Refund rate on a $6k coaching program is running my whole margin

The delivery record is what you're missing. Every call recorded and posted to the member area, attendance logged, materials released on a set schedule with a timestamp on each release. The disputes I've seen go the other way went that way because the merchant could produce a login history showing the person accessed 40 hours of content in month three. Right now you're arguing intent and they're arguing they got nothing.

On the installment question, raising the monthly price doesn't fix it. You'll just get fewer sales at the same completion rate. The people who quit in month four quit because month four is where the work starts.

The rolling reserve is the thing to solve first, because a flagged merchant account ends the business faster than a bad completion rate does. Processors generally look at dispute ratio as a percentage of monthly transaction count, and installment billing inflates your denominator in a way that looks good until the disputes cluster. If half your cohort is on 12 monthly charges, one quitter who disputes three months is three disputes, not one. Talk to your processor about what ratio they're measuring you against and get it in writing, because the threshold and the reserve terms vary by processor and by your history with them.

On the agreement, the clause that tends to matter is the one describing what you're selling as access to instruction over a period rather than an outcome, plus a defined process for a student who wants out. Whether a given clause holds up depends on your state's consumer protection statutes and, in some states, specific rules covering business opportunity or career training sales, which can apply to coaching programs in ways educators don't expect. That's a question for a lawyer licensed where you sell, and worth asking before you rewrite anything.

The structural point in cobalt's answer is right and goes further than he took it. Month four attrition is a curriculum problem showing up in your finance report. If the program front-loads inspiration and back-loads execution, the students who bought inspiration leave exactly when they stop being inspired. Programs with better retention tend to require a small piece of real output in the first three weeks, something like a written buy box or ten actual seller conversations, because a student who has produced something is a student with sunk effort. Screening at the sale does the same work. A short call where you decline people without capital or time costs you revenue now and saves you the reserve.