Everyone knows that I sell digital products. Here is a tale of 2 customers, who both bought stuff from me yesterday…

Customer 1

Bought two products for a total of $105. 1 sale at $25, 1 sale at $80. For some reason, Paypal bombed out on the $80 sale and did not send the required IPN (signal) to my server to let the download script know that product is paid for…

Hence, the customer was unable to download the $80 product.

Customer 2

Bought 1 product for a total of $15. Everyting went smoothly until the customer tried to download the eBook…here is the email I received from him at 18:43;

I just tried to download the e-book, AFTER PAYING FOR IT!!! and received a message that I "exceeded the allowable numbers of download attempts, (5)" when I only tried to download the e-book ONCE!!!! Send me a - real working link - or refund my money!

Yeah, that's fair enough. He deserves to have his money back, or a working link. Obviously I am not online 24 hours per day, so when things go wrong (whether by user error, or by my error, or by script error), it might take a while to get sorted out.

Here's the next email received from the same customer at 20:10;

Nice … well I can get to the actual download link … but every time I left click the link I get sent back to the log in page … Why don't you just send me the FN e-book via e-mail

I never take kindly to receiving such emails - particularly when this is a case of User Error - I make it plainly obvious what must be done in order to download a link - if people can't be bothered to read 3 lines of instructions, then things will sometimes go wrong.

If a person cannot understand that sometimes things DO go wrong, and that a vendor will usually do their best to iron out problems - then I don't want that customer as a customer. I sent him a refund.

Back to Customer 1

This customer had already been waiting for a couple of hours longer than the guy I refunded - and yet had not complained or made a fuss. I made his $80 link active, apologised to him and added his name onto my "subscribers list" for a month as my way of saying sorry for the inconvenience.

Conclusion

Sometimes things go wrong - that's patently obvious, it's how you react as both a customer and vendor that determines the next steps…

As a customer, acting in a positive manner will usually bring better results than childish feet-stamping.

As a vendor, it's important to determine the type of customer you are dealing with and react appopriately - whether by refund, apology, extra goodies or whatever…

I suspect that many product sellers would have been apologetic towards Customer 2 - not me - I learned many moons ago that if a potential client (or customer) is problematic before they even get their hands on your product, it's more than likely that the customer will be problematic throught his whole tenure as a customer. No thanks!