Refunds for Transformation?

4 min readJul 18, 2019

Do you offer refunds for transformation, healing coaching, coaching programs, training, etc? Why? When? How?

Someone in my network shared her challenges with refunds. She was about to change her refund policy because a recent client was the first in years to ask for a refund! The program had been serving thousands for years without a refund request.

Clearly, the client is not stepping up, right?

When is it a failure of the system, a failure of the client, or a failure of the combination?

When is it not a failure but something else?

So I’m curious — when should there be refunds for transformation? And when should there not be?

I have no hard and fast answer, but I do have some considerations and I’d love to know yours.

🔥💀 Refunds & Trader Joe’s

I love that I can return anything to Trader Joe’s. No matter the reasons it doesn’t work for me, they’ll take it back, often without a receipt, even if opened.

I’ve also thrown food out :( because I bought it because I ‘needed it’ or ten other reasons, but didn’t get around to using it.

With certain offerings… something like a 30–90-day refund policy or pro-rated policy is great for SOME things.

🔥💀 Refunds When They’re Not Ready

People are ready for certain things at different times than they think they are. Grades in school. Belts in martial arts. Some people can dive in. Others can’t be rushed.

I’ve seen people sign up for 10K+ programs they won’t be ready for 1–10 years!

So vetting people precisely, specifically, is very important. I don’t think a lot of online sales do this very well.

For all the failures of university education, consider the vetting of college admissions for 4 years of 40K+. People do that because they’re betting an entire future on it. What should be done for 6–12 months and 10–100K?