The $97 Decision: When the Promise Had to Cost Something

I was still trying to buy from them.

The product had failed three times. I contacted support because I liked the company and wanted to get it sorted out. I wasn't looking for a reason to leave.

I'd been spending about $5,000 a year with them. I'd recommended them to my parents. By the time I needed help, the company already had my business and my trust.

Their promise was that if something went wrong, they'd make it right. Then came the request for photos of a product I'd already thrown away. The credits offered would disappear if I canceled. Everyone was polite. The $97 refund still didn't happen.

I canceled.

The products arrived spoiled and never looked like the pictures on their website. The response changed what I believed about the company.

When the promise became a decision

That's the point I want founders to pay attention to. A customer can understand a mistake. What they're trying to work out afterward is whether the company they chose is still the company they thought it was.

I had been asked to believe I'd be looked after if something went wrong. When it did, I was left carrying the cost. The promise and the experience no longer agreed. That's the Say-Do Gap™.

This is why brand strategy has to reach the decisions people make after the sale. The belief should guide the decision. The decision becomes behavior. The customer takes that behavior as proof and decides whether to trust you again.

If a promise helps you win the customer, keeping it has to be part of the cost of doing business.

The customer isn't always right. They don't get to write your standards or demand whatever they want. But the business is responsible for living up to the standards it asks people to trust. A fair refusal can uphold those standards. Refusing to take responsibility for your own failure can contradict them.

What the refund could have proved

Replacing a failed product or refunding money can feel like paying twice for the same sale. It can also be the first time that customer has seen your promise cost you anything. You're giving them evidence they couldn't get from your website.

The cost is visible immediately. The return can take years to unfold: repeat purchases, another chance when something goes wrong, a recommendation made because someone knows how you treat people.

I'd already sent my parents their way. When I recommend a company to people I care about, I put my judgment behind it. I need to believe they'll be looked after when I'm not there to help.

That's part of what a happy customer can be worth. They can bring more than their own spending. They can bring someone else's confidence in their judgment.

About $5,000 a year tells you what I had been spending. It doesn't put a number on everything that relationship might have become. And nobody should have to spend that much to receive what a company promised them.

Put the promise beside the decision

Choose one promise your company uses to win customers. Find the most recent decision where keeping it meant giving up money, time or convenience. Bring the actual customer exchange into your next leadership meeting.

Read the promise first. Then read what happened. Ask:

• What did we give the customer reason to expect?

• When keeping that promise became costly, what did our decision protect?

• What would the customer believe about us after experiencing that decision?

The answers may be uncomfortable even if everyone followed the process. If the promise says one thing and the process delivers another, following the process keeps the gap open.

Agree on the decision that must change. Be specific about what the business will absorb when it falls short and where a fair boundary belongs. Make that a standard your team can use, then look at the next real case to see whether it held.

A customer shouldn't need the founder to intervene before the brand becomes the company it claims to be.

That is part of the work of defining a brand: deciding what must stay true when keeping it true becomes inconvenient. Better words alone won't settle that decision for you.

I wanted a reason to keep buying and feel good about the recommendation I'd made. The company had a chance to give me one. The $97 decision was where that chance ended.

If you can't yet name the belief those decisions should protect, The Belief Brief™ is a place to start. It's an exercise you complete on your own, with a Say-Do Gap™ score and a one-page Belief Script™ to bring into the conversation.

Brand isn't what you say. It's what you enforce.