So What Exactly is the 100% Satisfaction Guarantee?
What does this mean?
The top two fantasy sports sites, FanDuel and DraftKings both advertise a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee on the homepages of their respective websites.
Sure, it’s a nice little sticker to stamp on your website, but what does it really mean? Well we thought our visitors would like to know exactly what guarantees are offered by these top two brands.
You may be surprised to know the truth!
FanDuel’s 100% Satisfaction Guarantee
This is a very bold and impressive satisfaction guarantee offered to new FanDuel customers.
However, there are a couple of limitations. First off, the guarantee only applies to your VERY FIRST real money contest. So if you aren’t happy after your 2nd real money league contest, and decide you want your money back then, well sorry dude too late.
The other very important factor is that the guarantee offers a refund of a up to a maximum amount of $100. This is a pretty large amount, but just be forewarned that if you play more than a $100 on your first league, you are only guaranteed up to $100.
That’s it! Simple, clear, and quite frankly, an awesome guarantee for potential FanDuel members.
It also has the potential to be exploited – you could play a $100 contest and if you win, well you’re up almost a $100 and if you lose, well you can bitch and moan and get refunded your $100. Of course, this is an abhorrent practice which we are vehemently against. We are hoping that the amount of fraudulent douchbaggery is kept at a minimum so that FanDuel can continue to offer this excellent guarantee.
It can be a little scary making a real money deposit onto any website, so many customers will feel more comfortable having this guarantee available to them, even if it is rarely used.
So, overall, this is a real 100% Satisfaction Guarantee and we give FanDuel 5 stars!
Now, let’s take a look at DraftKing’s so-called “100% Satisfaction Guarantee”…
DraftKing’s 100% Satisfaction Guarantee
You can’t click on it and you can’t find any information on the website regarding the guarantee.
So we emailed their support and specifically asked. After a month, we never received a response… that may have been an accident so we sent another email and this time immediately received an answer… although not the information we expected…
Below is the word for word email response we received:
“Our 100% Satisfaction Guarantee does not offer a refund of any kind, however we are very proud of the product we provide for our customers and are sure that you’d enjoy your experience on the site! Please let me know if you have any additional questions.”
So the 100% Satisfaction Guarantee means that they are pretty sure you’ll like their product! Now, for the record, we agree that they offer an awesome product and anyone that likes fantasy sports is 99.99% likely to enjoy DraftKings… but does that mean they can stick a stamp on their website that states “100% Satisfaction Guarantee”?
We emailed support back to expand on their guarantee.
This was their response:
“In the event a new user is not satisfied with their experience here at DK, we will inquire as to what contributed to their poor experience and then pass it along to the appropriate departments for further review.
We are constantly reviewing user suggestions, complaints and observations; this leads us to develop and implement more user based suggestions and take corrective action on certain commonalities in which users say contributed to a poor experience.”
This is a bit better of a response, but is this really a 100% satisfaction guarantee? I don’t think it is, and it’s nothing like FanDuel’s guarantee.
We think DraftKings DOES provide an excellent service and it is very easy to use and a lot of fun. However, we are of the opinion that they can still deliver all of that and simply remove the 100% Satisfaction Guarantee stamp from their homepage. Voila!
In a new industry such as this, where FanDuel and DraftKings are battling for market share, while trying to convince the US population that this is a legal and legitimate business, why not be as upfront and honest as possible!
If DraftKings does not want to remove their 100% Satisfaction Guarantee graphic, then this is what we think they should do – offer a similar money back guarantee to FanDuel’s. But if $100 is too much to risk, they could make it $10. And similarly limit the guarantee to the first real money contest. $10 is plenty to play in a single contest to experience the software and interface, and would limit the costs related to fraud.
Sorry, we love you DraftKings, but on the specific topic of your 100% Satisfaction Guarantee, we give you two thumbs down.
(Yes, with my personal rating system, good ratings get 5 stars and bad ratings get two thumbs down!)
Draftkings Update their Website!
As of 12/2/2014, we noticed that DraftKings has changed its homepage! They no longer advertise a “Satisfaction Guarantee”, but rather a “Safe and Secure” site. This exactly what we recommended and like to think that we had a part in making this happen! See the latest screenshot of the DraftKings homepage below (and compare it to the screenshot above!) Kudos to DraftKings for removing the misleading material!
