Last updated on June 26th, 2022 at 11:41 am
In today’s article, we’re going to be talking about some of the things that specialists tend to gloss over when they’re talking about my 3 AliExpress dropshipping failures worth considering when opening an AliExpress dropshipping store.
I think we know what people love to talk about. They love to talk about their incredibly expensive sports cars that they bought using their dropshipping capital. It’s a lot more fun to talk about other things.
Rather than talk about things like having a
- PayPal account frozen
- Chargeback
- Customer asking for a Refund
Dropshipping is not an absolutely perfect business. A lot of newbies jump in and they find success. But then they have one of these things happen to them and often they get taken by surprise because they weren’t expecting it. Because nobody talked about these potential issues.
The unfortunate thing though is that these things are either easily overcome or you can do things in advance to prepare for them. So that they don’t happen to you. Which is actually why in this article I’m going to address these three things and explain how to overcome them and what you can do in advance to prepare for them.
So, let’s jump straight into it.
Getting Banned on PayPal
Of course, a lot of people love to say that PayPal hates dropshipping. But this simply is not true. You know the horror stories. Someone had a PayPal account and it had tens of thousands of dollars in it. And then one day, they sign on and oops, your account’s been banned along with the tens of thousands of dollars in it. You have bills to pay? Too bad.
But as I said, PayPal doesn’t hate dropshipping. What they hate is shady businesses. What they hate is when customers are lied to or cheated. And I’ll tell you what, I see new AliExpress dropshippers be shady all of the time with one thing and that is the shipping. There is no way around it. If you are dropshipping from AliExpress suppliers, then it’s going to take two to four weeks for the items to arrive.
Don’t Hide Your Shipping Time
Now, as I said in my recent article, on why long shipping times don’t matter, those shipping times affect conversions a lot less than you would think. Unfortunately, new sellers assume that it will. They assume that they can’t be open and honest about it because if they are, then no one will buy from them.
So, you know what they do? They do their best to hide it. They don’t put a disclaimer on their product page. And they may put a tiny disclaimer in the cart page, but that is it.
Put a Disclaimer on Your Product Page
- Disclaimer on Product Page. You should be putting the disclaimer very clearly on your product page. And I recommend that you bold this to make sure that the potential customer sees it.
- E-mail Disclaimer. I recommend that you go ahead and you put the disclaimer in your confirmation email telling the customer that the shipping is going to take two to four weeks and to please be patient. You want to make sure that the customer realizes that it’s going to take two to four weeks to arrive. That way you’re going to get a lot less emails from people asking you where their item is.
But you also want to do it because if you do this, you’re going to get less PayPal disputes from people, again, wondering where their item is.
And if you have been upfront and honest about them with the shipping times, then you will win those disputes. And it’s those disputes that are getting people’s PayPal accounts banned.
So, make sure that you are open and honest from the very beginning.
Getting Chargebacks
No one wants to talk about chargebacks because getting a chargeback isn’t fun. Credit card companies let their customers chargeback if they either didn’t get an item or they were the victim of a fraudulent transaction.
But it doesn’t just end there because you, as the merchant, get the opportunity to respond. You can upload documents and evidence to prove that what the customer is claiming isn’t true. Now, customers tend to do chargebacks for either one of two reasons.
Firstly, because the customer didn’t recognize the charge on their credit card bill. So, of course, they’re going to think that they were the victim of a fraudulent transaction. This is very easy to avoid.
If you’re using Shopify, when setting up Shopify payments, make sure in the statement descriptor box, you have the name of your store.
Unfortunately, the more difficult one to deal with is when the customer is simply unhappy and feels cheated. And time and time again, I find that the reason why people end up getting chargebacks is because of the fact that the customer had not been expecting the long shipping times. So again, it needs to be said.
If you are upfront, honest, and make sure that the customer is aware of them, then you’re going to be getting a lot less chargebacks. But even so, you should still expect the occasional chargeback.
I’ll tell you now, any business that is dealing with credit cards should be expecting to have to deal with chargebacks.
Always Be Honest With Your Shipping Time
So, if a customer comes in and claims a chargeback for the long shipping times, if you were open and honest about it, then you will absolutely win that chargeback. You didn’t hide it. You didn’t trick them. There was nothing fraudulent about the process. They were not lied to.
