Chargebacks

Chargebacks are up a huge percentage. I’m talking hundreds of dollars a month! What gives? Everyone is claiming either “fraud” or “unauthorized transaction”.

Are people starting to abuse the fact that they can just call their credit card company and essentially get a free meal/whatever? How can 8 people a month using stolen credit cards possibly be eating at our place? It just doesn’t seem logical, unless we are some kind of target for underground credit card thieves which I highly doubt. Do the credit card companies even give a shit if someone says “oh I didn’t buy that.”? People should go to prison for claiming bullshit fraud like this and not just get free shit whenever they want.

They are disputable but still, we lose on a lot of the disputes because the damn processor want, signature, imprint (some cards don’t have them!), they want us to check ID, get retinal scans, DNA etc etc.

It’s getting old very fast. What am I missing here? I was going to switch to square just so I can get a swipe at the door, but how is that going to even prevent someone from saying “oh that wasn’t me”?

I have been very lucky because in 12 years there has only been one charge back. If you are having hundreds per month the cost of having wireless terminals that require a PIN for the transaction would be worth it. The PIN and Chip technology has been here in Canada for quite a while and the advantage is if the person knows the PIN then the liability is on the card holder not the merchant.

Yeah it’s so strange we use to get maybe one every year or two. Now it’s 6-10 a month!

Ive had one chargeback claim. It was dropped.
8 in a month sounds like your part of some organized crime scam.
I use square and I love it. There are some little worries here and there. I save about $100 a month vs keying in cards over the phone and (this is most important) I save time by not having to wait for customer to find the card, turn on a light, read a 3 as an 8, etc. And the customer can call back and add as many items they forgot to order without having to rerun their card.
Im thinking of providing branded phone cases to my drivers, for a more pro look, and protection bc the customer had to touch the drivers expensive phone. Ive been using square almost a year now. Id never go back

We are a tourist destination and during prom (tons of high end houses are rented out around us for prom) we had a ton of chargebacks. My guess was daddy didn’t know that daughter stole his card for the weekend.

We have 2 to 3 per day, about 2K per month. 50% are out and out fraud. They have obtained a credit card number, they have a machine of some sort where they can print a card and a drivers licence with matching names and they are off to the races. They will order non stop until they card gets cancelled. The other 50% are customers who get a request from the cc company to verify their purchases and they decide to check the box that says they didn’t make a purchase from us. I gave up years ago fighting any of these. Now I just set back and enjoy it.

I all the sudden don’t feel so upset… That’s a lot. It really sucks. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to enjoy it.

I just don’t let it get to me. I used to.

My wife is a different story.

I’ve gotten 16 charge backs so far this year, where it used to be 3 or 4 per year. I guess when I compare the cost of these chargebacks to the nearly $3000 per month processing fees it’s not that big of a deal. If I get multiple ones from the same address, I stop delivering to that address.

Would video cameras help?..

Wow, I guess I am really lucky. To date I have never had even one chargeback, and I am in a heavy tourist area.
But, we take very few cards over the phone, and all 3 terminals have new E2E EMV complaint keypads, my crew does not touch a card ever.

Only 3 ever since we started taking cards about 8-9 yerars ago. Two were my employee’s mistakes back when we first started taking them entering the card info twice and the third was a kid using grandma’s card and they paid us for it.

I wonder what gives? Why would some of us get hundreds to thousands of dollars a month in chargebacks and some get 50 dollars worth in 9 years? There’s got to be something to it.

Sales/Volume? I know some of you are high volume so I’m pretty sure that’s not it.

CC processor choice? I’m thinking this is where the problem is. Maybe some are more lenient than others? What good is a phenomenal contract if you’re gonna hit me with all these chargebacks? Who are you guys using? I’m using heartland…

CC swipe/entry? We do the typical. Get the number over the phone, deliver the food, get signature/card imprint. I’d like to start swiping/chipping at the door soon.

Or maybe I’m just overthinking it all and the bottom line is we simply have more thieves in our area than the guys who never get chargebacks…

I think this is the explanation.

California is a criminal safe haven. There are no consequences for criminal behavior. Last year we passed prop 47. This measure made a huge % of felonies an instant misdemeanor. Now all drug offences and and any theft under $950 is a misdemeanor. And this prop was all made retro active. So once it passed the criminals poured out of prison early. This is the great work of our senile guv Jerry Brown. The guy loves criminals. But the people voted it in. Why would they vote such a measure in? Well the name of prop was:
" Safe schools and neighborhoods". So who doesn’t want that!

Sounds like a great way to meet the mandatory federal requirement to reduce the prison population.

That’s the excuse for it all. They could just build more prisons.

You need to switch to EMV processing. The word is out in your community that you don’t utelize it and people are taking advantage of it. It’s a situation you %100 can not win until you stop accepting credit/debit or you cough up the dough for new pin pads and upgrade your processing software and use EMV. If you accept credit/debit cards you are beholden to the policies of the credit card companies which are designed to fuck everyone over, consumers and merchants alike. EMV liability is especially designed to fall on to the merchant’s shoulders. If you have an EMV card you can go try the scam out for yourself at your rival’s restaurant that hasn’t upgraded yet. JK. But you’d be amazed at how easy it is to file a dispute there. I know cause it happened to my biz with a fury.

There’s a million articles like this to read out there…
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/news/story/EMV-Chargebacks-Proving-To-Be-a-Card-Present-Merchant-Problem

I’ve lost almost 2k as well. Credit Card gets keyed in and it’s usually the same people in my case. I filed a police report but awhile back but still no word. Not holding my breath either for any word from police either. Just chalked it up as part of doing business. I figure I won’t be able to stop 100%

Does your POS allow you to block an address or phone number?