Incident Record: Course Refund Policy

Preliminary Findings: Course Refund Policy Incident, Review and Documentation

Filed following expiration of the applicable refund period

Incident Summary

On a date approximately forty-three days prior to this filing, the account holder purchased an online course. The course was priced at sixty-seven dollars. The course platform offered a thirty-day satisfaction guarantee. The account holder was aware of the guarantee at the time of purchase.

The account holder completed two of the course's nineteen modules. The modules were watched at 1.5x speed. Following the second module, the account holder encountered a scheduling conflict that delayed their return to the course for approximately nine days. Following the nine-day gap, the account holder intended to resume the course but instead completed several other tasks that had accumulated during the nine-day absence.

The refund window closed on a day when the person was busy, following a week when they were also busy, following the initial period during which they had intended to assess whether the course was worth completing.

Observable Consequences

The first consequence is financial. Sixty-seven dollars has been allocated to a course that has been two-ninths completed. The per-module cost, calculated from total expenditure and content consumed, is currently thirty-three dollars and fifty cents per module. The intended per-module cost, calculated from the purchase price and total module count, was three dollars and fifty-two cents.

The second consequence is archival. The course remains in the account. It will remain accessible for the duration of the platform's operation. The person intends to return to it. This intention is unchanged since the thirty-day window closed.

The third consequence is promotional. The person has not unsubscribed from the platform's marketing emails, which now recommend four additional courses based on their purchase history.

The Absurd Rule

The thirty-day refund window is predicated on the assumption that thirty days is sufficient time to evaluate a course. For a person who purchases a course during a busy period with the intention of engaging with it during a less busy period, thirty days is not sufficient time. The less busy period arrives approximately five weeks after purchase, which is five days after the refund window closes.

This is not a design flaw. The refund window is designed to be long enough to appear generous and short enough to coincide with the period before the purchaser has confirmed the course is not worth finishing.

The Contradiction

The account holder purchased the course because they wanted the knowledge the course contained. The account holder still wants this knowledge. The reason the knowledge has not been acquired is not that the course was bad. The course may be fine. Two of its nineteen modules were, at 1.5x speed, acceptable.

The knowledge remains available. The sixty-seven dollars has been spent. The relationship between these facts has not been examined directly by the account holder, who has added the course to a list of things to return to, which is a list that also contains several books and an audiobook purchased in 2021.