That seems a bit sketchy to me - black-mailing merchants into signing up for your "service" of not sending them chargebacks?! Maybe you should explain why it's not.
Merchants don't need to sign up to resolve chargebacks. If we receive one, we'll send them links to resolve it before it gets sent to the banks. They can choose not too respond and it becomes a normal chargeback. Even if they do respond - all they have to do is acknowledge they're making a refund or change the customer's mind.
The basic resolution service is free for merchants. They only have to pay or even sign up if they want to use any of the premium features to help them reduce future chargebacks. Hopefully this isn't too dodgy :)
I definitely think we need to be more upfront about what we get out of it. A lot of people seem skeptical when they first see the site.
I came here ready to seriously hate on you, but now I love what you are doing. :)
Sometimes customers see their credit card bill, decide they don't want the service anymore, and instead of calling our number (printed on the credit card statement) or logging into their account to unsubscribe, they just call the credit card company and ask them to stop payment. It's really frustrating, because we gladly refund money if people aren't happy with our product.
Anyway, the issue is that sometimes the simplest thing for a user to do is call the number on their bill and ask for that charge to go away.
If you could partner with the credit card companies, and get your contact information or url listed on bills, that would be a HUGE win for you, and for startups like us. And if you could somehow save the credit card companies money, or even make them money, it could be a win for them to.
Whatever you decide to do, good luck. And post back again if there's anything startups can do to help you. :)
Need to fix up our copy though to make it more obvious what we're trying to do.
As for helping - if you register your startup at https://www.chargeback.cc/business it'll ensure that we can reach you if we receive a chargeback for your business.
Absolutely. We've found that under the existing chargeback system only 21% of claims are decided in the merchant's favour.
We started ChargeBack.cc with the aim to level the playing field a little more. Under the existing chargeback system in most cases the merchant receives very little information about what has gone wrong and who the customer is. Our aim is to use data to help merchants resolve chargebacks with less cost to themselves. By keeping the chargeback outside of the banking system we take away a lot of risk and cost from fee, fines etc... so that's one step. The next step is to give merchants the tools to provide the best response to the customer. Yes, it's still not going to be equal, but hopefully it'll help merchants spend less time, less money and generally get a better result than they used to.
Yes, this definitely needs some clear explanations. Without it, a suspicion raises that it is some kind of scheme to abuse chargebacks at the cost of merchants, and I as a consumer would not want to be a part of it - it would only lead to me paying higher prices.
However, if it is an attempt to reduce high costs of chargebacks that the banks usually create - this is a most welcome development that has potential to make this market more sane, which is great.
It is better if charge backs are seen as somewhat of an inconvenience to do, so customers will think more about if they really want to chargeback. Lots of things can and do go wrong in ecommerce, if anyone slightly annoyed reached for a chargeback rather than trying to resolve an issue with the merchant it would be a big hit for merchants.
it is actually worse than that. There is certain type of online customer that will literally click through "Interested->Purchase->Yes->Confirm>Pay>Done" without every really looking at what they purchased or why they did so in the first place.
After they realize what they actually purchased which is a legitimate product but not appropriate for the customer, they just uses the chargeback process to get their money back.
it is actually worse than that. There is a certain type of customer that will click through the whole process like you describe, and be perfectly satisfied with their purchase but not remember the name of the merchant. Then when it comes time to pay the credit card bill, it's an 'unrecognized charge' and they do a chargeback. They don't look through their email receipts and try to figure out what they've bought, they just initiate a chargeback blindly. fortunately it's fairly easy to fight these as a merchant, but it still takes valuable time.
Slightly less worse than that (sorry to break pattern), but another irritating example: it wasn't them that made the purchase, it was their son, husband, niece, whatever; I often get people sending me threatening e-mails about how I stole money from them, when in fact they share their credit card, PayPal account, etc. with other people and didn't have the courtesy to ask "anyone else know what this is?" before going all ballistic and demanding their money back.
