When do you offer partial refunds?

With the 3.15 release of Altru, we gave you the ability to partially refund. In our latest release (3.16 & 3.17, July 2014), we added a little more functionality - giving you the ability to keep the membership or ticket active, while refunding part of the purchase price. Since you all know HOW to use this functionality, I thought we'd cover more of the WHEN do you use this functionality. When do you offer partial refunds? Who has the rights to do so at your org? Here are what some organizations are doing:

"We rarely refund a membership unless it was mistakenly put in somehow, and it has to be re-inputted correctly. For these refunds, I process them through Altru so that are successfully processed through Altru and Merchant, with accounting double-checking behind with Merchant. I also process any of the Events, but these only happen if we were to cancel an event such as when the City shut down for the cold blast in January. Most of these however were forwarded to the next event. As you can see, we discourage refunds, and most either transfer their tickets to someone else or consider it a straight donation.

As for tickets to tours, those have been done by the front desk staff. For education, those are normally considered “transferred” to another event. It would be great when in Altru we can legitimately show which program it transferred too. These are done by our Education Director or myself, when he needs assistance. These are the only two areas in which we commonly may refund a ticket." - Maryca Burton, Telfair Art Museum

"Our policy is no refunds, but we look at those on a case by case basis. A full or partial refund would have to be approved by a manager depending on the department (store merchandise, membership etc) If there are questions, we consult our finance department." - Kestra Bronneke, The Discovery 

"We do partial refunds when our boats are cancelled due to weather. If a guest gets sick due to the heat, and has to leave the facility.   We also do them for advanced bookings at will call check-in or via phone due to a member of two of the party not being able to visit so we will the missing party members activities for the day.

We don’t have the ability to partially refund(give a discount after the fact) on a booking we end up having to refund, reprocess and recharge the guest credit card."  - Ann Clark, Clearwater Marine Aquarium

"We have a Summer Special, where our $130 reciprocal membership is only $100 when you purchase in June or July. A couple of members bought a reciprocal membership at the end of May at the $130 price. Since it was so close to the start of the Summer Special, we gave a partial refund of $30 to those few members who contacted us.

We also have done refunds where someone purchases 3 tickets and only wants 2, so we refund 1 ticket (and not the entire order)." - Kristina Gerard, Speed Art Museum

Any questions about partial refunds? Check out our new features page or ask away in the community!