Press enter or click to view image in full size
The $10 Payment That Cost Me $43.95 — The Madness of SaaS Chargebacks Mike Kulakov 5 min read · Just now Just now -- Listen Share
We run several SaaS products at Everhour, all billed through Stripe. Majority of the time everything works fine, but sometimes we get chargebacks. Even thought we do everything possible to prevent them.
We don’t ask for a credit card until the moment of subscription. A few days before each renewal, we send an email notifying the customer about the upcoming charge and giving them time to cancel if they’ve forgotten. After the charge, we send an invoice. Both the invoice and the bank statement clearly display the product name so the customer can easily identify us. Inside the product, we also provide a simple, self-service way to cancel the subscription without any questions asked.
Still, some people prefer to silently file a dispute rather than reach out and ask for a refund.
The worst part is that it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose a dispute — the very fact that it was filed still counts against your account. On top of that, you get hit with extra fees for both the dispute and the counter-dispute, which feels especially unfair when the payment itself is small.
For example:
Press enter or click to view image in full size
Still, we always submit evidence.
To me, blindly accepting a dispute is a de facto admission of wrongdoing, and not fighting against the claims only makes my account look worse. Even if it costs money and time, I’d rather defend the company and show that we don’t agree with absurd claims. On top of that, chargebacks are extremely rare for us, so it’s not a huge waste of time.
... continue reading