Buyer's Remorse

How many of you deal with buyer's remorse, and how exactly do you deal with it? At my studio, we have customer's sign at least 2 seperate contracts stating that there are no refunds, and no changes can be made to an order after it has been placed. Of course, customer's just glance over this, and then throw a fit when we won't let them change their order.

We definitely sell our customers. We're not pushy or misleading, but we do have trained sales people who try to get customers to buy a lot of pictures. Recently, as our volume has gone up, we've had more people who come back the next day and want to change their order, or get their money back.

This is definitely a no win situation for us. They signed off on the order, but if we argue with them, it creates bad blood. On the other hand, I hate the idea of our profit walking back out the door 12 hours later. We had one guy today, who spent 4 hours in our studio with his family, and ordered about $900 in pictures. He signed everything, paid in full with his credit card. This morning, he calls demanding that the entire order be cancelled, he doesn't want any pictures whatsoever. So, not only is this $900 in sales out the window, but 4 hours of my and my employee's time wasted.

How do you handle these situations?

The headaches are not worth the money.

Our studio has our prices printed in a nice full color brochure. This is given to the customer when they pick up their proofs. When they return their proofs, we ask them if they would like to place an order. If they do, Fine. If they don't, Fine. We don't pressure any of our customers into buying pictures. Our largest package for portraits is $495.00 although sometimes customers will order more- never pressured.

Russ Jennings said:

How many of you deal with buyer's remorse, and how exactly do you
deal with it? At my studio, we have customer's sign at least 2
seperate contracts stating that there are no refunds, and no
changes can be made to an order after it has been placed. Of
course, customer's just glance over this, and then throw a fit when
we won't let them change their order.

We definitely sell our customers. We're not pushy or misleading,
but we do have trained sales people who try to get customers to buy
a lot of pictures. Recently, as our volume has gone up, we've had
more people who come back the next day and want to change their
order, or get their money back.

This is definitely a no win situation for us. They signed off on
the order, but if we argue with them, it creates bad blood. On the
other hand, I hate the idea of our profit walking back out the door
12 hours later. We had one guy today, who spent 4 hours in our
studio with his family, and ordered about $900 in pictures. He
signed everything, paid in full with his credit card. This
morning, he calls demanding that the entire order be cancelled, he
doesn't want any pictures whatsoever. So, not only is this $900 in
sales out the window, but 4 hours of my and my employee's time
wasted.

How do you handle these situations?

Click to expand...

--
http://www.mikegoebel.com

Mike Goebel said:

The headaches are not worth the money.
Our studio has our prices printed in a nice full color brochure.
This is given to the customer when they pick up their proofs. When
they return their proofs, we ask them if they would like to place
an order. If they do, Fine. If they don't, Fine. We don't
pressure any of our customers into buying pictures. Our largest
package for portraits is $495.00 although sometimes customers will
order more- never pressured.

Click to expand...

This is AFTER they order the pictures. Our customers view video proofs right after the photo session, and a salesperson sits down and helps them pick out a package. They go thru the pictures, pick out what they want, we tell them the price, show them a few other options, etc etc. Finally, they decide on what they want to order, sign the order, and pay for it.

If someone doesn't want to order anything, they just pay the session fee and that's that. But AFTER the order has been made, we consider it rather permanent; etched in stone if you will. How do you deal with people who've already ordered and paid for the pictures, and then change their mind? There's nothing wrong with the pictures, they've simply changed their mind about it.

Russ

I haven't any cancels. But I have customers that take six months to order and couple that don't ever come back and order (and the pics are really good). I have checked out policy on a few other competitors and they charge a 15% extra charge if they don't order before 30 days. I guarantee the current prices for 1 month.

Ken

I'm talking about people who want to change things AFTER the order has been placed. Let's say I come in to your studio, take pictures with my family. I go through all of the pictures, saying "I want a 16x20 of pose 3,3 8x10's of this pose, etc etc." You say "Ok mr Jennings, that'll be $800 for this order. You'll get (repeat my order.) " I say "Perfect! How much with tax?" You write my order down, and ring me up. I sign off on the order, and pay in full with a credit card. You submit my order to your lab for printing.

The next morning, I call and say "wait, I changed my mind. I don't want any of the pictures, I just want all my money back. No, there's nothing wrong with the pictures, I just don't want them anymore."

What do you do?

Russ Jennings said:

We definitely sell our customers. We're not pushy or misleading,
but we do have trained sales people who try to get customers to buy
a lot of pictures. Recently, as our volume has gone up, we've had
more people who come back the next day and want to change their
order, or get their money back.

Click to expand...

