Refunds and Reviews: When to Give a Discount

I often get asked about giving refunds to avoid bad reviews.

1. Learn from the class and improve it.
2. Don’t give a refund if you did exactly what was stated in your course description.

When I think about teaching online as a business, I try to think of myself as the consumer of the service/product.

I consume services and products daily.  When I price my classes, I consider what I would and wouldn’t be willing to pay for.

I set the price of my classes based on the amount of working I am completing from teaching the course.  I see a lot of teachers offering $1 classes or free classes in exchange for reviews.  All of this leads to clients being able to take advantage of them and other teachers.

Clients(the parents paying for the class) expect continued discounted classes, they expect free make up classes, and they even demand that transfers are made when they missed the class.  Not to say this is the case for all parents signing up for discounted classes, but there is a continuing theme of this happening.  Does this mean teachers shouldn’t offer discounted prices?  I don’t think discounts should be avoided, but they should be limited.

Think about it like this:

You own a movie theater.  You offer discounts on the first Tuesday of the month.  A customer would not come in and demand that you let them watch the movie for the discounted price on the second Tuesday of the month as that is not the policy.

 

The next scenario, a family purchases tickets for Wednesday.  They forgot and come back on Friday expecting to watch the movie that they missed.  It doesn’t work that way.  When a family signs up for a class, they are potentially taking the seat of a person that would have paid and attended.  The expectation that they should be able to now take a seat in a new session (which someone else could have paid for and attended) is not fair to the person providing the service.

I use this example when I think about providing transfers or refunds.  I very rarely do either as my classes are listed months in advance.  Now, all situations are not the same.  Right now, I have parents that enrolled in classes back in February requesting to transfer to summer sessions because their child’s school has opened back up.  My transfer policy is the same as my refund policy.  If a parent reaches out and requests a reasonable transfer (the class hasn’t started yet or there is a family emergency), I will consider it.  However, all my classes are recorded for instances when a participant misses a class or wants to review the material.  The will still have access to the class material and recording.

 

What about reviews?

If you are giving discounts or refunds because you’re worried about getting a bad review, that’s going to put you back in a place to be taken advantage of.  Everyone is not going to like your class.  I have a class that gets 5-star reviews (4.96 rate), and one day, I got a 3-star review.  The parent was upset that I didn’t refund the class her child missed.  Sometimes, there will be other reasons.  They may not enjoy your teaching style, maybe they wanted more engagement or interaction between learners, you can always reach out and ask for feedback, but that does not require to not be paid for your time.

 

When to give a discount?

That is completely up for you to decide.  If I have a technical error or have to reschedule, I am absolutely giving a full refund.  I will even offer a discount for the next class or the same class if the prefer to reschedule.

While I do offer discounted classes, it is only for classes I want to offer at discounted prices.  If a parent cannot afford the longer courses, I have one-time classes available.  I have classes listed below my average hourly rate too.  I currently offer a 15% off discount for a Part II session, but its only for those that participated in Part I.

 

When transitioning to teaching online, remember to think about yourself as a business.  This is hard for people that have been conditioned to think they should be underpaid and overworked because they’re educators.

 

If you want to offer free and discounted classes, and that works for you, go for it.

 

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Next week: Pre-recorded Classes

Here’s a preview of an interview I did with Entreeducator!