Timing of Refunds and Guidelines

Refunds are not processed immediately (unless someone writes in and wants to change what they purchased). 


The reason we do not process refunds right away is three-fold (but please do not share this with the members):

  • We want to keep our PayPal and Stripe account balances in the green, and this is taken into consideration when bank transfers are made. There must always be a $500 balance in each of our PayPal accounts.
  • We can only process 3 refunds per day per product (per payment type i.e. Stripe of PayPal). Sometimes this is reduced according to sales that day.
  • It also gives us lots of time to process refunds and allows us to exceed customer expectations.


Should we have excessive refund requests (and this periodically happens) these parameters can temporarily be modified. It is a judgment call dependent on our financial balances.



Processing Full Refunds


1- In the ticket:

  • Tags: Cancellation, Refund Request.
  • Type: Account Membership.
  • Theme Reference: Tesla Themes.


2- Log in to https://teslathemes.com/amember/admin and search for the email or username.
Select Payments/Access to view: https://www.screencast.com/t/3U8jqtle



3- Click on Stop Recurring (if the subscription has not already been canceled).


4- You will receive a notification Do you really want to stop this subscription. Click on OK. This ensures that they are not automatically billed again next year.




5- Click on Expand Details. On the right-hand side under Payments, Paysystem, you will see how the user was charged (i.e. Stripe or PayPal). 



  • If PayPal, copy the Transaction ID and then log into PayPal and search for the transaction to refund. 
  • If paid by Stripe, log into Stripe and search for either the charge number or email address to refund the charge.


Note: once you refund a payment, aMember automatically deletes the affiliate commission.


Processing Refunds - PayPal


  • Log in to PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/.
  • Select Activity. Search for Transaction ID to locate the sale.
  • Click on the most recent payment. On the transaction page, scroll down to Issue Refund and select it. Keep selecting the prompts (i.e. Issue Refund) until finalized. There is no need to fill in a note (as PayPal has had technical issues with filling in the details which stopped refunds from processing).


Processing Refunds - Stripe

  • Log into Stripe: https://dashboard.stripe.com/login.
  • Search for the email address or name.

  • Click on customer.
  • Under payments, click on the …  Select Refund > select full refund and the refund button. For most refunds, select Requested by Customer in the drop-down menu. We use Other for partial refunds, duplicate payments, etc. Other requires a note/details in the dialogue box (or the refund will not process). Then select Refund.




6- Final Steps

  • Respond to the ticket with this canned response under Refund Request Responses > Refund ISSUED (only used AFTER the refund has been performed). Note: change in the canned response As promised to As promised earlier (when you complete refunds on the same day).
  • Double-check the tags in the ticket to ensure they are classified as Refund Request and Cancellation.
  • Mark the ticket Resolved.
  • In the About Section, input the current date issued refund – membership expired i.e.
    Apr 14/20 issued refund – membership expired. Save.


Processing Partial Refunds


If a user did not apply the discount code, in PayPal, instead of processing a refund, send them a Payment instead. This will ensure that the refund is not recorded in aMember and will not expire their membership.


In the top menu in PayPal, select Money. Select Send or request money and enter the PayPal email address. On the next screen, ensure the funds are in in US dollars.


Our Tesla Themes account contains PLN currency as Erick was unable to change this after we acquired Teslathemes. (With PLN currency, the ',' is used instead of a decimal point '.' 


Change Paying for an item or service to Sending to a friend -- this ensures the member is not charged any PayPal fees. (Note that you still have to use the ',' instead of the decimal point '.' in US dollars -- it still reads/converts as a decimal point. Fill in the US dollar amount and under Note put in Partial Refund for discount coupon code not applied (for example).


Select Continue and select Send money now.


For Stripe partial refunds, try to do the same i.e. ask them for a PayPal email address to send the funds to (again, so that we do not expire the membership in aMember). Should they not have a PayPal account, ask them for their mailing address and let them know that we will be sending the payment by check during our next payment schedule (either the 1st or the 15th of the month). Give all the details to the Business Manager, so that the payment can be included in the next monthly payment schedule.