Hey, guys.
It's me, Sarah, the video editor here at Wholesale Ted and in today's video, we're gonna be talking
about some of the things that YouTube gurus tend to gloss over when they're talking about
AliExpress dropshipping.
See, 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
money.
"Oh, hey, guys.
Just came back from buying my Porsche 911 GT3.
And don't worry, I outfitted it with custom HRE FF01 wheels as well."
And, of course, they love to talk about their flashy, exotic vacations.
"Oh, hey, guys.
Sorry, this video's a little bit late.
Just got back from my first-class flight from the Maldives."
Because, you know, it's a lot more fun to talk about stuff like that rather than talk
about things like, "Oh, hey, guys.
Just woke up today to find that my PayPal account has been frozen.
Oh, yeah.
So just checked and saw that I have a chargeback.
Oh, hey look.
Just checked my email.
There's a customer asking for a refund."
And the truth is, I haven't been completely innocent of this myself either, which is a
shame because it is true.
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 video, 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.
Number one, getting banned on PayPal.
So, 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 gonna take two to four weeks for
the items to arrive.
Now, as I said in my recent video, "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.
They may put a tiny disclaimer in the cart page but that is it.
Yeah, no.
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.
And then 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 gonna 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 gonna get a 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.
Two, 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 gonna 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.
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 shipping
times.
You can provide screenshots of your product page.
You can provide a copy of your confirmation email in which you, again, had the disclaimer
about the shipping times.
And if you are using ePacket as your shipping option, which I have recommended multiple
times on this channel, 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.
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."
So 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 you do get contacted by a customer, let them know that yes, the shipping time
is normal, yes, the item is on its way, and yes, you do care.
Three, 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.
Hey, 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.
I strongly recommend that you have a very strict refund policy in place.
I recommend only allowing refunds for items that are faulty or broken.
Do not have a refund policy in place that allows people to return items because they
have simply changed their minds.
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.
Now, before I close up this video, I do wanna mention one thing.
There is one other reason why gurus don't like to talk about these things and it isn't
just because they don't wanna 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 become very negative when they find out that dropshipping
isn't the absolute perfect business.
It's like when people watch my video about how to collect sales tax as a dropshipper.
They watch that video and they go, "Nope, too hard."
The truth though is that these sorts of people are never really gonna 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 wanna 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 video 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 watching this video.
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