Forum Moderators: buckworks
On b2b sites, I charge 25% - I say in my terms that we are a commercial site and that we expect our buyers (businesses) to know what they are buying.....
We go zero, returns are less than 2%.
zero is best - people are more willing to buy if you promise them a 100% refund if they change their minds.
you need to rethink your charges. if items are say $25.00, then a 15% returns charge would be $3.75. that would deter me from making a purchase from you. it would cost me a minimum of $3.75 just to get a real look at the product. i could probably get a real look at the same product completely free from another site. even if they sell it for $30.00, it's still worth buying at the higher price because it won't cost me a penny if i want to return it.
if your returns run at 1% and your items are $25.00 then you have a cost of $3.75 for every 100 items. that is less than $0.04 per product. all you gotta do is add $0.04 to every product. every 100 sales will give you an extra $4.00 to cover the returns charge on the 1 product that is returned.
if returns run at 2%, you need to add $0.08 to every product. buyers won't notice that at all.
if returns run at 3% or more, you may need to rethink your sales pitch - you could be misleading people, probably unintentionally.
Thanks. Maybe I'll mark some of the products up and remove add a full refund policy. It is still difficult when you sell vitamins and have such a small margin.
You pack the order$
You get packing material$
You get a box$
You bill the order$$$
You get charged for the return shipping$$$$
You have someone credit the person's account back$
You eat the cost of the FULLY used product$
All for some vitamins.
Still, I completely agree with the idea of zero. Even zero shipping if you can work it in. It all helps the total sales and makes for a very strong perception.
My best product sells for $23.98. Again, this is standard, except for a few bottom feeders and we pay $19.18 for it. NO MARGINS AT ALL.