If I understand correctly, you shoot the pics, have the client review them, while "trained sales people .... try to get customers to buy a lot of pictures". Although from your standpoint you are not "pushy or misleading", perhaps from the customers standpoint you are: ergo "buyers remorse"? Have you considered putting a 48 hour "grace period" in your contract?
Regards
Karl
Karl H. Timmerman M.A.J.D.
http://www.karltimmerman.com
http://www.karltimmerman.com/ramblings.html

Member said:

Russ Jennings said:

We definitely sell our customers. We're not pushy or misleading,
but we do have trained sales people who try to get customers to buy
a lot of pictures. Recently, as our volume has gone up, we've had
more people who come back the next day and want to change their
order, or get their money back.

Click to expand...

If I understand correctly, you shoot the pics, have the client
review them, while "trained sales people .... try to get customers
to buy a lot of pictures". Although from your standpoint you are
not "pushy or misleading", perhaps from the customers standpoint
you are: ergo "buyers remorse"? Have you considered putting a 48
hour "grace period" in your contract?

Click to expand...

If I went to a phtographer, I would expect to be able to look over proofs over a couple days before being forced to order anything. I would like to be sure of what I want before I spend more money. To sit, then look things over and buy all in one session, I think is a little pushy. But that's only my opinion.

wayne

waynepp said:

If I went to a phtographer, I would expect to be able to look over
proofs over a couple days before being forced to order anything. I
would like to be sure of what I want before I spend more money. To
sit, then look things over and buy all in one session, I think is a
little pushy. But that's only my opinion.

wayne

Click to expand...

Okay . . . and if your customer did that, and then changed their mind a few days later, how would you handle it? I'm not concerned with my sales process. I've found that if we wait for people to come back and buy pictures later, they never will. We sell proofs all the time. People ordering prints from their proofs don't even represent 1% of our sales. We'd go out of business if we waited for people to come back and buy pictures. Heck, I have about 75 customers worth of orders that are paid in full, and have been sitting here waiting to be picked up for over 6 months. These are prints already paid in full, with multiple messages left for the client that prints are in, and they still haven't come in and picked them up. If they won't come back to pick up paid for prints, I doubt they'd come back in to pay for an order.

I'd really like to know how you deal with customers wanting to change their orders. I'm happy with our sales process and our way of doing business. We don't mislead or push for higher sales. We let the customer choose the sizes and poses they want, and then we show them other packages in that price range that they may find to be a better deal. The customer decides what they want, even if that means just buying proofs and coming back later.

Russ Jennings said:

Okay . . . and if your customer did that, and then changed their
mind a few days later, how would you handle it? I'm not concerned
with my sales process. I've found that if we wait for people to
come back and buy pictures later, they never will. We sell proofs
all the time. People ordering prints from their proofs don't even
represent 1% of our sales.

Click to expand...

Russ Jennings said:

I'd really like to know how you deal with customers wanting to
change their orders.

Click to expand...

I'm curious, how many folks who purchsed proofs and then prints, had buyers remorse? So, what percent of folks who buy on the spot have buyers remorse? If the percentage is very low, let them change the order because it is not worth the bad will. If it his high, hold them to the contract and milk them for all they are worth because you won't have any good will to worry about before long.
Regards
Karl
Karl H. Timmerman M.A.J.D.
http://www.karltimmerman.com
http://www.karltimmerman.com/ramblings.html

We've done 212 customers for the month of November, and we've had 4 complain and try to change their order. That's about 1.8% who are unhappy. Not too shabby, IMHO.

So, you'd happily let someone change, or even completely cancel any order after it's been placed? That's what I want to know. I'm not really interested in the overall way other photog's run their business, I'm curious about dealing with this 1 specific problem. It's not a frequent problem, but it's a particularly thorny problem when it occurs. It seems like there's no right answer; either I (and my employees who worked on those customers) are screwed, or our customers are angry.

Karl H. Timmerman M.A.J.D. said:

Russ Jennings said:

Okay . . . and if your customer did that, and then changed their
mind a few days later, how would you handle it? I'm not concerned
with my sales process. I've found that if we wait for people to
come back and buy pictures later, they never will. We sell proofs
all the time. People ordering prints from their proofs don't even
represent 1% of our sales.

Click to expand...

Member said:

I'd really like to know how you deal with customers wanting to
change their orders.

Click to expand...

I'm curious, how many folks who purchsed proofs and then prints,
had buyers remorse? So, what percent of folks who buy on the spot
have buyers remorse? If the percentage is very low, let them change
the order because it is not worth the bad will. If it his high,
hold them to the contract and milk them for all they are worth
because you won't have any good will to worry about before long.
Regards
Karl
Karl H. Timmerman M.A.J.D.
http://www.karltimmerman.com
http://www.karltimmerman.com/ramblings.html

Click to expand...

