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Lets say you buy something then later want a refund. What should you get back?
1205 sats \ 13 comments \ @carter 11 Apr AskSN
I was in a conversation with some people who have an online business and they were talking about how they lost money on a refund.
They mention that what matters is what you denominate the price of the items in. They price everything in USD and say that what you get back is the USD value not the value of the currency you paid with.
Quoting the person:
transactions in US dollar values only. We do that, even though we take BTC. I'm not refunding a huge jump in crypto price over a week.
But from a customer perspective that seems wrong. I handed you a 10$ bill shouldn't I get the same back?
It seems like it's up to the merchant to decide what currency they want to transact in and everything else is converted to that when you pay. Therefore when you get a refund you are refunded the value of the merchants preferred currency not what you paid in
This is opening up a bunch of questions for me in a similar way to my argument here #940782 how should I price my house in sats? I think the only "real" bitcoin price would be if I could buy the house with no conversions. Should merchants list different prices based on their subjective trust of currencies they will accept? How do conversion rates play into the move from fiat to BTC?
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167 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 11 Apr
I don't think there's a morally right or wrong answer. It's just up to the buyer and seller to understand and agree to the terms.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @carter OP 11 Apr
Im making a couple assumptions.
  1. You should get back the same type of currency you originally paid with
  2. If you want a refund you should get back your original value
I think if you are ok with violating these then the answer becomes easy. I think time plays a big factor too but I guess i'm wondering what a reasonable customer can expect... will we honor a full refund for 5 min, a day, a week?
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134 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 11 Apr
Plenty of companies already do things like this. For some products and some time periods businesses will over store credit vs. money. Private companies write refund polices and when you buy from them you are agreeing to the terms. If people stop patronizing them due to this the company is incentivized to adjust their policy. If consumers abuse a refund policy the seller is incentivized to change their police again.
If companies do not follow their legal refund polices customers will sue them or expose this to the public. This happens from time to time and usually is settled privately through arbitration (private law). If a company abuses their customers these days they will get lit up online and suffer very quickly. We've seen this many times.
Its honestly funny to me when people think we have to have the state regulating everything as it does. Freedom is much better, much faster, and much more profitable to all parties.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 11 Apr
Correct answer.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 11 Apr
Refund policies are contractual terms, so whatever is agreed to is the right answer.
I think a twist on your question, where we're talking about breached contracts, is more interesting. If you pay for a service that never gets rendered and the company is ordered to pay you back and this wasn't explicitly covered in the initial contract, what are you owed back?
In this case, I would generally agree that they should return whatever you paid with, because that's the transaction that became voided.
It would open a huge can of worms if they could payback with their own selection of media of exchange.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @LibertasBR 11 Apr
In this case, I understand there's a failure between the merchant and the buyer in not anticipating the adjustments that currencies undergo during a transaction. It would be enough for them to clearly state that the value is the value in currency X at the time of purchase, and that the same value applies to refunds.
Now, regarding Bitcoin, what was said in that message comes from someone deeply entrenched in the fiat mindset. Calling Bitcoin a speculative financial asset is proof that they don’t know what they’re talking about—either because they haven’t done their research or because they think all kinds of crypto shitcoins and their scams apply to Bitcoin, when that couldn't be further from the truth.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Longtermwizard 12h
Free market
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Dkryptoenth 20h
Whichever way it goes you'll get your money back although some losses might be incurred, just like you did, which invariably makes crypto a better means of payment than fiat.
Cos there's no way you'll be incurring a charge of $200 over a €1844 transaction.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @longlifelearner20 12 Apr
it is not about the refund as much it gets to the buyer and the other seller utual agreement
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 11 Apr
A cheeky buyer might see the price of bitcoin has gone up in a short period of time and want to get those sats back.
If the product was paid for in sats I think they should be able to get back around 70%.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @carter OP 12 Apr
if that is the policy i the sign i think that's fair... i also said minus the exchange rates plus some set restocking fee
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 11 Apr
What about no refund policies?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @carter OP 11 Apr
I think people expect to be able to get refunds and its reasonable for the business to try and comply with refund requests. If its cash there is no cost to returning the bill so its like it never happened. That is harder to say when you did some conversion to make the sale. People seem to understand they are refunded minus merchant processing fees even if they don't like it. I think same would be true for paying with Bitcoin and Lightning if the price hasn't moved and it cost me a penny to undo then that isn't a problem. If the price has moved I'm not sure i'm still obligated to give you a full refund because to me the conditions that the deal was done under have changed. Like you may want the refund just because you have buyers remorse now that the crypto is worth more and I don't want to honor that while if you just got a wrong size im more likely to be sympathetic
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