If you as a guide have ever asked yourself, When should I hold my ground on my refund policy? or What should I do when a guest is demanding their money back? – then this video is for you!
For those seeking refund policy help, the honest answer is that the no matter what your guidelines are, you should always follow this golden rule: No matter what the reason, give them their refund. So the answer to the question: When should I give a refund on my tour? Is: Whenever a guest wants it!
What if they are at fault? Give them the refund. What if they are being a jerk about it? Give them the refund. What if in your heart of hearts, you fully believe you should not give this person a refund – give them a refund.
The reality is that a negative review (and believe me, these are the people who will take the time to review you) has the potential to do so much more damage in the long run. Let your pride take the hit, and turn that negative experience into something positive. A loss of $100, $300 or more in the short term will be worth it for your long-term success.
It’s really just that simple. Take a look at the negative reviews for tour guides on Trip Advisor and Yelp and you will quickly see that 40-50% of them could have been avoided just by giving a refund, or taking the customer’s side in a monetary dispute.
Trust me on this, in the digital age, and with our online reputations meaning more and more every year, refunds are not the place to dispute with your clients.
-Kelsey T
Finished Watching?
Let me know in the comments if you already have this refund policy? Do you have an alternate opinion? How do you communicate your policy to all of your staff and guiding teams?
Transcript:
Hi everyone, Kelsey from beabetterguide.com. Today we are talking refunds. I have got two stories to share and one rule when it comes to refunds.
First up, story…Last week I had to rent a car, and I did it from Budget Enterprises. I was considering not mentioning their name in this example, but they screwed up so bad that they deserve to be mentioned.
The problem was not with my reservation, but when we were at the checkout desk, next to us there was a man who was very upset. He was returning a car, I think an hour or two late, but they were charging him three or four hours late.
Whatever the reason was, there was some sort of miscommunication, misunderstanding between the booking, but this guy was livid.
I mean, he was screaming, yelling; we have all been in that situation where you just go like, “Oh God!” and you feel for that person behind the counter. Here is what was happening. The person behind the counter was not giving in.
They were saying, “Actually sir, this is our policy. It says here on the form you checked out the car at this time. That means that we need to charge this much.”
He was really sort of towing the line on the policy, but the man was extremely upset. He was saying, “No, no. I checked it out at this time, I was given an extension.”
Who knows what the actual circumstance was, but I was watching Budget just blow this situation. Honestly, this guy is now going to become a one-man anti-PR show, and he is going to take it on the road. He is the anti-Budget guy, probably for the rest of his life.
If you started thinking about that, this guy is going to tell… For one, never, ever, ever, ever, ever probably use Budget again. Which is fine, a loss of one customer.
But two, he will probably tell all of his friends and family, and any chance he can get, about how the people at Budget are crooks.
Thirdly, he might even get motivated and go online and start posting about his terrible experience. So that is why I am going to give you this golden rule for you to consider when it comes to refunds.
Good, here it is: If a client wants a refund on one of your tours or experiences, no matter what the reason, no matter how stupid, or even if they are a jerk, give it to them. I will repeat that again.
If a client of yours at any time wants a refund, no matter what the reason is, give them the refund. That’s the rule.
It is one of the hardest things to do as tour guide, or more a business operator I guess, especially if you are running your own tours, or an independent guide, to give refunds to somebody who is being a total jerk-wad. That’s basically what it boils down to.
It’s easy to give refunds to people when you are at fault. Say you screw something up, or for some reason the tour couldn’t happen like you sold it to them, then yeah, you can offer those refunds.
But I am talking especially about cases where the person is just an entitled jerk. It’s clearly their fault, you didn’t screw up, you sent them all the emails, all of your cancellation policies, all of your, whatever policy was on the website, and they didn’t read it.
Here is the thing, this is going to take a hit to your pride, but you have to wrap your head around the bottom line.
The bottom line is that those entitled jerk-wads probably, most definitely, have a Trip Advisor account. They may even have a Yelp account, and they may even be motivated to make your life pretty miserable.
They may not even be that vindictive. They will just go on and express their opinion of what happened publically which can then stay with you for the next five to ten years.
You don’t have to search far in the tourism and hospitality world to know how much those negative reviews can really affect your business.
Another thing you want to think about too is these aren’t necessarily just extreme situations. Say you find out someone has come on one of your tours and there is a misunderstanding, so something that maybe you charge extra for, they just thought was included in the tour.
Maybe it was an extra hour of the tour you can do this, but they had to pay more, but they were pretty disappointed and they said, “Oh. That’s the reason we picked you, because we thought that was included.”
That is a great example of a time when you should just give them that…Side with the client, right?
The customer is right; because that‘s going to prevent that three star, whatever that mediocre review too, because it’s going to be a moment to shine instead of a moment where they are like, “Mm, I went on this tour but it wasn’t really clear, and I had to pay more.
The guide was great, but I was a little disappointed in that communication” could be your review versus, “So-an-so was wonderful. I screwed up and didn’t know that I had to pay extra for that, and he gave it to me for free anyway. Highly recommend him.”
This one is about United. It’s got a nice hometown connection. I was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A musician travelling with his band, and he flew from Halifax to Chicago on United Airlines.
Basically, they broke his guitar. He had a nice Taylor guitar, the band was travelling, and he said it was their fault. It was in a hard case.
So he went back and forth with them. Sure enough, they came back and said, “We are just not liable for your instruments. You signed the waiver. When you buy the ticket you agree to our terms.” He says, “Alright, fine.
If you are not going to replace my guitar I am going to write three songs about how terrible your airline is, and then I am going to put them out on the internet.”
His first song was called “United Breaks Guitars”. It was all about, basically, his frustrations with the airline and how poorly they managed him as a customer. It went viral. Sure enough, five million, six million views. Suddenly he is on CNN.
He is being picked up by all the major newscasters across North America, talking about his terrible experience with “United Breaks Guitars.”
Sure enough, as soon as that video goes viral the upper management at United comes to him and says, “Oh look, we are really sorry. We want to replace the guitar. Here is the money for it.”
He says, “No, it’s actually too late for that.” He publically said, “Here’s the charity where I would like you to donate that money. I am going to go work on my other two songs.”
In the comments below let me know what you think. Do you have this kind of refund policy? More importantly, how do you communicate it down, say if you are managing guides?
You have got to make sure that all of your guides know that policy. I am interested to hear how you do it. Thanks so much for being here.
