Refund Policy

Last updated: April 18, 2023

I no longer offer automatic refund rights on my eBooks.

I stand behind my information products and your satisfaction with them is, and always has been, very important to me.

However, because my products are digital goods delivered via internet download and are therefore 'unreturnable', and because they contain valuable knowledge and information which you can't 'give back', I no longer offer automatic refund rights to ebook purchasers.

Downloads are closely monitored and tracked. If you change your mind about a purchase before you have downloaded the product, I will happily issue a refund upon request.

Refund requests made after you've downloaded the product are not granted except in special circumstances, subject to my sole discretion.

Any refund request must be made within thirty (30) days of your original purchase.

 


Why I Changed My Refund Policy:

no guarantee imageFor quite a few years I used Clickbank to process payments and handle product delivery for my ebooks. It's simple, fast and easy to use for fairly non-tech people like me (like I was then anyway!)

Clickbank has a default "60 Day Money Back Guarantee" which automatically applies to every product in their enormous database. Vendors have no say in the matter, it's all totally automated and therefore it's also wide open to abuse.

If you doubt this, why not drop by their website and order any product that tickles your fancy, or just grab the most 'expensive' product you find, don't worry about the 'price' because it won't cost you a penny! Just download your goodies, then at some point in the next 60 days click to get an automatic refund and keep the product forever. Tadaa!

As if by magic, you get the goods for bugger all. There's some great cat training videos in there, marketing guides, "How To" manuals for getting rid of piles, flower arranging tutorials, DIY guides, you name it, they've got it all! Well, except for my ebooks, as of today. Do I sound a bit peeved? You got it in one!

Don't get me wrong, I am not peed off at Clickbank because of what the 'serial refunders' do. Clickbank offer a reliable and efficient service which is attractive to online vendors mainly for the powerful affiliate program they have where you can get lots of people to go out and sell your product on a commission basis (which I never wanted, nor used).

I chose to sign up so it's my own doing, and I can of course choose to leave, it's a free market and all that. I am finally doing exactly that and voting with my feet to keep some control over my products and to avoid the thieving toe-rags who must hang around every street corner in the Clickbank 'Marketplace' all day and night, presumably with a pit bull in one hand and a joint in the other.

Using it was fine to begin with, but it gradually became intolerable as time went on and as I produced more ebooks with more in-depth and valuable knowledge inside. I was always more than happy to give refunds willy nilly and I gave out many of them early on, admittedly concerned at first as I took each one quite personally, at least I did until I woke up. Why would someone in Islamabad or Lagos be that interested in Betfair trading anyway, so I wondered. I started to get more curious when people were requesting a refund without having read a single page of their ebook. I had some people actually stating their reason (which they don't have to give) as 'It was just too long' or 'I want just bullet point, too much work to read this all' (real quote!)

To spend thousands of hours which I have, writing some of the most detailed and high quality trading guides on the web (at least my readers say so!), only to watch impotently as people just grab their cash back, smile, and pocket the product, especially having given their 'reasons' as my 'mistake' in over-delivering on the information I gave them, that took the biscuit and it was the last straw, sounding the death-knell for any future involvement with Clickbank at least as far as selling my ebooks goes. Of course I learned I was naive in believing some of the 'reasons' given by many of these refund-junkies, they just scribble something down to make it look like they had one. Funnily enough, there's no drop down menu option for "I just wanted it for free". Shocking I know!

Fraud / Copyright Theft

To make matters much worse, I found that these scoundrel purchasers were then selling my products via their own damn websites, for half the price, and just duplicating the file. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose. Clickbank makes so much of this fraud possible/easy to do, but thankfully those old sites have gone now. (Genuine threats of legal action, even when they're 'hiding' in Singapore, tends to scare these little critters off, funny that.)

men sucking lemonBy the time I published my last and most valuable ebook on pre-race trading I was far beyond the point of tolerating this situation any longer. This book nearly broke me, it took months and months of mind-numbing work and the thought of someone getting a copy of it for sweet Fanny Adams, well let's just say I would rather chew on a lemon!

I therefore decided to take this difficult and rather regrettable decision to offer NO REFUND RIGHTS on my products any longer. Bear in mind, the fact I don't give a "right" to a refund doesn't actually mean I would never provide one. In certain circumstances, where I could be sure someone was genuine, I would still happily give one if asked. Working that out isn't as tricky as it might sound either.

If you buy a product and have a genuine reason why you think it's reasonable to request a refund, please let me know. All I will say is this: If you are a thieving toe-rag and you think this paragraph gives you a way to get my products for nothing, you can think again. That party's over, and I bought all the beer.

The Law on Digital Products

Just for clarity I should point out that eBooks and other digital downloads (software, music etc) are given their own classification in the Consumer Contracts Regulations and the Consumer Rights Act. They are deemed neither as 'goods' nor as 'services', rendering them exempt from normal refund rights, and also exempt from the 14 day "cooling off period" offered for online transactions (other than digital downloads). This is for two very good reasons:

1. They can be easily copied within minutes of purchase

2. There is no possible way to "return" the product, the customer will own it forever once downloaded.

In Conclusion

I wish it was a perfect world but it isn't. I may lose sales by making this decision, but that has never really concerned me as sales was never the reason for starting this site. A sale or two a week really does very little for me financially anyway, and I would rather lose sales than willingly enable people to steal my (extremely) hard work and perhaps more importantly, cause me stress which I am under orders to reduce in any way I can!

Having said all that, if any genuine person is reading this and is deterred from purchasing, please bear in mind that I am open to any questions you may wish to ask prior to purchase, if that will allay any concerns you may have or ensure it's the right product for you before you commit. There are plenty of genuine testimonials from readers of my products which you can read. That should hopefully assure you that I am not a fly-by-night merchant who produces junk material (been doing this over a decade).

Also you can contact me to ask about particular products if you want, include some information about yourself and where you are in your trading career. I will give you an honest opinion on whether I think a product will help you or not, and you won't get any BS from me I can assure you. I have often advised people against buying one of my products due to feeling that it won't help them for any number of reasons.

So if you're interested in a product but put off by the lack of an automatic right to a refund, let me know and we can discuss it or maybe find a solution which we are both happy with and which puts your mind at ease. For instance I could send some screenshots of various pages to give you a good idea of the type of content, the writing style, the quality of explanations and so on.

Thanks for reading, this was the first page I really did not enjoy writing, but 'needs must' I am afraid.

 

 


 

Subscribe for free to get email updates of newly published content and strategies. 

Share this page...