You were open and honest. You can provide a link to your product page which clearly has a disclaimer about the shippingtimes. Or you can provide screenshots of your productpage. You can provide a copy of your confirmation email in which you, again, had the disclaimer about the shipping times.
Provide Tracking Codes
And if you are using ePacket as your shipping option, which I have recommended multiple times, then you will have a tracking code that you can provide. Which will show that the item is on its way.
So, yes, if you weren’t shady, then you should win. Of course, again, if you’re completely and utterly upfront with the customer about what they are getting, then you will get a lot less chargebacks.
But let’s be honest. Even if you are going to be winning them, dealing with them is a pain. Luckily, there is something that you can do to avoid getting them in the first place.
Encourage Positive Communication
The best way for you to avoid things such as chargebacks and PayPal disputes is to do what Amazon FBA sellers do when they’re trying to avoid negative feedback. And that is to encourage communication between you and your customers.
See, in the Amazon FBA world, getting reviews is key and one of the main ways that you get reviews is you send out emails to your customers asking them to leave a review.
But because of the fact that we cannot ask them to leave a positive review as that is against Amazon’s terms and conditions, we have to ask them to leave an honest review.
Now, this is usually absolutely fine until you end up emailing that email out to an unhappy customer. And so when you ask them to go leave an honest review, they end up leaving a negative review. And that is very, very bad.
So what do you do? You encourage communication between you and customers that are not happy. In that email, you add in a line like this:
“And if you’re having problems, please email us before leaving a review. We care about each and every customer.”
Do the Exact Same Thing with Your Shopify Store
Set it up so that your automated email notifications such as your shipping confirmation email have a line in there about if they are unhappy or having any problems, could they please email you.
And make sure that you have at least one email that gets sent out about a week after the sale telling the customer that, again if they’re having any problems, that they can contact you. Plus, it’s a great idea in that email to let them know that item is on its way and to please be patient.
The vast, vast majority of customers just want to know that you are still there and that you care. So if a customer contacts you, let them know that:
- Shipping Time is Normal
- The Item Is on Its Way
- You Do Care
Getting Refunds
You know what, refunds are just a part of doing business. It doesn’t matter what your business is. You could be mowing grass for your neighbors. You could be manufacturing high-tech phones. Or you could even be running a dropshipping business.
It doesn’t matter. People asking for refunds are just a part of any business. Luckily, those customers are uncommon and rare.
So, what do you do about them? The answer is actually quite simple.
Create a Strict Refund Policy
- Strict refund Policy. I strongly recommend that you have a very strict refund policy in place. I recommend only allowing refunds for faulty or broken items.
- No Other Refund Options. Do not have a refund policy in place that allows people to return items because they have simply changed their minds.
- Refund Policy Link in the Footer. I also recommend that you link to the refund policy page in the footer of your site. That way it will be on every single page and all customers have no excuse for not having read it.
Giving Up Is The Easiest Thing To Do
Now, before I close up this topic, I do want to mention one thing. There is one other reason why dropshipping gurus don’t like to talk about these things. And it isn’t just because they don’t want to talk about uncomfortable topics.
It’s because even though these issues have simple solutions, there are a lot of people out there that get discouraged. And they become very negative when they find out that dropshipping isn’t the absolute perfect business.
It’s like when people read my article about how to collect sales tax as a dropshipper. They read that article and they go, “Nope, too hard.” The truth though is that these sorts of people are never really going to start a business. They’re always going to be stuck in their eight to six jobs. Eight to six jobs are easy.
Okay, it’s not quite easy.
I would say that they’re quite tiring and quite uninspiring. But they’re safe because every day you go to work, you know that you’re gonna get a basic paycheck.
And if you want to be one of those sorts of people, that’s absolutely fine. Most of my friends are those types of people. I’ve got nothing against that. But the truth is, is that the people that succeed and the people that get rich are the ones that see challenges as opportunities.
Because, you see, the successful individuals see those that are afraid of starting their business because they’re scared of their PayPal account getting frozen and they see them and they go, “Oh, great. One less competitor for me.” They know like how I’ve explained in this article that there are solutions to all problems.
With a bit of research and a little bit of problem-solving, you can generally find an answer to anything, so they don’t let it stop them. They go out there, they see what silly mistakes people were making that were getting their PayPal accounts frozen, and they don’t make them.
So really, the question I have for you is what type of person will you be? Thanks for reading this article. If you liked it and you appreciated the honest advice, then it would be really great if you give us your comment below.
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