Is trying to overturn chargebacks a COMPLETE waste of time for entrepreneurs?
5 comments
I think this is why most companies don't dispute anything. It's simply not worth the time. Amazon unquestionably takes pretty much any return. Not worth the support time to sort it out, ill will from the customer, bad press, whatever. Unless the lost sale really puts you out, it just seems smart to let it go.
Is it the rate which the case gets resolved in your favour or is it that it’s not worth the time and effort? If it’s the latter, some LLM flavoured automation might help.
It's both, but mostly the latter. Purely from a time-management standpoint, doing the menial clerical work of compiling all the information requiring to properly respond to a dispute -- like some kind of courtroom lawyer assistant preparing for a boring case -- is just alien to how I want to spend my time as an entrepreneur. I'd rather just click "Accept", move past it, and focus my efforts on GROWING the business -- not engaging in these trivial disputes.
FYI -- I directly asked Stripe support, is there any downside to having a default policy of "Accepting" all disputes? Does my "accept-to-challenge" ratio have any impact on my account standing, risk profile, likelihood of getting banned, etc? They said, nope! Just focus your efforts on keeping your dispute rate ITSELF low. The resolution rate is irrelevant.
FYI -- I directly asked Stripe support, is there any downside to having a default policy of "Accepting" all disputes? Does my "accept-to-challenge" ratio have any impact on my account standing, risk profile, likelihood of getting banned, etc? They said, nope! Just focus your efforts on keeping your dispute rate ITSELF low. The resolution rate is irrelevant.
I am assuming its different for everyone. I have had digital delivery products (think cd keys) that were absolutely pointless to fight.
I have also had service products and at least 50% of those are rejected even with concrete proof of the customer literally saying they received the product as advertised.
Heres what I ended up realizing. Your dispute isn't with the cc's or with stripe its with the customers bank. The bank has basically no incentive to side with your business over their customer.
I never saw that table before but that is absolutely pathetic. The best case scenario (5 stars) is a 60% chance of winning a dispute?
Depending on the amount of money I would write off disputes. Sometimes we take to small claims court and present literally the exact same evidence we do to the bank and we have won 100% of those.
I have found it is better to try and vet the customer before doing business with them but depending on the business this isn't always possible.
The system is rigged to be honest. Friendly fraud is multi billion dollar problem that banks have no motivation to solve.
I have also had service products and at least 50% of those are rejected even with concrete proof of the customer literally saying they received the product as advertised.
Heres what I ended up realizing. Your dispute isn't with the cc's or with stripe its with the customers bank. The bank has basically no incentive to side with your business over their customer.
I never saw that table before but that is absolutely pathetic. The best case scenario (5 stars) is a 60% chance of winning a dispute?
Depending on the amount of money I would write off disputes. Sometimes we take to small claims court and present literally the exact same evidence we do to the bank and we have won 100% of those.
I have found it is better to try and vet the customer before doing business with them but depending on the business this isn't always possible.
The system is rigged to be honest. Friendly fraud is multi billion dollar problem that banks have no motivation to solve.
I see literally no benefit to challenging the disputes, assuming you don't care about getting the money back and would rather not waste the time/energy on the challenge process.
The ONLY thing I might be getting wrong in my case is this: Perhaps Stripe has some kind of "internal monitoring" metrics that tracks how users respond to disputes, and maybe there's some kind of "accept vs. challenge" ratio they use to assess account standing and risk likelihood. If that is the case, my assumptions may be wrong here and this may be the wrong strategy. Would love to hear input from somebody at Stripe on this question. Wasn't the Stripe cofounder crawling around on this site last week answering some questions? Where's he at now? lol
The ONLY thing I might be getting wrong in my case is this: Perhaps Stripe has some kind of "internal monitoring" metrics that tracks how users respond to disputes, and maybe there's some kind of "accept vs. challenge" ratio they use to assess account standing and risk likelihood. If that is the case, my assumptions may be wrong here and this may be the wrong strategy. Would love to hear input from somebody at Stripe on this question. Wasn't the Stripe cofounder crawling around on this site last week answering some questions? Where's he at now? lol
1) According to Stripe, it doesn't matter if you win or lose the dispute -- the mere fact that a dispute was filed counts against your account standing in either outcome:
"Accepting disputes: You can accept a dispute, effectively agreeing that the cardholder’s reason for the dispute is valid. Accepting a dispute isn’t considered an admission of wrongdoing and is sometimes the most appropriate response. The customer has already received their refund through the dispute process—–if you agree with the refund, it’s best to accept the dispute. Take this action if you don’t intend to respond and submit evidence. Although accepting disputes doesn’t negatively affect your business any further, it’s not a viable alternative to an effective refund or returns policy. *Dispute activity is calculated based on the disputes received, not won or lost*, so dispute prevention is critical... *Remember, the card networks don’t consider how many disputes you win or lose, only how many you receive—a withdrawn dispute still counts as a dispute.*"
2) Taking the time to meticulously prepare and compile all of the evidence required to adequately respond to a dispute will likely require hours of work -- hours that could better be spent building and improving your business, AND taking action to prevent future chargebacks by improving your business systems. Depending on the dollar amount and your effectiveness as an entrepreneur, you can likely make way more money with those hours spent productively on your business than you could earn back by winning the dispute.
3) Even in the best of circumstances, you have maybe a 50/50 chance of winning the dispute. I again quote Stripe on this point:
"The following table shows the expected win percentage for each ranking. Even in the most favorable cases, it’s very difficult to overturn a disputed payment."
|Dispute Win Likelihood Ranking|Chance of Winning the Dispute| |:-|:-| |5 dots|60%| |4 dots|40%| |3 dots|25%| |2 dots|15%| |1 dots|5%|
4) My biggest argument AGAINST a blanket policy of just, accepting all disputes would have been: "By doing so, it's a de facto admission of wrongdoing, and not 'fighting against the claims' would make your account look worse, and sketchy, so you'd be more likely to get banned by your payment provider." However the quote from Stripe in point 1 seems to indicate... it doesn't really work that way. Since your dispute SUBMISSION rate (not your dispute win vs. loss ratio) is what fundamentally matters and will compromise your account standing.
I'm a big advocate of streamlining processes as much as possible, and reducing the cognitive load spent on things that don't really matter much, and that take up tons of time and mental energy. Carefully compiling reams of evidence, like a courtroom lawyer, to challenge a very rare dispute, seems like a prime candidate for something that would take a ton of time, be unlikely to end in your favor anyway, and make zero actual impact on your account standing -- since the filing of the dispute ITSELF is what compromises your payment provider account standing. So WHAT'S THE POINT?
Assuming your dispute rate is low, the money lost likely isn't going to have any ruinous impact. Plus if the rare dispute has the potential to sink your business, you're fucked anyway as far as I'm concerned. So, aside from the "moral victory" of standing up against what you believe is a phony dispute... from a practical standpoint? I think the best move, whenever you get a dispute, is to simply accept it, move on, and focus your time and energy on continuing to grow your business, improve your customer service, and do anything/everything to reduce the number of disputes you receive in the future.
What are your thoughts on this?