Fighting customers who charge back!
 

There's been a similar thread to this a while back but I want to touch on this again.
I had a member sign up today, download what he wanted and then contacted me and the biller (Epoch) to say that he could not download the content and demanded a refund.
I checked our Strongbox reports and saw that ha had in fact downloaded several GB of content so was just trying to pull a fast one. Meanwhile Epoch just refunded him without even contacting me first!
I've expressed my anger to Epoch regarding this but it seems that they are shift scared of charge backs and want to remain whiter than white!
So, how do we fight these bastards? It's these sort of people that up the content to file lockers and then post on forums.
Do we threaten to rat them out publicly on their Facebook page or something or do we remain professional and move on?
I always try and remain professional but this incident has really rattled my cage today! :(

The short version is that for fighting a chargeback, you have to get his own bank to take your side against their client. Thats not going to happen. Right or wrong is irrelevant. Move on and accept that its a cost and focus on building and growing rather than chasing 19.95.

Actually it's $39.95 and maybe I should have worded the title better. This particular customer didn't charge back. Epoch refunded him immediately in fear of a chargeback!

I don't want to fight any banks, only let customers know that we are not pushovers who allow people to rob us and just turn a blind eye!

The first step is to find out why you are having an issue with chargebacks. I've noticed that my chargebacks stay at a certain percentage from year to year so I know what's normal for my sites. They can't be avoided but should be a low percentage otherwise that's telling you something is wrong.

Someone also mentioned in another thread to create a public page that lists their info and call it a "chargeback blacklist". Mainstream companies do this all the time. Imagine their name showing up in a Google search for charging back porn. You would just be stating a fact that the person charged their membership back regardless of the reason.

What you wrote is 100% correct.

:2 cents:

I'm not having an issue with charge backs. In fact I have very little.
In this instance my gripe is with a user who downloaded what he wanted and then told us and the biller that he couldn't access the content so he could get a refund and thus what he wanted for free!
I'm angry at him and I'm angry at epoch for not running it past me first so I could at least have been given the opportunity to provide proof that he was lying.
In reality I realise that there is nothing I can do now. I'm just venting!

Send him a thank you package for signing up to your site to his house.
throw some gay magazines in there too...:2 cents:
no sense in being bitter! celebrate your customers...

This I like :thumbsup

Most CC processors will issue a refund when customers threaten to chargeback. I think they should contact the owner first so they can verify downloads. There will always be douche bags that rip your entire site and then want their money back so they can do the same thing with another site.

When this happens, I send an email to the processor's fraud department telling them to ban that person from ever joining again. He liked your content enough to join and download a bunch of videos so there's nothing stopping him from doing it again after you build up some new content.

Content theft comes in many forms...

You have his email address. contact him and politely ask when the local police can call because someone must have hacked his computer, you have ip records that state 2gb of content was downloaded, and as he couldn't download the content (as he claimed when asking for a refund) then obviously he wants to get this matter solved.. what if the person who´s hacked his wifi was downloading illegal stuff..

i like this idea, dont forget to put american grizly in there

http://a396.idata.over-blog.com/461x...ar-02small.jpg

Your problem is with Epoch.

Get another processor or stop whining.

i am annoyed by those who charge back credits on cam white labels, for instance i had the lowest revshare sign up on one white label program yesterday and today he charged back as i see.

there was nothing to download, but time to spend chatting with model or just watching the naked show, that $25 really meant a lot to him since he charged back right the day after.

We had this same problem and this is why we moved away from third party processing.
The fact of the matter is that it is not hard to get their bank to take your side (We win over 90% of chargebacks and recover the $) the problem is that your CB ratio is not based on the amount of CB's you lose is based on how many are initiated.

So because your billing on Epoch's master merch account they (and all others) will refund the clients with no questions asked because they cant afford to have a high CB ratio. They also know nothing about your site or how it works so their reps are unable to retain any clients for you and that means that your losing about 30% more then you would if you had quality billing customer service.

The only way to stop this is to get your own merch accounts and setup your own customer service team or hire a company like ASS to manage it for you but as long as your on third party billing your just going to have to suck it up because they are not going to change.

way to reply including a quote you clearly didn't read :thumbsup

lol, awesome. I'd be doing this during away-from-work-but-still-on-comp time :thumbsup

As others have mentioned the first step is to get your own merchant account, Epoch and others will generally issue refunds rather than deal with the possibility of a chargeback.

Unfortunately you will eventually realize there is a reason why they do this and that reason is that in the long run it makes more sense. Customers are increasingly aware of how easy it is to file a chargeback and ultimately they have the last say as to whether you get paid or not.

Much like being fucked in the ass, if you put up a fight it's just going to hurt more. Most merchant accounts don't charge anything or else very little when you issue a refund, but a Chargeback comes with a 25-50 dollar fine. So you can give back the $40 willingly and be out $40 or else the customer can file a dispute and you can be out the $40 plus another $25 plus have a higher CB ratio which hurts your processing history and makes it harder and more expensive for you to process transactions in the future.

If you so concerned about charge backs, do your own processing, then you can easily fight it and win

I get your frustration. I think that every processor that you allow to handle your customer service for you would have handled it the same way. The best way to overcome this is like some others have said: get your own merchant account, and hire a customer service team to handle these calls for you. Often times, you can talk customers out of a refund if you handle it properly, and even have them continue to be customers, or at least come back to you again in the future.

I'm actually the Operations Manager for Adult Support Systems, which is a leading customer service outsource solution. I would love to talk to you about how we can take care of your customers for you, increase your retention and sales, and lower your chargeback ratio. You can email me at [email protected], or add me to skype at: shauna.ass. I look forward to talking to you about this further.