Had an interesting situation occur during our black friday sale today I thought I’d share. My e-commerce stores return policy is you can return for any reason within 30 days of purchase. We also had our Black Friday sale today which had a pretty substantial discount on certain products. Some of my more conniving customers realized that they could request a return / price adjustment for their item they purchased up to 30 days ago as my return policy states they have 30 days to return the item.
I’m of the mindset I should just take the L on this. Based on the rules I set they are allowed to do this. And customer service / public perception is important. I find the situation both annoying and amusing. I can’t blame them for doing this but I do think there’s something to be learned here. Part of me wants to implement some kind of restocking fee in the future, but also people expect returns to be free these days.
As i’m curious, what would others do in this situation? Suck it up? Try to weasel out of the obligation? How would you craft a return policy in the future to avoid this kind of thing?
I’ve honestly never had this happen but I am cautious about when I run sales so timing doesn’t overlap.
How many customers is it? Hopefully just one or two and you can take the L and move on? If they are a repeat customer DEFINITELY take the L. Do them a solid and they’ll be back again.
It depends upon your business and product. If I’m selling commodity goods, your approach is understandable. For my product and demo, I have to be a hard ass. Product is limited and highly desirable. I can pretty much pick and choose who I sell it to.
Fair enough! Given your product type it makes sense people would come back and try to get the discount.
I think i’m at 6 or 7 out of about 100 sales. Analysis of if they’d be a return customer would be a worthwhile part of how I should handle the situation conversation.