Just curious to know if there are any members out there who are in a Customer Support Manager roll that have to deal with membership renewal fees. Our platform indicates clearly when signing up that the membership auto-renews if it is not canceled by the renewal date, and that membership fees are nonrefundable if cancellations are on/after the renewal date.

I'm looking for a short and sweet email template that reiterates to customers why we cannot simply just gift refunds away all the time because they didn't read the membership terms clearly provided to them from the get-go. Denying refunds obviously makes most customers angry, so I'm looking for a template with tone that somewhat softens the blow.

Just for further insight, we are a small startup so giving away refunds as if money were growing on trees is something we simply cannot due. Instead, I always offer company credit that can be used at any time. The only con to this is if the customer doesn't want to use the service anymore, the company credit is essentially not useful to them.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Templates you could share with me? Our CS software used is ZenDesk.

Thanks!