In addition to the existing $15 fee every time someone files a dispute, @stripe will now start charging an <i>additional</i> $15 fee for countering the dispute, which you only get back if you win.<p>Banks constantly claw back legitimate transactions no matter what evidence you show them, so now they'll take $30 instead of $15¹.<p>This is highway robbery.<p>¹ - unless you use Stripe's Smart Disputes AI, which isn't out yet<p>Full text of their email from today in the tweet. Or here if you prefer Nitter <a href="https://lightbrd.com/ArtemR/status/1902446906640605657" rel="nofollow">https://lightbrd.com/ArtemR/status/1902446906640605657</a>
That's the dystopian future I've been scared of. LLMs (Large Language Models i.e. generators of most probable text) will be used to DECIDE if a person gets the money back or not.<p>People in command (managers) showing the lack of understanding of what an LLM is and misusing it in the worst way (another is to write to people why their insurance claims have been rejected)
I run a SaaS business, and whilst disputes are rare, I'm pretty sure most of them are from customers who forget to cancel their subscription. Rather than emailing me asking for a refund (which I'll be happy to give), these customers go straight to the dispute process.<p>Once a dispute is opened, what are my options?<p>- Send a super nice email to the customer asking to withdraw the dispute and promising to refund their payment/s<p>- Contest by submitting evidence. What evidence is there to show that the customer DIDN'T cancel a subscription?<p>Both of these processes are laborious and rarely worth the time. And regardless of outcome, the original dispute fee is not returned in my experience.<p>This feels unjust such that the psychological cost of a dispute outweighs the financial cost for me. I get that merchants should be disincentivized from engaging in dodgy businesses, but even when a merchant does everything right, disputes still happen.<p>I would like to see a simple, penalty-free option for dispute resolution, similar to:<p>1. Merchant receives notification of customer's intent to dispute. Merchant has 2 weeks to review the claim.<p>2. During this window, merchant can refund the payment/s, either accepting the dispute, or refunding as a courtesy. If payment/s are refunded, the case is closed, and no penalties are incurred (apart from transaction fees).<p>3. If the merchant contends the customer's claim or doesn't respond, the matter becomes a dispute as it exists currently. A fee is withheld, and the merchant can submit evidence within a given time. However unlike the current situation, the fee should be borne by the customer if the merchant is successful. If customers risked a penalty of opening an unsuccessful dispute (especially a non-fraud dispute), it would likely reduce the number of groundless/fake disputes.
This is bullshit. Period.<p>Stripe already made this suck with their $15 fee you get hit with for every chargeback.<p>Let me say that louder for the people in the back:<p>If a customer buys your product for $10, they use your product, then they issue a chargeback then Stripe will clawback $25. You are out 250% of your product cost without doing anything else.<p>Before this change you could dispute it and potentially get back your $10 (minus fees) but you just lost that $15 no matter what.<p>After this change you have to pay an additional $15 just to dispute it and only if you win do you get that back (but you are still "out" that initial $15). So you have to decide if you want to fight for your $10 by risking another $15.<p>Also, the dispute process is a complete farce. There is zero visibility and you can provide perfect documentation and they will still deny it.<p>There is a special place in hell for people that file fraudulent chargebacks.<p>I say all of this as someone who is favor of customer protections but chargebacks are so far tilted in the customer's favor that small businesses can get screwed easily.<p>* Pulls out soapbox *<p>And this is why I'm pro-regulation, pro-customer-protection but there /has/ to be a way to advantage the "small businesses" that every politician pays lip service to. Regulations are written blood most all of the time and are needed but treating "mom and pop"-sized businesses the same as massive corporations with armies of lawyers (that often let them avoid the regulation or blunt it) is insanity.
Man this sucks, just as I spent months integrating it into the payment pipeline of my side business app. Maybe I just shouldn't accept cards, or only through PayPal or something.
The big problem here, as mentioned in the post, is that banks (esp smaller ones) frequently reject legitimate evidence - and stripe don't allow you to go to arbitration. So it's basically asking the banks if they'd like to admit wrongdoing.
For example, we've had a bunch of fraudulent transactions that had 3DS approval - meaning we are covered by liability shift. But certain banks don't care and issue fraud chargebacks anyway!
If stripe allowed you do go to arbitration or at least helped out in keeping the banks straight, this would go down better.
To mind that Mastercard and Visa arbitration fees for merchants is $500.<p>Adyen has great docs about how disputes are handled on those two networks: <a href="https://docs.adyen.com/risk-management/chargeback-guidelines/visa-chargebacks/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.adyen.com/risk-management/chargeback-guidelines...</a> and <a href="https://docs.adyen.com/risk-management/chargeback-guidelines/mastercard-chargebacks/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.adyen.com/risk-management/chargeback-guidelines...</a>.
If Stripe Radar (has a small fee per transaction) is enabled in an account, then an early warning (before chargeback) is sent via the `radar.early_fraud_warning.created` webhook event, which can be used for a pre-emptive manual review, or an automatic refund and cancellation. No dispute fee on a refunded transaction!<p>There are services like Chargeblast, ByeDispute etc. which also help avoid disputes and chargebacks.