Since I wrote this I started a company and learned one more reason to offer a flexible refund policy: Chargebacks.
Chargebacks are the world’s biggest pain in the butt for retailers. You are guilty until proven innocent, you pay high fees, and it costs hours of your time (and months overall) to resolve or fight.
Technically, if you deliver your product correctly and clearly state your no refund policy, you would win every chargeback dispute.
That doesn’t prevent your customers from opening a chargeback case, and that doesn’t prevent your payment processor from charging you a fee, requiring pages of evidence to overturn it, and taking funds out of your account for months at a time. Even if you win a high percentage of chargebacks, receive enough of them and your payment processor will shut you down.
It’s time-saving, money-saving, and better in the long-run to just offer a fair refund process (Refunds take about 1 minute on Stripe. Chargebacks take 5–10+ hours each). Not to mention you don’t create enemies.
