Ebook Refund policy and Warranties
After reading the page on your website “Terms and Conditions”, I have some questions regarding refund policy and warranties. If a merchant is selling an ebook:
1) Is it necessary to have a refund policy for an ebook, given that there is no physical product to ship, and therefore there can be none of the problems associated with shipping physical products, such as damage or non-arrival?
2) Is a buyer entitled to a refund on an ebook just because they do not like it, after they receive it? [Bearing in mind that it is rather meaningless to ask a buyer to ‘return’ an ebook when they can easily keep a copy of the ebook on their computer even if they did ‘return’ the ebook by sending it back to the merchant as an email attachment].
3) Is it necessary to have a warranty policy for an ebook? If so, what is being warranted? That it is readable or is the content being warranted? Is it realistic to make a warranty about the content of an ebook when the assessment of the content of any book (in other words –
whether of not is considered to be a “good book”) is very subjective?
Hello Richard,
thanks for contacting us!
Let me answer your questions one by one.
1) Yes, it is required to have a refund policy for each product regardless of its type.
2) Theoretically a buyer can’t just buy a product and then ask quickly for a refund. However, in reality in most cases it is enough for a buyer to say that he/she is unsatisfied with the content of purchasen product
and they will be refunded. Please understand that we do not issue refunds ourselves. We leave a total control of refunds to merchants. However, a buyer can contact PayPal (if a transaction was made via PayPal) and ask for a refund. In this case PayPal will open a dispute case and both of you (the seller and the buyer) will be listened. But the decision about refund will be up to PayPal. Such refund policy (that a buyer can be refunded if he/she is unsatisfied with a product) is for encouraging people to buy products in the Internet. Let me assure you that quite a small part of buyers ask for refunds (and usually with a good reason).
3) The warranties (in other words refund policy) are mainly for making clear that if a buyer feels unsatisfied about the purchased product, then he/she can ask for a refund. In many cases, merchants state that buyers can ask for a refund within 15-30 days after a purchase. Actually, a lot of merchants use very visible “Ironclad garuantee”. Ask for refund if you don’t like my product. You lose nothing!” phrase just for encouraging customers to buy the product. That’s some kind of marketing technique.
I hope I explained the situation clearly enough. If you have more questions or need further explanations, just let me know!
Regards,
Vytis Vyskupaitis
Click2Sell.EU – Sell Products Online with a help of Affiliates!
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