Recognition issues are comparatively easy to fight (unless it was an Amex payment, as they charge merchants more to get more screwed over) but you still get dinged with the chargeback fee and potentially a higher discount* rate because of the larger percentage of payments that have been charged back.
* Despite the name, you want the lowest discount rate you can get: it's the fee charged by your acquiring bank on top of interchange, and is basically the only thing in credit card payments that you have any ability to negotiate. As you'd expect, having more chargebacks hinders your ability to get the discount rate lowered.
chargeback only works because most users don't know it exists. If you start telling people all they have to do to get their money back from a merchant is to click a button, it won't be long before credit card companies are forced to get rid of it. please don't abuse this.
The goal with ChargeBack.cc is to divert unhappy customers away from the traditional chargeback system and into direct contact with their merchant. It is backed by sending unresolved disputes through the banks, but if we get to that stage I consider the chargeback failed on our behalf.
The banks will put you in direct contact with the merchant. From a merchant's perspective, your service is just another unnecessary middleman to deal with. The damage you're doing is advertising the chargeback feature. You are encouraging users to initiate chargebacks (whether through your service or not), which is not a good thing.
You're probably going to get a cease and desist letter at some point if you haven't already talked with the various financial institutions and have contacts there... you're almost certainly violating their terms of service (and maybe people filing through you are too).
You might want to be proactive about reaching out and making some contacts with the financial institutions.
Or maybe not, maybe it's OK. Just uninformed intuition there.
Also, you probably want to add some pretty serious language in bold saying "You must be telling the truth, not telling the truth here can cause serious harm, etc."
You probably also want to do some basic confirmation of a person's identity so you don't get whacky results. Ask for a phone number maybe, and occasionally spot check calls? I could see this being used for pranking, harassment, or inappropriate use (disgruntled employee, uninformed spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend, etc).
I've spoken to a few financial instituions. The general consensus seems to be that we're not doing anything they didn't wish customers did already - which is contact the merchant for a refund before creating a chargeback. We've been told that in only around 18% of chargebacks have the customers even told the merchant they have a problem before filing the chargeback.
I do expect someone along the line will have a problem with it, in which case we don't offer services for customers with that institution (after attempting to change their mind!).
We do have a layer of manual checks on each chargeback before they are processed. I like the idea of spot phone calls though - might add that in!
I do too, and I wish people would realize that we practically trip over ourselves to issue refunds whenever they are requested, because we want to avoid chargebacks at all costs.
This business will fail even though the idea to improve the chargeback process is a good one (for both merchants and customers).
Most customers don't know what a chargeback is. Those who do will never find your site. Only if you sell your service to the credit card companies will this work.
That seems to be how BillGuard (a site that seems to have a similar purpose) is attempting to play this: to provide a service to users, but really attempt to get the ear of banks as a value-add to their online offerings.
I've never had trouble with chargebacks, personally. I try the merchant, and if they don't play ball, I contact my card issuer. It's been pretty painless, so I don't see the point of this service. Is my experience just abnormal?
I think it depends on your credit card company. American Express is well-known for very good customer service and easy no hassle chargebacks. My Bank of America card was a bit more of a hassle though trying to find the correct form to fill out online then they had to mail me papers and I had to sign them and send them back and talk to 3 different people.
How is this different from BillGuard.com? (edit:) Well, I mean, for the features this site offers; BillGuard also seems to scan your bills proactively trying to help you deal with charges, but at the end of the process seems to be fairly similar: I (the merchant) receive an e-mail from them rather than a chargeback, combined with information that might be useful to look into the matter and fix the problem. (I only started dealing with BillGuard yesterday, so I don't know much about them yet, and certainly not much about this new site.)
The concepts are similar, but the implementations are quite different. In order to use BillGuard you must sign up for constant monitoring of your credit card. ChargeBack.cc is more of an a la carte service - you only use it when you want to perform or resolve a chargeback.
