Refunds are always a tricky thing. Too many people abusing the system and you will never generate a profit. Too strict with your refunds and everyone will be too scared to use you, because you obviously refuse to give them their money back should something happen. This can be a touchy subject. Here are our thoughts on this.

How many times have you signed up for a Video Professor disc? One of their free discs to teach you word(you figure its free and your grandmother can probably use it). Or how about canceling an AOL account?

Look at the dislike out there, one google search of Video Professor yeilds hundreds of un-happy pages about the service.

The process of just canceling(let alone trying to obtain a refund) is horrendous! Everytime I have ever called one of those places I always ended up getting a refund, after a agravating 1 hr of waiting or answering meaningless questions they finally allow me to get my money back. Now not only do they not have my money, but you can be sure that I will never recommend them to anyone I know!

At Powerhost we have decided to ‘do things right’ from the start. You as the customer know if you make enough noise we WILL refund your money to you eventually, we as a merchant know deep down we will as well, so whats the point of going through the hoops to do it?

We have had to refund some money. Sometimes we have had customers with no explanation for wanting to leave, and that is fine! Sometimes we have screwed up and they want to leave, which is fine too. Most of the time there are some sort of other circumstances at play(site closes, or costs too much, etc.), usually we work a bit harder to make a compromise and try to help them out. But in almost every conceivable situation, we will always eventually give them a full refund for most of our services, we figure if you leave us on happy terms we are more likely to see you again.

And its true. About 50% of people who have left us and requested refunds and happily received them have done one of the following:

• Turned around and signed back up with the same or a new domain
• Thanked us and written a good review about us on a forum or website
• Referred someone new to our site

So why deal with the hassle of refusing to refund money, then turning around and refunding it anyways, when you can do the right thing and make your (non)customer happy. It might cost you money in the short run, but will save you money in the long run.