Say Goodbye to Restocking Fees at Headphones.com

HEADPHONE Community Meta
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We try to keep the posts related to the store as infrequent as possible here but I figured this was a big announcement that should be shared with the community.

See below from @andrew

"To our community: We’re getting rid of restocking fees!

When my brother Taron and I started Headphones.com around my living room table, we would daydream about the kind of company we wanted to build (we had lots of time to daydream because sales were sparse).

That’s where we came up with 365-day returns and our focus on community, education and giving back.

However, we definitely weren’t daydreaming about restocking fees.

A few weeks ago, we took a look at our restocking fee policy and asked, why is this here?

We set out to build the Headphone store we wished existed. The fee chart felt like the opposite of that. Like something that came from a corporation that had lost touch with its values.

We started charging those fees for what we thought were good reasons, it costs us around 3% to process a non-financed payment (financing sits around 6%) and another 1% for fraud insurance on every transaction. We don’t get those back when a product is returned. After that, it’s just expensive to handle a return and get it refurbished and re-sold.

All those reasons made sense, but they didn’t change the fact that restocking fees suck for customers.

So, we’re getting rid of them.

It feels great. It feels like the right thing to do. That’s when this is the most fun, when our values lead us to do things that our accountants think are crazy.

Thank you for being the most incredible community and for allowing us to wake up every morning with a chance to do what we love."

Andrew Lissimore
Co-founder & CEO, Headphones.com

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This is a MASSIVE move for your customers and puts you on an even plain for prices, shipping and now returns with Prime membership in the Bezos Behemoth.

What elevates you cats above Amazon is your care for and dedication to the audiophile community, something that NEVER will happen with Amazon. Combine that with this new policy, and my first stop for new or refurbished cans will be headphones.com.

Kudos. Thanks.

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That’s great. I’ll take one of everything.

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Kudos to you for this!

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I’ll take the Feliks Audio Envy 25th Anniversary Edition worth $17,495 that I heard at your office good sir.

364 days later: This is crap, I don’t want it anymore.

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Hi Andrew. I did post this in headfi, but of course I thought here would be far more appropriate.

I think you’ll get more international customer sales. Many people don’t have the luxury of being able to try out products before they buy them, simply because their are no dealers or even availability of certain products in their respective countries.
Taron. I’m not a businessman at all, but I think your setting your business up for more overseas sales.
The other thing I could mention because you have this restocking fee wiped out is setting up something with @zach915m and carry a small line of ZMF headphones.
I mention this because even your North American customers don’t have it that easy with regards to a “try before you buy” with ZMF headphones. For instance I live in Toronto, Canada and there is no way for me to try ZMF headphones unless I know someone who has one already bought. Unfortunately I don’t know anybody that has one. Lol.
Anyhow. I understand why certain businessmen run their businesses the way they feel they need to.

What do you think though? I’m I crazy ? I just feel ZMF and Headphones.com would be an incredible partnership, especially with your new policy in place.
I may be thinking a bit naively here because again, I’m not a businessman and I might not know of some logistical problems or practices that are in place to make a partnership happen with you and Zach.

Cheers Taron. Thank you for listening and speaking as a customer of yours I still LOVE my Campfire Atlas IEMS I bought from you and Andrew a few years back. Grinning face :grinning:

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Yay! And again, yay! I just hope that Headphones.com doesn’t take an economic “hit” as a result of your new policy. I’ve seen videos of you two (brothers) talking about the founding and evolution of Headphones.com, and just want to say that I HOPE that consumers (and FANS) of the products you offer won’t take advantage of this extraordinary (and exemplary) move.

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People who are going to abuse our policy are going to abuse the policy, regardless of what it is. It’s just how those people are. However, quite a few of those people who would abuse our policy are known to several stores and have already been banned from purchasing from most of those stores.

We’d much rather build our policies around the customers we want to keep, not keep out.

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