So the problem with 'money back guarantee' is that nobody learns anything in the process associated with that sales tactic. This works great for companies who have tons some product to shill on late night TV and need to lower the perceived risk of the consumer. So if you are selling GeneriClean on late night TV, you offer 'money back guarantee' to get people to try it, and if they really hate it, they get their money back and you keep focusing on selling the million gallons of GeneriClean that you have coming ashore on container ships from China.. and best of all, you just have to sell it at a price that can absorb the % of people who successfully get their refund.
In my world, our goal is 0% problems/issues/refunds, but the only way we get there is by learning from each other and improving the product as we go. I'm not shilling the million valve extensions on a container from China, I'm making and assembling them myself (with 2 employees) one at a time. So if I'm selling valve extenders which have worked well for the first 200 people and they don't work for you, then I need to start working through a fairly specific process to figure out why so that either we can improve our part, we can improve the information for consumers about our part, or we can isolate problematic combinations with other parts and try to address them, whether it be with our product or with the ill-mating product. So to me, 'Money back guarantee' means, 'nobody learns anything and nothing improves', and that doesn't work for me. In fact, what we offer, is more me putting my most valuable people on your problem for signifigant periods of time, pay shipping both ways, replace product at our cost, work with you personally, work with your mechanic or shop..all at no cost to you so that the problem can be SOLVED, not just band-aided by the revenue of additional sales to people who feel their purchase is less risky because they can get their money back.
So ultimately, what we offer our customers is that we will spend many times the purchase price of your product in our time, money and product in order to not only understand and solve the problem, but to make sure others don't have that same problem, and to make future products better both ours, and the mating products. However, our way does involve the participation of the consumer, and if our customer isn't interested in participating in that process, then it doesn't work for either of us.
So like I said initially, we make stuff that works, it works really well, but like anything designed or made by anybody, it cannot yet be perfect, and it can certainly be designed or made better. So if our stuff doesn't work for you, then we need to work with you to determine why, and we do what is needed to make it right both in the short term, and in the long term through improving future generations of the product.
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