How to Avoid Disputes & Chargebacks

Disputes are an unfortunate aspect of accepting payments online and the best way to manage them is to prevent them from happening at all. An effective dispute and fraud prevention strategy uses a number of methods that are best suited for your business while keeping any customer burden—and losses—to a minimum.

Clear and frequent contact with your customers can help prevent many of the reasons for disputes. By responding to issues and processing refunds quickly, your customers are far less likely to take the time to dispute a payment. Make your customer service contact information prominent and keep customers updated.

Collect Information

Some disputes are lost because only the minimum information was provided during checkout. This makes it difficult (sometimes impossible) for Fiserv or Adyen or the card issuer to verify that the customer is legitimate. For instance, while a billing ZIP code is not always necessary to process a card payment, including it allows it to be verified by the card issuer. If verification fails, you may want to consider rejecting the payment as this may be an indication of fraud.

Collecting Signatures

You should include a clear description of your refund and cancellation policies in ALL documents that require a signature. You can require your guests to agree to your policies in order to increase the likelihood that card issuers respect your policies in the event of a dispute.

Liability Waivers require the customer's signature before they can attend your gym. These waivers should be signed by anyone coming into your facility, from a corporate event to a children's birthday. For this reason, include your cancellation and refund policy to your waiver.

The above are the two best pieces of evidence to submit when fighting a dispute.