returning money to student

[MohamedAbde451]

hello ,

student recorded my course then he return his money .

its very bad policy that he can return money after learning the course .

plz protect our efforts we are loss 

[SanjitAcadmy · Accepted solution]

Exactly,  because they are earning from them, so they are important,  but To us they have To pay,  that's why they will now listen us. 

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@Gokul wrote:

One of my students openly said to me on my Facebook page that he enrolled in all of my courses and then downloaded them and then applied for a refund for the courses. That's how it works here. Udemy gives more importance to students rather than the instructors which I don't feel is good. 

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[jadaon · Accepted solution]

Samething happened to me today. This is my first course, so I treasure every student. That's why I feel really depressed when I saw it. He enrolled and finished the course really quickly, then returned his money.

Do we really have no way to prevent that?

[Thor]

How do you know they recorded it? If you have actual proof and not just a feeling then report it to instructorsupport@udemy.com. I mean proof. 

Refunds are normal 1-2%, if higher than that something is wrong and you need to fix it. 

The 30-day money back guarantee is good for instructors, it makes more people buy because they can always refund if they do not like the class (but rarely do). 

Working as intended.

[MohamedAbde451]

thank you for replaying , do you mean if student watch all lecturs course he cant refund his money ??

[Thor]

Yes, just like if I buy a chair on amazon and I sit in it, if I do not like it I can return it. 

[Gokul]

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@Thor wrote:

Yes, just like if I buy a chair on amazon and I sit in it, if I do not like it I can return it. 

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You buy a chair from amazon, you sit on it for 29 days and when you are done with sitting on a chair, you return it. 

[MostafaAta]

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@Gokul wrote:

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@Thor wrote:

Yes, just like if I buy a chair on amazon and I sit in it, if I do not like it I can return it. 

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You buy a chair from amazon, you sit on it for 29 days and when you are done with sitting on a chair, you return it. 

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This reply is so epic true sarcastic, nice one

Agree with you 100%

[SanjitAcadmy]

Guys let me clarify,  people are now recording now a days,  they r worst than that. They are many 3rd party application like tor browser,  idm,  when you just play the udemy first video,  all videos will display in pop up to down load with various quality like 480p, 720p,  it takes max 10-15 min based on internet speed To download your months of efforts and say good bye To you,  and again get back my money and purchase another course,  agaim get back my many and purchase again.... Do. The funda is just in 10$ , a person if he want can read the full udemy course,  as easy as that. And of you easier your voice udemy will do nothing,  since it's bot them,  who created the video,  they are earning for your work,  so you can't do anything,  better put your courses without udemy offer day in 199$, no offers,  then only legitimate users who really need that buy it. 

I am ethical white hat and cyber security head in India,  we know these things can easily be stopped,  but still udemy don't have such level of engineering applied To there system To prevent it. 

[Thor]

With the right scripts it takes less time than that to download 10-20 hours of video.

That is not the point though, there will always be new ways to circumvent the system, you implement an appropriate amount of security, not as much as possible. 

People have been stripping videos online for many years but the vast majority of students don't, you can't stop all the people who do steal copyrighted content. 

You can limit it, but if Hollywood could not stop it, I doubt Udemy can either. 

If you change your courses to $199, I can just as easy buy it, strip it and refund it,  the only way to avoid piracy is to not make courses. 
Since that is not an option, I will keep doing what I do, make my money and know that my courses are pirated. 

[Gokul]

One of my students openly said to me on my Facebook page that he enrolled in all of my courses and then downloaded them and then applied for a refund for the courses. That's how it works here. Udemy gives more importance to students rather than the instructors which I don't feel is good. 

[Thor]

Those will always be there, but the refund policy adds a lot more sales than it costs. 

Students feels reassured when they buy courses because of the refund policy, the vast majority never use  it, but they buy more. 

It is a good thing.

Why focus on the 2 or 5 people who exploit the system and not the 20 or 50 who buy more because of having the option to refund?

