Online Return Policies
If you paid by credit card, file a dispute with the credit card company. They will credit you the money immediately while they investigate. The burden of proof will then be on the merchant. Keep your documents handy in case you need them: USPS receipt, proof of delivery, copies of all correspondance, etc. File the credit card chargeback now, because there are time limits. The FTC has more information.
"On reflection there are financial products that do what you want, whole-life insurance policies that guarantee an annual dividend calculation on some index with a ceiling and floor.  So you will have a return within a defined minimum and maximum range.   There are a lot of opinions on the internet on this.  This Consumer Reports article is balanced These have a reputation for being bad for the consumer compared to buying term life and investing in a mutual fund separately, but if you want the guarantee (or are a ""moral hazard"" for a life insurance policy, closer to death than you appear on paper) it may be a product for you.   If you're very wealthy, there is an estate tax exploit in insurance death benefits that can make this an exceptional shield on assets for your heirs, with the market return just the gravy." There's a cool calculator at Money Chimp that lets you plug in a start and end year and see what the compound annual growth rate of the S&P 500.  The default date range of 1871 through 2010 gives a rate of 8.92% for example. Something you need to take into account when comparing returns to a whole life policy is what happens to the cash value in your policy when you die.  Many of these policies are written so that your beneficiaries only get the face value of the policy, and the insurance company keeps the cash value. Organize your expenses in order of the rate of return, and pay them in that order.  By far the highest rate of return on your list is: Nowhere else are you going to see an immediate 100% return (or 50%, depending on the company's matching policy) on every dollar you allocate to this pot. Second would probably be: Money that you do not allocate here will usually incur a 15%-29% penalty.  Outside of large expenses like a home, education, or a reasonable car, you never want to pay to use your own money (and borrowed money is still yours, remember that someday you have to pay all of it back).  Avoiding a negative rate of return (interest) can be just as beneficial as finding a high positive rate of return on an investment. Continue down the list determining what must be paid first, and what the highest rates are in the immediate future and the long run.  Meanwhile, live within your means, and set aside a portion of your monthly income towards things like a rainy day fund (up to a level which is not touched when reached).  Additional savings through work or your personal investments should not be neglected (money saved early and compounded is worth many times what a dollar saved down the road will gain) especially if you are young in your career. If you do go the online route (there's TONS of information out there on how to launch an e-store) make sure you're aware of the caveats. Amazon sellers for example can be shafted pretty hard on returns, as policy generally dictates that you eat the costs. If you don't have a lot of capital this could be back-breaking.   Don't let that discourage you, though! You could make a decent business essentially just setting up an online storefront and drop shipping items from elsewhere, which could fund the capital needed to open a brick and mortar shop.  To answer your question directly, what everyone else has said is definitely important and correct but don't ignore the smaller things like the fact that you could have a page that presents the items better and makes things look more appealing/luxurious, and the fact that not everyone punches every item they're considering buying into Google to compare. Decent marketing can go a long way (depending on what you're selling, at least) As consumers, we need to demand licenses for content which state that they cannot be revoked unless there is a demonstrated violation of the terms of service. Those violations should have to be specifically enumerated and provided in writing to the licensee. Required? No. It would be a good selling point though.  If you do offer an international multi-year guarantee, make it clear that your customers are required to retain proof of purchase and cover any international shipping costs. Brokerage firms must settle funds promptly, but there's no explicit definition for this in U.S. federal law. See for example, this article on settling trades in three days. Wikipedia also has a good write-up on T+3. It is common practice, however. It takes approximately three days for the funds to be available to me, in my Canadian brokerage account. That said, the software itself prevents me from using funds which are not available, and I'm rather surprised yours does not. You want to be careful not to be labelled a pattern day trader, if that is not your intention. Others can better fill you in on the consequences of this. I believe it will not apply to you unless you are using a margin account. All but certainly, the terms of service that you agreed to with this brokerage will specify the conditions under which they can lock you out of your account, and when they can charge interest. If they are selling your stock at times you have not authorised (via explicit instruction or via a stop-loss order), you should file a complaint with the S.E.C. and with sufficient documentation. You will need to ensure your cancel-stop-loss order actually went through, though, and the stock was sold anyway. It could simply be that it takes a full business day to cancel such an order. I have encountered this too, and nearly every month the downloaded transactions do not match up with the statement balances. In my experience it isn't necessarily because of transactions changing later; I have seen discrepancies for the following reasons: So what to do about it? So far I've been manually reconciling with the itemized statement each month. For me refunds are rare so the differences are easy to spot. Side Note: I see you are using the micropayments fee schedule. Since you don't have the default I'm sure you know that PayPal offers 2 different schedules: Some quick algebra tells us that if your average item sold is more than $11.90, then you are better off with option 1. You are apparently using option 2 even though all of the charges in your example are $20 or more. If your example numbers are indicative of your average sale, you could probably save some money by changing to option 1. Note that the reason I say probably rather than definitely is because when you have refunds you don't get the fixed fee back. So right now you only lose 5 cents per refund, whereas you would lose 30 cents per refund if you switch. You'll have to run the numbers for your average sale price and consider your refund rate to know which is best for you.