EP 382: Context Clues: What makes for a fair refund policy?

Does your refund policy help you make sales... or do right by your customers?

Show Notes

No one likes being asked for a refund. In fact, I find the thought of it stomach-churning. And when what’s being refunded is the product of your time, experience, and expertise… it’s tempting to put every obstacle you can think of between a customer and a refund. In this episode, I’ll take you on a journey from the 17th century all the way through the modern era of online business refund policies to answer the question: What makes for a fair refund policy?

Footnotes:

• About Josiah Wedgwood
• “Josiah Wedgwood: An Eighteenth-Century Entrepreneur in Salesmanship and Marketing Techniques” by Neil McKendrick
• “Beyond The Pottery: The Creative Giant, Josiah Wedgwood” on YouTube
• “They Broke It” by Judith Flanders
• “What a Hundred-Year-Old Department Store Can Tell Us About the Overlap of Retail, Religion and Politics” by Tobias Carroll
• “Many (Un)happy Returns? The Changing Nature of Retail Product Returns and Future Research Directions” Journal of Retailing
• Online Outlier & Regina Anaejionu
• More on “caveat emptor” (the buyer beware)
• “Is the customer always right?” The Merck Report, June 1915
• “Is the customer the enemy?” by Chris MacDonald
• “The Customer As Enemy” by Michael Schrage
• Kaye Publicity & Dana Kaye

 
 
 
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Work is central to the human experience. It helps us shape our identities, care for those we love, and contribute to our communities. Work can be a source of power and a catalyst for change. Unfortunately, that's not how most of us experience work—even those who work for themselves. Our labor and creative spirit are used to enrich others and maintain the status quo. It's time for an intervention. What Works is a show about rethinking work, business, and leadership for the 21st-century economy. Host Tara McMullin covers money, management, culture, media, philosophy, and more to figure out what's working (and what's not) today. Tara offers a distinctly interdisciplinary approach to deep-dive analysis of how we work and how work shapes us.