I think it would be useful if at least the first email could be read without a subscription. Just to understand the content, tone of voice, and so on. I believe the conversion rate would be higher after that first read.
For example, charging based on customer revenue (like ChartMogul). It doesn’t really fit our case, but I just don’t like this model overall.
We also avoided usage-based pricing tied to API calls or account activity.
We never tried monetizing through ads or selling anonymized data — and we never plan to.
And unlike many SaaS companies, we never forced existing customers to accept price increases. I know some businesses calculate churn vs. uplift and decide it’s worth it. We’ve stayed away from that path.
No, as far as I know. But as a merchant, in theory you can block that customer from making future payments. But probably only their specific card or email.
I’d say if a chargeback does happen, the chances of winning =0, unless you can convince the customer to withdraw it. I realized this especially after my last dispute, where I was 100% sure I would win. But that’s it. I have no faith in the process anymore. What’s left is just the internal struggle, I always want to respond to something unfair and try to prove my case. But here it’s not worth doing.
Sorry, I probably misunderstood and confused things. I was of course talking about the Apple App Store, when users file complaints about the app itself.
Well, I treat other companies and people the way I’d like to be treated myself. Knowing that a chargeback is unpleasant and creates extra costs, I always first write to their support.
In the post I mentioned that we build several products. I didn’t want to list them all, because I always feel a bit awkward about self-promotion. My goal with the post was to spark a dialogue, not to advertise.
RE pricing page: yes, we do state that there’s a minimum of 5 seats. But there are no chargebacks here, since we don’t take a card upfront and we don’t bill in a hidden way. In the worst case, if you missed or didn’t read that detail, you can simply decline and not subscribe after the trial. You’ll see the price in Stripe before giving us your card. And if you prefer, you can stay on the free plan for up to 5 ppl.
As I mentioned in the article, this is extremely rare for us, but it has happened a couple of times. And that’s where I start having questions and frustration about the process itself.
Email about an upcoming charge is automatically sent a couple of days in advance, that’s Stripe standard feature. The other question is whether the user actually check their email (or which email they registered with).
As for cancellation, the problem is that even though it’s easy to cancel a subscription, chargebacks usually happen afterwards. It doesn’t matter how simple cancellation is, what matters is that the user first cancel and then still goes and files a chargeback.
Neobanks definitely have this feature. For example Revolut. There’s a “Block future payments” button, and once you click it, no more charges from that merchant will go through.
We always issue a refund if a customer asks, or at least try to find a compromise if the payment was made a very long time ago. In that case, it’s usually more about a pro-rated refund.
But recently I asked for a refund from a very popular project management system, and it was a nightmare, an absolutely terrible experience. After that, I gained a new level of respect for our own support team ))
I know for sure that if users start filing complaints against you with Apple, they can simply ban your account entirely and for long. Some companies never recover from that and end up shutting down.
Yes, we’ve had a few cases where people tried card testing through us. But we noticed quickly and introduced the proper limits. In general, if you redirect the user to Stripe Checkout after clicking Subscribe button, all of that should be handled by Stripe itself and not affect your account. I guess ))
But this is a slightly different story. With chargebacks, almost every time it was just a customer not wanting to admit fault. What’s strange is that they could have simply written to us and asked for a refund. But I guess they realized they were in the wrong, so instead of contacting us, they went straight to their bank.
Yes, that’s pretty much how I look at it. And in all of our products I do everything possible to keep chargebacks to an absolute minimum, sometimes even making decisions that aren’t the most profitable from a business perspective.
When I look at some other companies, I often see all kinds of "shady" tricks that clearly boost revenue, but also inevitably increase the number of cases like this.
TL;DR:
We run multiple SaaS products on Stripe. Even with clear renewal reminders, invoices and easy cancellations, some users skip refunds and go straight to chargebacks.
A $10 payment ended up costing us $43.95 recently. Banks almost always side with the cardholder, and the only reliable “win” I’ve seen is when the customer withdraws the dispute themselves.
So here’s my question to the community:
What’s really going on here? Why do banks completely ignore the terms customers agreed to when they subscribed, or even in cases where the claims are obviously false? And why aren’t customers required to provide any proof at all?
What actually prevents someone from using a SaaS product, filing chargebacks every time they cancel, and essentially getting refunded for the last several months of usage?