--
http://www.rj-exposures.com

Russ Jennings said:

Russ Jennings wrote:
Heck, I have about 75
customers worth of orders that are paid in full, and have been
sitting here waiting to be picked up for over 6 months. These are
prints already paid in full, with multiple messages left for the
client that prints are in, and they still haven't come in and
picked them up.

Click to expand...

Hi Russ,

Are you still with Glamor Shot's?

It sounds like a lot of buyer's remorse with 75 people unwilling to pick up their orders? You have had a problem for over six months. The question is are you willing to be honest with yourself and staff and research and address the problem's? If 75 are non responsive there may be several hundred people less than talking up your operation. My ego has made me blind to problems more than a few times. And I do not expect to stop making errors in judgement myself anytime soon. Having a customer pay is not my objective at all. Seeing their response to the work I do is.

All the Best, John

Russ Jennings said:

That's about 1.8% who are unhappy. Not too shabby, IMHO.
It's not a frequent problem, but it's a particularly thorny problem
when it occurs. It seems like there's no right answer; either I
(and my employees who worked on those customers) are screwed, or
our customers are angry.

Click to expand...

There is a "right answer". From a business perspective, you arn't screwed if 98.2% of your customers are happy. Accomodate the 1.8 that are not and write it off. From an ethical perspective, give them the benefit of the doubt and allow them to renegotiate, (there may be economic reasons they wish to renegotiate). Isn't that the "moral high ground"? As for the unpicked up, paid for work, mail it to them, "return reciept requested".
Regards
Karl
Karl H. Timmerman M.A.J.D.
http://www.karltimmerman.com
http://www.karltimmerman.com/ramblings.html

Russ Jennings said:

We definitely sell our customers. We're not pushy or misleading,
but we do have trained sales people who try to get customers to buy
a lot of pictures. Recently, as our volume has gone up, we've had
more people who come back the next day and want to change their
order, or get their money back.

Click to expand...

Coming at this from the customer's perspective, let me tell you about my wife. When I met her, she had absolutely zero ability to stay her ground. If a photographer's package assistant pointed out "would you like this? this? this? ..." she would end up buying WAY more than she wanted to buy. Book clubs are a disaster. Telemarketers were invented to take advantage of her. A few years later, she's getting better at holding her ground, but I still deal with the car mechanics... and the photo studio package assistants.

--
[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ] http://www.halley.cc/pix/

Russ Jennings said:

Russ Jennings wrote:
It's not a frequent problem, but it's a particularly thorny problem
when it occurs. It seems like there's no right answer; either I
(and my employees who worked on those customers) are screwed, or
our customers are angry.

Click to expand...

How are you getting screwed?

Your service just is not what the customer is looking for at that piont. That's part of working with people, if there is remorse you failed them. If a customer get's to the point of being angry you have failed them without grace. Failing is normal to get paid for Failing you need to get elected for that to work.

John

Member said:

Hi Russ,

Click to expand...

Member said:

Are you still with Glamor Shot's?

Click to expand...

Yes, I am.

Member said:

It sounds like a lot of buyer's remorse with 75 people unwilling to
pick up their orders? You have had a problem for over six months.
The question is are you willing to be honest with yourself and
staff and research and address the problem's? If 75 are non
responsive there may be several hundred people less than talking up
your operation. My ego has made me blind to problems more than a
few times. And I do not expect to stop making errors in judgement
myself anytime soon. Having a customer pay is not my objective at
all. Seeing their response to the work I do is.

Click to expand...

The 75 aren't upset or unhappy, they're just forgetful, or they don't feel like driving to the mall to pick up their prints.

It seems like people think you shouldn't sell your photos. Isn't that why we're in business, to make money? I don't think that people would just buy, on their own, enough to keep us in business. People have an emotional response when they see the pictures, and that response is greatest when they FIRST see the pictures. Letting them take proofs home and place orders allows them to rationalize themselves down into next to nothing. To those who let customers take home proofs and come back to reorder . . . how many come back? How much of a deposit do they have to put down, and how many buy more then that minimum?

So, we have sales people. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We're not pushy, we're not a "hard sell" but we do try to get them to buy a lot of pictures. Again, isn't that why we're in business? Who wants to run a business that barely squeaks by? I've worked for photographers who don't "sell" their work, and my studio does more in a week then they did in a month.

