r/chargebacks

I run a made-to-order fashion brand doing ~$175K/year. Built it from scratch, profitable, growing. Never received funding. Everything from my savings. And right now chargebacks are threatening to shut the whole thing down.

Here’s what most people don’t tell you about chargebacks as a small business:

It’s not just the money. When your chargeback ratio crosses a threshold, your payment processor flags you. I use Shopify. Too many flags and they close your merchant account. No merchant account means you literally cannot accept payments. Business over, not because your product is bad, but because a handful of customers discovered they could dispute a charge and get free merchandise.

Made-to-order makes it worse. My pieces are custom. By the time someone files a chargeback, the garment has already been produced to their measurements, shipped, and received. I’ve seen people wear the item and still dispute the charge. There’s no inventory to restock. That’s pure loss every single time.

The dispute process is stacked against small businesses. You submit evidence, you fight it, and half the time the bank sides with the cardholder anyway regardless of proof. It takes hours of your time per case. Hours I don’t have.
I’m now having to rethink my entire payment structure: deposits, contracts, everything!! just to protect myself from bad actors.

Has anyone navigated this? What actually worked ? Stripe, a different processor, contracts, anything?

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I am looking to tighten up my store’s fraud detection and I am currently exploring velocity checks. I want to set up some automated rules to catch suspicious activity before it turns into a chargeback, but I want to be careful not to create friction for legitimate customers.

I am considering implementing the following specific rules

• Limiting the number of allowed transactions from a single device within a 24-hour period.

• Capping the total dollar amount that can be transacted from a single account within a specific time frame.

• Restricting the number of login attempts from the same IP address within a one-hour window.

Exactly how many transactions or logins do you allow before you block or flag an order for manual review? Have you found a good way to handle normal spikes in customer behaviour like holiday shopping or massive sales without triggering these rules? What tools or apps are you using? Are you relying on native platform tools like Shopify's built-in Fraud Analysis or have you had better luck with third-party apps?

Just lost $400 to a chargeback on an order that was delivered exactly how it should’ve been. Tracking shows it arrived, everything went smooth, no issues during shipping, and the customer was completely normal in messages.

Then out of nowhere, their kid didn’t like the color. I don’t get it. You try to run things properly fast shipping, good communication and it still doesn’t protect you. I’ve even tried saving everything before: screenshots, order timelines, packaging photos, even recording parts of fulfillment at one point.

Now every notification feels a bit stressful, like it could be another one coming in. It’s not even just the money, it’s the feeling that you can do everything right and still lose. What makes it worse is how random it feels. Some orders go perfectly, then one like this shows up weeks later and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

Feels like selling is just funding entitled returns at this point. need to stop feeling like the worlds biggest sucker. Anyone cracked the code on spotting these disasters before they file ?

Is anyone else dealing with an increase of AI in their chargebacks? Customers submitting AI edited photos with AI script to win chargebacks for "item not as described".

To give context: I bought a trading course that was supposed to be a lifetime but I lost access after 2 years.. I emailed the guy and messaged on Snapchat and Instagram and eventually got blocked. My info wasn’t in the database anymore…

It was lifetime access..

I paid through PayPal with my Bank of America credit card

Not really sure how to fully explain this but I believe my BetMGM and bank acct was somehow corrupted or got into. I enjoy betting on college basketball so I did so up into March madness but mostly conference tournaments, I hit a 12k win off of 100$ (really proud on it) and I decided that was my peak and deleted BetMGM. At that point I had ballpark 17-18k in my savings. The next day I lent around 5k to my uncle who lost his job recently to help out and I got a receipt from the bank so I had an idea of how much I had. Worth noting, other than college basketball betting, I’m extremely stingy and save every penny I can whenever I can. So I knew I had 11ish thousand in the bank so admittedly I just lived off of my paychecks and quit checking my bank acct. fast forward to early last week and I decided to check my bank acct due to my card declining while getting groceries (definitely shouldn’t have) and I see I only had like 1.5k in my saving and -100$ in my checkings. I immediately changed my password to my online banking and deactivated my card, after looking into it there was easily 9-10k of charges to BetMGM even though I hadn’t used it in almost 2 months, not only that but there was easily 100+ transactions moving money from savings to checking. I immediately started disputing charges and I emailed BetMGM support as well as my bank, I got a response from BetMGM and they said it came from my device and IP address, but on almost 90% of those charges was during times that I was in class (college) or at work (night shift 7p-7a at nursing home) and the other 10%ish was times that I was sleeping. Now I understand that this is extremely dumb of me to not check my acct and so on but I knew I had money so for the first time in my life I wasn’t stressing over it. Well, I now got an email from BetMGM regarding the chargebacks from my bank (they have completed roughly half the disputes and credited me already for them) and the email said they would deactivate my account and send it to collections and that would negatively affect my acct. Now I have 0 clue how this is possible, the only conclusion I came to is that I had an old laptop that was stolen(about 2 months ago) that was logged into BetMGM and my banking app online, could they have looked at my info and used a von for my address? I don’t want this to show on my credit but I can’t just let that much money go. What do I do?

Due to what situation happened in Mid East, airline allowed for full refund, where my flight was supposed in March. But since I booked my flight via OTA, the refund only received partially. Reconfirmed with airline, they said it falls under disruption policy and eligible for full refund. But OTA said, it is voluntary, hence cancellation fee is applied. No idea how to get the remaining refund. I’ve already report to several auth, but some just closed my case and did not want to attend it. I just think about the chargeback, will it apply in my situation?

Hi,

I’m dealing with a complicated return dispute with a Chinese company and wanted some advice before proceeding with a chargeback under Mastercard.

I bought a 3D scanner and accessory (for $400+) from the company’s official store. They advertised a 7-day return & refund policy. I requested within that window, and they agreed in writing to accept full return of both items.

However, after agreeing to the return, the process became extremely difficult.

1. They demanded $200 for the return shipping + import duties on the returned goods. The actual shipping cost is nowhere near $200.

2. They suggested I resell the products in their Facebook group, since “the return is expensive.”

3. I asked them 3 separate times whether the accessor will be accepted as long as there was no other damage. They only kept replying “the item can be returned” and “refund will be issued after inspection.”

During the negotiation, they secretly modified the product page to add a new clause saying the accessory is non-returnable once assembled. Luckily, I was able to retrieve the original product page.

I still have the items with me because a) the return conditions were intentionally left vague and 2) they are not sending me any return documentation that would make the shipping of the returned goods tax-exempt.

So… I’m stuck in this very nuanced position where the merchant says they accepted the return, but the actual refund conditions remain ambiguous, and I’m worried they’ll reject the refund after I ship the products. What’s stopping them from claiming that the item was not in good condition? (I’ve tried it once to test before deciding to return due to poor quality.)

What would you do? Continue to negotiate or file for a chargeback, accepting the risk in the ambiguity here? Post reviews all over the internet?

TLDR

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VERY LONG AND FRUSTRATING story short. I submitted a charge for a service I didnt sign up for. The merchant says they honored it and I can see they deleted the services and refunded, yet my bank says that they never sent my money back. I have tried getting invoices but nothing seems to be enough. What do I do? I have heard the better business bureau is a joke. I really appreciate any guidance