How To Lose Future Clients and Possible Current Ones Too…

I read a news article in the Sydney Morning Herald (www.smh.com.au) about a fitness organisation going to the courts to recover a A$200.00 cancellation fee from a member who had to cancel her membership because she was ill. I could not believe my eyes. Here is a multi-million dollar company going at great lengths to recover a paltry amount of A$200.00 (as compared to their overall annual earnings).

This company missed a very good opportunity present itself as an organisation that cares or has compassion for its members. An opportunity to show that their members are precious to them and they are willing to accomodate sensible requests. On the other hand, what they have shown is a cold, ruthless behaviour that their membership contract/rules should be enforced at all costs without regard to their members. For them what is important is the bottom line, of returning value to their investors/shareholders.

It sure gives the impression that their members are seen as ‘cash cows’ who are expected to regularly fork over some of their hard earned cash in exchange for some time in their gyms. I am sure a lot of the people who go to their gyms go there because they want to and do not mind paying. But if I was a member this incident will surely get me thinking along the lines of what if something happens to me and I am not able to pay the monthly dues or I have to quit becaues of some grave personal reason? How many of their current members are now looking closely at their membership contract? I’m sure there are a few.

I was talking about this incident with my wife and we both arrived at the same scenario about someone who is thinking of joining this gym and reads the article. What message is the gym sending across to this prospective member? Instead of being 100% sure there will be some doubts forming in his/her mind.

In 9 out of 10 cases (unless the client is extremely unreasonable) I think it is better to give the benefit of the doubt to the client. A business exists because of its clients not the other way around. Businesses fail because they usually do not make enough sales to make its existence viable. As it has been written (because it is true) it is more difficult to get a new client than retain an existing one.

For example, in my time tracking application, VeriTime Time Tracker, I have a 30-day unconditional money back guarantee. Throughout these years, I’ve had only one request for a refund and this was the result of a wrong purchase. I refunded the exact amount, absorbing the administration cost of my payment processor. I even told buyer to keep the software. Why? Because requests from software vendors to uninstall the product after they have requested for a refund do not really work. For one thing, the software vendor does not have a foolproof way of determining whether or not the buyer really uninstalled the application. Generally, the request will be heeded but the cynic in me thinks that there are some who do not.

Now that I’ve gotten this thing out of my system I can go back to coding :).