggravation to simply cancel them and refund the year's pre-paid amount than to waste time bickering.

Unreasonable people tend to start out being difficult and then dig in. Have you seen: http://www.boston.com/food-dining/restaurants/2014/12/09/har...

Are they claiming the service was unavailable, unreliable, poor etc. Or just saying, hey we forgot so we'd like to have our money back?

Did they use the service for 12 months? To me it is two different things if they had the account but hadn't used it, I might be more inclined to say refund 3 months just to keep them reasonably happy and make it easy on myself. If they used the account all the way up to the end, then I would likely not be very accommodating on any refund, unless you messed up somehow which it doesn't sound like.

Overall, they are responsible for canceling timely which is not your problem.

Would you get your money back if you called up the cable company and said, hey sorry I didn't watch TV for the last 12 months, so I'd like my money back please. It is the same thing they are asking you to do.

Their site was up and running, receiving traffic for the duration.

>Would you get your money back if you called up the cable company and said, hey sorry I didn't watch TV for the last 12 months, so I'd like my money back please. It is the same thing they are asking you to do.

I've had the same thought, and I wish there was an elegant and professional way to communicate that sentiment.

Knowing that, I would call whomever is requesting it and talk to them like a person not a business. Say something like, look, I understand you meant to cancel, but the fact is you actually had your site running all the way up to X date. Meaning I incurred real costs to run it and be available to help you with any issues. And while I understand you are saying you had intentions to cancel it prior, you never communicated that and you didn't take the actions necessary to move your site, therefore I had no knowledge until your recent request. Given that, there is just no way I can refund you for 12 months of service that you received and I incurred costs for.

And tell them the cable analogy or something similar. I think sometimes we get caught up thinking as though we have to be "businesses" and forget that it is another human on the other side. They may not even be aware that there was service going on for 12 months, as someone on their side might have just told them to go see if they can get a refund.

I had a fairly small client once that the manager of the team I worked with was new. He didn't understand what we did for them yet so he asked their accounting person to get a refund from us for the last 3 months because we didn't do anything. What he didn't understand is that everyday we were the ones keeping their site alive and functioning while his team was rebuilding it. After my initial feeling of anger subsided I called the lady from accounting back and explained what we did, and said there is no way I can or will refund that money as we provided the services in the contract. She had no idea and said yea, I wouldn't either, let me talk to him and make sure we are all on the same page. They were a small business and just didn't communicate clearly, maybe you have something similar going on here. For us it worked out great, hopefully it will for you too.

Check what card they were using . . . determine how far back they could request chargebacks and refund to that point or one billing cycle farther back . . . most services will only refund back one billing cycle so I agree this request is extreme . . . Good luck in 2015.

Did they pay for a year up front? I feel more information is needed.

Is this a renewal and they pay for a year at a time? If so how long past the renewal are they?

Or has a year gone by and they owe for the past year?

It's a month-to-month service, so they're asking for a refund on 12 billing cycles. The TOS is clear that there are no refunds for services rendered. I try to be as accommodating as possible, but this just seems absurd.

Yeah. I would try and compromise with them. Maybe offer some of their money back, but in this case the company doesn't owe them 12 months of refund because they forgot to cancel for a year.

Suggestions like yours make me wonder if I should be more of a nuisance, so people will compromise with my unreasonable demands.

Can you check their usage stats? Were they using the service at all in the past 12 billing cycles?

If their site was up and having visitors, did it change at all in 12 months? Whats the traffic stats like?

Most importantly, is this money worth the risk of possibly losing customers if this guy is loud?

Yeah, I'd just refund it like jasonkester said. It's not worth the hassle and besides, that customer is likely to complain about your service if you don't refund it. The chances are, they are probably really strapped for cash and are looking for ways to cut down on expenses suddenly. Or they are just (---: 's

I would look at how much they actually cost you. Cost you. If they didn't cost much of anything refund them up to the cost to you to do business, including overhead

What are your original TOS for refunds?

Maybe offer them a month's refund to get rid of them. Hard to say when dealing with extreme cases.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com