So, the question, again . . you give customers 48 hours grace period to completely change or cancel their order, leaving you with nothing but wasted time?

Russ Jennings wrote:
I'm not concerned

Russ Jennings said:

with my sales process. I've found that if we wait for people to
come back and buy pictures later, they never will. We sell proofs
all the time. People ordering prints from their proofs don't even
represent 1% of our sales.

Click to expand...

Russ, selling from video proofs is VERY PUSHY selling! I have been at the receiving end of this. I wanted to treat my wife to a studio shoot and in the excitement of the moment she did order $900 worth of prints. I am absolutely amazed that other studios do not use the same method, especially these days when shooting digital. Other studio operators: Wake up! The sales generated by the excitement of the moment far, far outweigh sales generated a day or more later from proofs. I'd suggest that you simply face the fact that the oversell (no other word is more suitable IMHO) through the excitement of the moment will sometimes lead to a change of mind when the husband sobers up. Two choices: you introduce a cancellation charge (stated upfront of course) or you accept the bad feelings when you refuse to honor his cancellation. Overall, you still sell far, far more with video proofs than you would with paper (or even CD) proofs that come days later. Other studio owners: wake up!

PS: I am NOT accusing you of dishonorable salesmanship. It is an excellent way of generating huge sales, but let us not pretend that it's not "pushy". ;-) Most people would be too shy to cancel or reduce their orders later (eg myself) but occasionally you'll have an upset client if you do not honor his cancellation. By the way, my wife was and still is happy with her prints, so at the end of the day the $900 was well spent. Heck, you don't get much of a diamond ring for that little...
--
Bored? Peruse my website:
http://www.geocities.com/samirkharusi/index.html

Russ

it's my understanding that a 1% chargeback on visa online merchant account will get that account cancled. by these standars 1.8% is a real problem.

I have a 40% no show in my photography biz so I guess it's a matter of perspective. 1.8% no show rate would thrill the heck out of me.

so I guess I'm saying I wouldn't get to worried about it and I would mail the printed orders out with a return recipt . . . just my $.02

bm bradley

bm bradley said:

Russ

it's my understanding that a 1% chargeback on visa online merchant
account will get that account cancled. by these standars 1.8% is a
real problem.

I have a 40% no show in my photography biz so I guess it's a matter
of perspective. 1.8% no show rate would thrill the heck out of me.

so I guess I'm saying I wouldn't get to worried about it and I
would mail the printed orders out with a return recipt . . . just
my $.02

Click to expand...

Actually, every charge back we've had except one, the credit card company has sided with us. We just fax in the signed contracts and signed orders, and they see it our way. The one that got by us, we never received charge back notice in the first place, and that customer had already taken the pictures out of the studio. We're taking her to court, but that's another story . . .

Do you know how much return receipt postage is on 75 boxes of pictures, with packaging and everything? Not to mention . . have you been to a post office recently? The one in our town, I've never gone and spent less then 45 minutes in line. If customers want pictures shipped, they have to pay for it. We have them on file, and once a week, we go thru our pictures and call everybody. People tell us all the time "Okay, I'll be right in . . ." and never pick them up. Or, being a military town, they're at training or deployed, and even if we did mail them, they'd get lost or come back with the wrong address.

Still, only one person has really answered my question. When a customer wants to change their order after the fact, what do you do? When one of the 60% who do show up decide they want to cancel their $1000 order just because . . . how do you handle it?

Finally, if you've got a no-show rate like that, it's time to start taking some non-refundable deposits. Even our "free" sessions require a $20 non-refundable deposit to book the appointment. The deposit is applied towards whatever they buy, but it goes a LONG way in making sure they're booked up. Next time someone wants to book, tell them "oooh, 4:30 is the last slot I have left on Friday, we're SUPER busy. It's an $XX.XX session fee which you have to pay to reserve that slot, otherwise, I won't be able to book your appointment." Guess what? If they say no to that, they're deadbeats who wouldn't have shown up anyway.

Russ Jennings said:

Okay . . . and if your customer did that, and then changed their
mind a few days later, how would you handle it? I'm not concerned
with my sales process. I've found that if we wait for people to
come back and buy pictures later, they never will. We sell proofs
all the time. People ordering prints from their proofs don't even
represent 1% of our sales. We'd go out of business if we waited
for people to come back and buy pictures. Heck, I have about 75
customers worth of orders that are paid in full, and have been
sitting here waiting to be picked up for over 6 months. These are
prints already paid in full, with multiple messages left for the
client that prints are in, and they still haven't come in and
picked them up. If they won't come back to pick up paid for
prints, I doubt they'd come back in to pay for an order.

