This weekend was bit frustrating for me. I spent way too much time setting up a new niche site using a new premium WordPress theme that eventually I abandoned and re-built using a free theme. The most frustrating part was the fact I spent so much time and some decent money for the premium theme AND I wasn’t able to get a refund.
You see, early last week I had someone recommend to me a new premium theme that was designed to allow webmasters to build custom affiliate websites faster. I’m all for anything that helps me to build my sites faster so I checked it out and it looked like it was pretty cool. I decided to spring for the license, which was well over $100 and downloaded it.
After getting it installed, I began configuring the super cool affiliate theme and was real excited to get my new niche site up and running in record time. I had the content I just needed to get the site up. Needless to say I spent several days, and hours each day fiddling with the darn thing. Eventually I really felt like this new theme wasn’t for me.
I’m a fairly technical guy and have no trouble diving into the html, css, or the php within a theme or WordPress itself in order to get the site to layout, function, and appear the way I want it to. I guess that may be MY problem. With this super fast configuration theme I was bound by the theme itself to place page elements in pre-defined locations, use specific banner sizes, page widths etc. Needless to say it wasn’t saving me any time at all!
I quickly shot an email off to the creator asking very politely for a refund. I figured hey this is IM and everyone offers a refund, or so I thought. I guess I’m spoiled by the onslaught of offers I see everyday offering an IRONCLAD Guarantee and such. Because I was a bit shocked to see that the creator was not going to refund my money.
Honestly I can totally understand the authors point of view as there is no way for him to know that I will never use the product again or to “return” the product. He would just have to trust me.
So here I am again, stuck with a product that I’m never going to use and I’ve wasted another $100+ bucks on hype and hyperbole.
Am I just spoiled with all the current guarantees and refunds? Should the creator take the loss and give refunds? Should I just accept it for what it is and deal with it? We all loose money in this business, many folks hundreds more than my mere $100.
What are your thoughts? What are your horror stories of lost money on IM products, software, and “SECRETS to overnight success”? Leave a comment and let me know. Misery loves company and I’d love to hear your story!
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Well, your fiancee thinks you need to listen to HER and stop going off half-cocked and wasting time and money.
Of course we know that will never happen and I love you anyway. lol.
nice post
You know what, you are lucky you lost only $100. My friends (a couple) lost a lot more money than that. One time they lost about $5,000 on an IM coaching program which they couldn’t get refunded and the funny thing is that they knew IM more than the coach themselves. They thought that with $5,000, the marketer was gonna be the one to coach them, instead the marketer just outsourced it to someone who didn’t know much. But the good thing about that is they (my friends) just charged it to experience. After all, it’s just money. The lessons you learn from your experience is more important because it will make you a wiser person.