The Secret To Chargeback Management

Here’s a startling figure: nearly one in four online shoppers in the US, Australia, and the UK have filed a dispute in the past 12 months. All totaled, chargebacks cost merchants an estimated $117.47 billion in 2023.

Unfortunately, many merchants still see chargebacks as an unavoidable “cost of doing business.” From a strictly numbers perspective, though, they could be right. Merchants who choose to confront the issue are usually met with a discouragingly low success rate. It’s estimated that fewer than one-third of chargebacks are reversed; as a portion of all chargebacks issued, this is a mere 12%. Representment requires a lot of time and energy, but a return on investment is rarely achieved.

Those numbers can be very discouraging. However, most chargeback management challenges stem from a single fundamental mistake: over- relying on reason codes to identify the true source of each dispute. 

Managing chargebacks requires knowing the real reason claims are filed. That information is seldom found by blindly trusting in reason codes, though. Taking reason codes at face value typically means misallocating resources, resulting in merchants’ wasting time and money fighting the wrong problem. 

Through years of experience and practical application, Chargebacks911® has proven that merchants must consistently look past symptoms to find the true causes of chargebacks. This understanding can change the entire concept of chargeback management.