I'd really like to know how you deal with customers wanting to
change their orders. I'm happy with our sales process and our way
of doing business. We don't mislead or push for higher sales. We
let the customer choose the sizes and poses they want, and then we
show them other packages in that price range that they may find to
be a better deal. The customer decides what they want, even if
that means just buying proofs and coming back later.

Click to expand...

Wouldn't you think that what people buy is an outcome of the sales process. I don't think you can separate the two.

You mention that people don't buy pictures if given the time to think before they buy. Then you really should count on that there will be some percentage of cancellations after the sale has been made, as your customers get to leave the store.

I don't think you should see this as an annoyance, but an side-effect of the way you have chosen to market your product. If it works as a whole, then it works.

On the other hand, I have lot of experience with customers are not even aware of that they are taking up our valuable time, much less appreciate it. And that can get very frustrating at times, especially if we miss an opportunity to make a real sale.

I think there are several things to keep in mind when dealing with buyer's remorse.

First is the fact that you want that client to be happy in the end. Even if they end up not buying anything from you (after they said they would) The old adage of 1 upset client will tell 10 people about their bad experience really comes into play here.

Every so often we get the client who wants to change their order. Seldom do I get one that "just doesn't want anything" after having placed an order, but I have heard, "Wow, we spent a little more than we wanted to yesterday" line more than once. We too are not pushy... we only sell the same day of the shoot about 20% of the time... I personally am tired after a big shoot and prefer to sell at a later date. But when you are doing big families where 1/2 of the people are out of town I will sell immediately following.

One way to handle changes in orders is to let them know that any work that has already been done to the order is non refundable. We do all of our own retouching at our studio. Within 24 hours most images have been retouched and are out to the lab. I usually tell a client that the work has already been started on their order, but I will see if I can get it pulled at the lab. I typically call them back and let them know what work had already been done and what it is going to cost them to change / cancel their order. Often after finding out that they are going to be out money because the work has already been started they go ahead with the order. Our pricing has about $30 per image built in for retouching. A reasonable client understands that if THEY cancel an order they don't expect to pay nothing. If you have the plumber come out to your house, but manage to unclog the drain right as he arrives, you still expect to pay him something for his time. Even if an order was all the way through the lab process I would still work with the client (making sure my costs were covered, but I most likely would not charge the client full retail.) Often times I will ask them if I could use the images they don't want as samples at our studio! They feel flattered!

I've often been taught "Don't make your rules for the exceptions" People who cancel their order are the exception. Ask yourself this. If a client wanted to add 16 wallets to their order the day after their sales session, would you let them? We would all be stupid to say "no". My personal opinion is that you are not smart to NOT let a client lower their order either. For the simple reason that you will at least have the respect of that client if they leave content with a satisfactory outcome. If you tick the client off they will not only leave mad, but will cost you future business by spreading negative comments about you.

The biggest reason I could see someone saying, "I just won't order anything" after having placed an order is for spite! "Screw me? Screw you!" Its a lose/lose situation that should be avoided whenever possible. If you policies are so tight that this is occuring at any regular frequency, I would suggest reexamining how you are making your client feel with your refund policy.

Does it stink? Yes. Do we, the photographer, lose out? Yes! Is it the right thing to do (letting them adjust their order)? I think so.

It sometimes makes more sense in a different context... Say you go to a restaurant and you send back your dinner. The manager makes a new one and you still aren't thrilled. The manager, having now probably lost money on your meal offers to take the item off your bill. So now he has done his job twice, and still gave you your money back! Losing situation for the restuarant? Yes... BUT... if you leave with the feeling that, "Well, that is what they should have done... they took care of me" you are much more likely to come back and try the place again.

If the manager said, Gosh, sorry you didn't like your meal (portraits) but you know we did do all that work (twice even!), we're going to charge you for it anyway... you are going to leave that place with a bad taste in your mouth and probably not come back. Sure, you can make the arguement that, well anyone who cancels their order wouldn't come back anyway, but what about the 10 people they tell not to come in the first place?

On the subject of chargebacks versus refunds... the comment about a 1% chargeback will get your account canceled. Refunds are a totally different subject than chargebacks. Chargebacks should be a very seldom occurance. I haven't had one in the past 3 years I've had my studio. It just shouldn't get to this point. I would suggest that you might be thinking of yourself as a winner and still be a loser in the big picture. Any client who gets to the point of seeking a chrageback HATES your company! Do you really want that? Can anything good come from it? Solve the problem before it gets to that point, even if it means giving back the $$$. Its no fun, but in the end, you will reap the benefit of satisfied clients.

my $2.00 worth.

classici