MS

Hello, I’m Michael Sliwinski, founder of Nozbe - to-do app for business owners and their teams. I write essays, books, work on projects and I podcast for you using #iPadOnly in #NoOffice as I believe that work is not a place you go to, it’s a thing you do. More…

Money back guarantee - risk free shopping is good for you

💼Business

The past weekend my small family (my wife, my daughter and myself) moved to a new apartment. It was a crazy weekend, with lots of work to do, lot’s of stuff to move, etc. It’ll be several months until we’ve made the new place “ours” as there are still lots of things to adjust, plan, buy… which brings me to the subject of today’s post - risk free shopping…

Money back guarantee - risk free shopping is good for you

I had to buy lots of “small misc things” for the apartment in one of the big chain stores for home-builders (home-owners?). Although I’m not sure it’s the cheapest place to buy stuff, there is one thing that I dig about this store:

You can return anything. No questions asked.

That’s right - I can buy anything I want and later return it and they’ll give me a full refund. They won’t even ask me why. I just go the counter that says “returns” and I show my invoice and show the stuff I want to return… and within 5 minutes I have my money back. It’s so simple.

No forms to fill out, no questionnaires to respond to, no extra mile to go…

It’s a huge relief. Really, I don’t have to care about the manufacturer’s warranty, shipping my items back, or whatever…. I just give it back if something is not good for me.

This helps me make better decisions and shop more

If I’m not sure whether to go with one or the other color of an item, I just buy both, see how it fits in my flat and return the one I don’t like. Or sometimes I even keep both…

The fact of the matter is that a returns policy is a must!

I mean really, I still see shops where they write: “please shop carefully, no returns will be accepted”. I know where they are coming from, they don’t want the headache of the returns… but they in fact also don’t want the headache of quite a few extra customers.

If you’re running a startup (or any business for that matter), make refunds easy-sneazy for your customers. When I started selling Nozbe, I started with 30-day money back guarantee… and it worked really well for me… until I introduced a 60-day money back guarantee… and it worked even better - I get even fewer returns and every user that signs up for Nozbe knows that they have two full months to give us a try and if my app doesn’t deliver for any reason, their refund is just one email away. Simple and risk free.

What’s more important for you? Cheaper purchase price or the comfort of a quick return for refund? Have you returned anything lately and got your money quickly, or was it complicated?