While other magicians may have mentioned the "money-back guarantee" well before him, the first one I was aware of was Dave Dee. I think Dave came onto the scene somewhere around 1993, though the money-back thing wasn't pushed by him until some years later. Dave was known for taking other people's ideas, sometimes with attribution/ sometimes not, and just regurgitating them back to magicians.

I don't believe in running unless someone is chasing me. That's my motto. You do as you please.

Personally, I don't use or want to use a money-back gurantee mainly because there are a ton of variables, some of which are totally beyond your control.

You're working an outdoor festival. There's a light drizzle and hardly anyone shows up. You have 5 people in the audience, no children, and you were hired to perform your children's show. You're guranatee states - - ALL THE CHILDREN WILL BE LAUGHING.

Or, sometimes you just get a dead audience. You have a socko show you've been working on for the last decade. You feel good because you know your comedy material and effects have been perfected in hundreds of performances over the last 10 years. The following is a made up story, but it highlights what can wrong when offering a money-back gurarantee. You are to perform 3 shows at a festival on a Sunday. The organizer wants your first show to start at 11:00 am, but you know people are still just leaving church at that hour or they're still sleeping. You gurantee EVERYONE WILL LOVE THIS SHOW, but your first show has a light crowd and your performances comes across as being good, but not great. However, your last two performances are terrific. The sponsor only sees your first show, isn't impressed and wants a refund.

This is why I don't offer show gurantees.

Gerry

Gerry - And how many of those do you expect to actually experience? I mean, experience all the way to having a refund demanded?

I still believe that being able to make such an offer will bring in more money than you will lose.

So don't put the guarantee on your website ... instead, keep it "in your pocket" to use as a value-added feature when it might be just enough to make the sale. Then define, along with the client, exactly what "satisfaction" means. Develop your "potential client character analysis" skills enough to tell, as well as anyone can, whether they have the potential to be "customers from hell". Always the possibility of error, of course, and the callers who intend to screw you from the outset have also had years to perfect their "gotcha" skills, but really they are relatively few.

Ross,

I hear you.

Being in this business for many years, I think I can spot most "customers from hell" from the onset. They're usually the ones that start bickering about price, want a discount and then start making demands before you even arrive for the actual show. When that happens, and again cases like this are so rare, I turn down the booking or will excuse myself from the booking if I feel that this could really be a bad experience.

I knew of one performer who used to use the word SAFE in his parental publication advertisements. To me, why would you even have to mention that? Of course your show should be safe for children. It reminded me of the patter line to Arnold Furst's FRESH FISH SOLD TODAY.

Like others have said here, there is no right or wrong answer. Personally I just prefer not to run if no one is chasing me.

Gerry

How does it bring in money?

I've actually considered posting a link to a copy of my child abuse clearance form on my web site! I decided not to for the same reasons you are all talking about. Don't run when you're not being chased. But I wonder sometimes how many prospects look at our web sites and wonder..... Its very sad but its a reality.

Last year I redesigned my web site to jointly feature my wife's face painting and balloons along with me. We are clearly a husband and wife team. I believe this combats the creep factor a bit.

How do clowns overcome the creep factor?

If you were good at managing expectations, then you wouldn't need a guarantee in the first place - lol.

Ken when I viewed your site, I actually thought about the child abuse clearance and why you didn’t have a copy of it on there.
Not saying you need it, you already have a lot of coverage, but I did think about it.

Like it or not, when offering to work with kids you already being chased. Nowadays the bad thoughts are already planted by others.
The bad thoughts are already in the mind. Good marketing doesn’t plant thoughts; it removes thoughts that are already there.

How do clowns overcome the creep factor? To a point they never do, those who don’t like clowns just never call them. Those who are on the fence,
debating hiring one, must be sold that under the makeup is a good trustworthily person that understands the clowning business.


Another argument For the guarantee and what some don’t understand is that in some market areas you need to distance yourself from the competition.
The birthday mom, the office girl, or the church group, doesn’t have any experience in hiring an entertainer. They have no idea who they dealing
with when viewing a website. Maybe it’s the 12 year that knows some magic tricks? Maybe it is the local bad clown, the ole drunk magic guy from the bar,
or the magician that doubles as the tattooed man in the sideshow. The last thing a mom or office manager wants is for a drunk or serial killer
to show up at the door on party day.

Oh sure they could call some references to find out about you, but why waste your time on something that doesn’t feel right from the beginning.
They need some sort of guarantee about moving forward with the choosing.

We often don’t think much about it, but the competition is not just the other magicians either. Not by a long shot. You up against every bad/good buying experience
the buyers have made. Your competition is the repair man, the cashier, the bank, the movies……..


But again and like others have said, it’s not a one size fits all decision. Each business or each area may need something different.

Tom

Absolutely Tom. I am asking to find out and learn not to bust someone's chops. I know nothing of birthday parties so my opinion on them is fairly invalid.

ATTENTION! EXPOSING OF MAGICIAN'S SECRET!

This comment from Mindpro is pure gold, and I'm serious about saying that. It's the solution to the whole problem being discussed here, and to many others of this kind. How often have you discussed with a buyer every point you want to make, and on show day they will either claim "you never said that" or else demonstrate that what they expected was some construct they had, unspoken, in their imagination?

Unfortunately, the managing of expectations is a skill that takes years to learn well, and there's no "perfecting it" (because ... remember that old saying? As soon as they make something idiot-proof, somebody makes a better idiot.)

Why would you even raise the issue?

It's like saying "I'm going to use a PERFECTLY ORDINARY deck of cards ...."

Bingo!

Gerry