ran two refund approaches back to back on the same offer. first, a no questions asked refund button right in the account. second, a refund by email request with a short reason form. the no questions one had way more refunds, some obviously abusing it, rebuy and refund the same content. the email one had far fewer refunds and barely any more complaints. im now fairly convinced the frictionless refund just invites abuse and a tiny bit of friction filters the cheaters without hurting real customers. anyone got the opposite result?
A little friction wins the vast majority of the time in my experience. The frictionless refund is what people reach for because they think it signals confidence, but to the abusers it mostly signals free trial. A genuinely unhappy customer will spend thirty seconds on a reason form, the serial refunder is the one who wants it to be one click with no trace.
I will give you the opposite, but with a caveat. Friction on the refund never reduced my abuse much, the determined chargeback crowd just goes to their bank instead, which costs you more than the refund would have. What actually moved it was blocking the rebuy after a refund, so they cant run the refund then buy again loop. It is not the friction, it is closing the loop they exploit. Worth testing separately.
friction over frictionless basically always, but dont sleep on which window you tested in. you ran the open refund first and the gated one second, so if the second period had different traffic or a promo running, part of the drop might be the audience not the policy. make sure the two windows were genuinely comparable before you lock the policy in.
fair point on comparability dana, both ran a full month each on the same offer and traffic source so i think its clean, but ill rerun the open version briefly after to confirm the abuse comes back and it wasnt just a quiet month. and ill add pushordies rebuy block either way, that one seems basically free.
Worth noting the higher refund rate on the frictionless version was not all abuse, some of it was real customers refunding more easily, which is not automatically bad for a repeat business. What you measured is that a reason form filters abusers more than it deters genuine refunds, which is a real finding you can act on. Just dont assume every refund you prevented was a cheater, some was goodwill you traded away, so watch repeat purchase rate not only the refund number.