How do I refund my customer's order?

In this article:

Refunding my customer's order

How to issue a refund through PayPal

How to issue a refund through Stripe

Good practices to prevent refund requests

Can customers still access their digital product after a refund?

How to handle refund disputes

How to restrict digital purchase access

Refunding my customer's order

As you accept all payments directly from your customers, you'll also be responsible for issuing any refunds to your customers. 

All refunds will need to be processed through your payment processor account, and this means that it's not possible for Sellfy support to assist any of your customers with a refund. If a customer were to inquire about a refund, we would recommend that they contact you, through your store contact form or if not available, through your store-linked social media accounts.

Sellfy does not require any specific rules regarding refunds for your store. You'll create your own policies. The one thing that we do recommend is that you make your refund policies clear to customers and have a contact method available for them.

Issuing refunds is simple to do through both of the available payment processors.

How to issue a refund through PayPal

If it's been 180 days or less, you can issue a refund by the following steps.

1. Go to Activity.
2. Click the transaction you want to refund and then click Refund this payment.
3. For 'Refund amount', enter the amount you want to refund, (you may have the option to refund a partial amount of the payment) and click Continue.
4. Review your information to make sure you entered the correct refund amount and click Issue Refund.

For more help, you can read here on PayPal's site.

How to issue a refund through Stripe

1. Find the charge to be refunded on the Payments overview page.
2. Click the ••• icon to the right of the charge and select Refund charge.
3. Enter the amount to be refunded. The default is a full refund. For a partial refund, enter a different amount to be refunded.
4. Select a reason for the refund. If you select Other, you must provide an explanatory note that is attached to the refund.
5. Click Refund.

For more help, you can read here on Stripe's site.

Good practices to prevent refund requests

Customers may request a refund if:

• They're not satisfied with their purchase
• They've misspelled their email address and so haven't received their email
• They're confused about how to properly use a digital download
• They can't find your contact information
• The item isn't shipping at the speed that they expected

We have a couple of recommendations that you can use to help ensure happy clients and prevent refund requests as much as possible. 

Make sure you have an excellent product presentation - buyers should be able to install/apply and work with the product without further assistance just by reading the description or any added instructions. Many sellers will provide a Page for help or FAQs, in addition to including instructional documents such as PDFs.

Providing a contact page, helpful purchase info, and/or refund information is recommended. Conversely, if you don't offer refunds to your customers, please make sure that they're aware of this when purchasing. Quick reply times for communication can also be beneficial for solving customer confusion.

Regardless of your efforts to prevent refund requests, some customers may still be unhappy with their purchase and will seek a refund. If you do not offer the customer a refund, please be aware that both PayPal and Stripe allow for some refunds or chargebacks, based on the information offered from the customer. These refund processes will be done through PayPal or Stripe, depending on which processed the payment.

Can customers still access their digital product after a refund?

This will depend on whether you've issued a full refund or a partial refund.

If you've issued a partial refund to a customer, then they will still be able to access their digital product for downloading or streaming.

But, if you've issued a full refund to a customer, then they will no longer be able to download or stream the digital product. The customer will instead see the following message.

How to handle refund disputes

For digital products, Sellfy provides you with access to order information that you can use as supporting evidence in Stripe or PayPal dispute cases.

For example, if the customer has attempted to download product files prior to requesting a refund, you will be able to verify this information yourself and use it as proof in a refund dispute. The details provided will include the date and time the customer has accessed the product files.

To access the status information of any particular order, you'll follow these steps:

1. Log in to your Sellfy account
2. Navigate to Orders and search the orders by email or product
3. Select the relevant order and scroll down to Activity log 
4. Take a screenshot of the Activity log and present it as evidence to support your position in a dispute

How to restrict digital purchase access 

If you have concerns about a disputed order or have an order with suspect customer behavior, you have a manual control that allows you to block the customer from accessing some or all of your digital products ordered. 

To restrict the customer's access, go to your Orders section and locate the order in question. Then, use the Quick Actions dropdown menu to choose the option to Restrict "All products" or select the products that should be restricted. See how this is done, below.