I read Adam’s post about a large chargeback a while ago and could completely relate to the pure helplessness felt when dealing with these.
A chargeback is when someone files a claim to get their money back from you. This is a great consumer protection device, but it can be abused.
It’s almost obscenely rare that the merchant will ever win one of these disputes. I’ve tried many times to no avail. I fully understand that this is simply a cost of doing business, but I’d still like to send a message:
As you know I own a business called House Of Rave and over the years we’ve had to deal with chargebacks. Since customer service is good and everyone gets handled properly, legitimate chargebacks are quite rare. However the occasional piece of fraud slips through the system, and it really sucks losing even $1.00 to these people.
I’m not in position to change how this entire system works, but I’d like to do something to help. Whenever I see a suspicious order, I’ll basically just Google the name, address, email etc. to see if I can find results. Based on this I can often make a judgement to send the order or not.
Inspired by Adam’s post, in the archives of the House of Rave Blog I’ve created the Chargeback and Fraud Warning Page:
We don’t get many chargebacks, but I listed two of them we’ve recieved in the last five months. I’ll list more if they come along.
This way if any other merchant Google’s some of this information, it will give them a hint that this person/address has done this before. They can make their own judgement call from there.
If you own a store or have the resources to make one of these pages, I’d suggest you do. I’m not sure if it’s worth it, but if this manages to stop even one jackass from ripping off someone else’s store, I’d be happy.