The Ultimate Beginners Guide to Refunding Expensive Items PART 4

Part 4 - What the Process Looks Like, Start to Finish

With all that in mind, let me walk you through what the actual process looks like, from start to finish. Once you've got your store list, you've found a county that pushes through police reports without follow up, and found a drop address in that county, you're ready to start. First thing you need to do, is change the billing address on your payment method, to the drop address you're going to use. The biggest hurdle in this method is not getting the order cancelled by the company, and the number 1 reason that happens is mismatched billing and shipping addresses. It also helps if you're close by the shipping address when you make the order. If you have trouble with getting the order through without it getting cancelled, call the company's customer service and they'll usually be able to help you get it to go through eventually. I've also found that using paypal to checkout decreases the likelihood of the order being cancelled.

Once you get the order through, and it gets shipped out, it should be smooth sailing if you've done all the tests properly. Once you receive the order, wait a day, then call the company. If they did someone like make you give them a one time passcode to receive the order, or you used a rent a mailbox service, tell them the package appears tampered with and when you opened it, it was empty. Otherwise, simply claiming it wasn't you who received the package will work. The goal here is to tell them a story, in which it is plausible the package was stolen. That's what triggers the police report requirement.

Quick tip:

When calling the company, be nice to the agent. Ask them up front how their day is going. Tell them you realize they probably deal with mad people all the time and you know it's exhausting. I personally tell them I have worked in customer service and know what it's like. MAKE THEM LAUGH. This will make them do whatever you ask and no ask questions and actually help you more than random person

As I mentioned earlier, the company might ask you to file a police report on that initial call, or you might receive a follow up email a few days later with the request. Either way, you should find the police report the day after the package is delivered to get it approved as fast as possible. Once it's approved, send it to whichever email with whatever details the store tells you to. Once that's done, all you have to do is wait for the refund to be confirmed. If you ordered electronics, make sure you don't turn the device on until after the refund is processed (or don't ever do it, and just let whoever you sell it to activate it), so the company can't lock the device.

I recommend selling whatever you refund for cash, on places like craigslist, offerup, facebook marketplace, etc. Selling online usually means you'll be asked to provide an invoice, and just generally leaves a paper trail that you don't need to leave. It takes longer to sell on those p2p marketplaces for cash, but the benefits outweigh the costs.