[Gokul]

I absolutely agree with you Mr. Thor. We shouldn't focus on them and rather foucs on making better courses so that new students would want to enroll. 

But what happens is that when you are a new instructor and earning $50-$100 a month, these refunds can be very much disappointing. 

[Thor]

Completely, I started ignoring them. 

How many is not important as long as they are below 1-2% of revenue (unless there is a good reason for it (full price sale can be one)). 

If you consistently are 5%+ on refunds, then you have an issue you need to fix (look at reviews for clues). 

[DanielEvans]

It's about ratio / percentage, not amount earned.

The more you earn, the more refunds you will inevitably witness.  The less you earn, the less refunds you'll witness.

An instructor earning so little might have not even earned that if a refund policy were not in place.

P.S. OP, this is the Audio / Video section.

[RandyMinder]

Yes, refunds can be disappointing. I have a half-dozen courses for sale on Udemy and over 300 total sales across all my courses. I would guess my refund rate is maybe 2%. That's low enough where I can't really get upset.

[SanjitAcadmy · Accepted solution]

Exactly,  because they are earning from them, so they are important,  but To us they have To pay,  that's why they will now listen us. 

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@Gokul wrote:

One of my students openly said to me on my Facebook page that he enrolled in all of my courses and then downloaded them and then applied for a refund for the courses. That's how it works here. Udemy gives more importance to students rather than the instructors which I don't feel is good. 

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[DanielEvans]

As long as that person fully accepts without future quarel, that when or if he or she actually begins to make money on the internet, others are going to do exactly the same to them.

'That's how it works' afterall.....

[jadaon]

Hi there,

I am new here and I have read all your answers. I have a question on this: so should I make my course videos dowloadable? 

Thanks, guys.

[SanjitAcadmy]

You may do that,  but you know with my experience I am telling,  say one student downloaded the video and it's not compatible to his device due to any reason,  the students in udemy are not smart enough I seen,  they will rate your course say 1 star for that and may be ask for refund,  then you know it will hamper your upcoming earnings,  because some students are so braineless they rate the course the blindly without knowing how much effort you kept while creating the course,  so always try to take such action where you will have minimum risk to get away from such foolish feed backs and raters. 

[Karthikeya]

The best solution is to leave a watermark in some key location, so that, at least it will help in promoting your brand.

[Ouche]

I had this thought 2years ago... and i felt it's not really worth the stress. But i realized it never stops instructors with great courses from being successful on this platform.

So I believe it's just a negative thought. And negative thinking always drags people backward. I ditched the negatives, and started working on my course again. 

I have uploaded 9hours of video content, and almost done with it all. Will submit for review in less than 2weeks. I have not lost anything. I have actually learnt how to make finer courses next time.

The key is to be positive and keep doing what you love. 

[MostafaAta]

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@MohamedAbde451 wrote:

hello ,

student recorded my course then he return his money .

its very bad policy that he can return money after learning the course .

plz protect our efforts we are loss 

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Hello Mohamed

I really feel your problem because I'm now preparing some courses to be published on udemy, but with this policy (the instructor agreed for udemy to share his content with whoever they want + not protected content againist scrapping/download + 30 days Refund regardless the course progress the student had made) I'm afraid of loosing my money, time and effort

we need some human logical reply from udemy about that, please don't mention some links to community or support article I've read them all

Also to be positive there are some affordable applicable solutions that might help

- changing the terms saying that udemy has the right to share the content with whoever, to be only student and promo videos for advertisers

- protecting the video content like the applicable technology used in https://sproutvideo.com/

- linking with the video copyrights entities like Facebook and Youtube protect their content creators from copying or stealing the content specially the videos

- changing the refund policy to be less than 30 days (it is really too much but to be 14 days), and to be conditioned with the course progress maybe more than 40% of watching the course not guarantee a refund (for sure at 40% of the course anyone will know if this course is going to beneficial for him or not to request refund)