"In order to use BillGuard you must sign up for constant monitoring of your credit card" - simply not true. Anyone can file a dispute, without signing up.
How would consumers find out about you? If I buy something online, I would call merchant first, then bank. How would I find out to use you first vs. going to merchant and/or bank? Thanks!
In my experience as a merchant, disputes can be very time sensitive (i.e. travel cancellations). On one hand, finding out about a misunderstanding from you (rather than a chargeback fax two months later) may allow a much easier dispute resolution and be so be valuable to a merchant. But on the other hand, customers who cancel/complain by charging back instead of calling the merchant may therefore lose a chargeback because they miss an agreed deadline. Adding your service as a middleman could lead to further missed deadlines.
This is especially true since any good merchant privacy policy/PCI DSS would of course prevent them from discussing anything with you without direct approval from the customer first - and if they did that, they may as well discuss the issue direct anyway.
Lastly, the toughest chargebacks can take months to resolve. Help with that (as a merchant) would be very useful(and so I can imagine you providing a compelling service), but are you really committing to take on a potentially complex issue for the customer? And wouldn't it be a conflict to represent both parties? Still, a tool that eases the admin of chargebacks could be great for both sides...
I like the service (just used mailinator to test it) but in the end I'm left with the feeling there is some hidden cost to me. I'd like if it was clear that it was a free service for me.
I notice you are Australian? Or have you localised your site really well?
>You must not modify, adapt or hack the Service or modify another website so as to falsely imply that it is associated with the Service, ChargeBack.cc, or any other ChargeBack.cc service.
You must not do illegal stuff?
>ChargeBack.cc reserves the right to update and change the Terms of Service from time to time without notice
Please change your policy on this, tos-dr.info will likely rate that section badly.
Have yet to get a notice as a "merchant" but I love the experience as a consumer.
The feedback about the "hidden cost" is great. I've heard that a lot. I definitely need to communicate somehow that we attempt to up-sell merchants with premium services and use the chargeback essentially as a lead to talk to them.
Yup, Australian :) Although the site does localise to the US and UK as well.
There will be a short delay before the merchant notification emails come out. We put them through a degree of manual approval and due to load from HN traffic it may take some time for them to be fully processed.
I think a page called "Who we are" [1] should answer that question, and not describe "what we do" (again). Especially with something involving such sensitive information.
I think there is a big need for this type of service. The majority of my transactions are fine, but there are times when I have a problem and getting it resolved is a huge hassle. Like last month when the NYTimes charged me $15 but a bug in their database prevented me from actually using my account. Took 2 painful hours to get a refund.
In those cases I assume the merchant has better things to do as well, and it seems like a service like this could offload some work from their support staff and, by adding things like exit surveys, turn those small number of bad experiences into positive, constructive experiences for all parties.
Essentially the basic chargeback resolution is free, but we charge merchants to access additional tools like exit surveys, the ability to configure questions on chargebacks for their business. Also we're working on a set of tools to help merchants reduce chargebacks in general - like domains to put on credit card receipts, that type of thing.
The value is that each chargeback is a lead to a business with a chargeback problem :)
This is the online equivalent of "protection" money the mafia asks for when they say they're going to burn down your store if you don't pay them.
I applaud making it easier for people to file chargebacks but shame on your business model.
Edit: after reading the explanation given below perhaps the business model is not as bad as it first seems - if that's the case, you need to make it more clear! It looks like you are encouraging people to file chargebacks and then shaking down the merchants for money with the threat of the chargeback getting filed if they don't pay you.
Maybe using the word "protection" on the business page was a bad idea. Merchants don't need to pay us to resolve chargebacks. We just try to make their services better in the future through premium data services. Please see this comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4799225
you're also not being honest with your users. you're not actually filing chargebacks on their behalf, at least not at first. you're asking for their permission to harass/spam/threaten the merchants they have a problem with - then filing a chargeback if you don't get what you want.
