Forum Moderators: buckworks
Are the credit card companies lessening their policies on this, or is it simply becoming more widely known how easy it is to do and get away with fraud?
I myself, have never initiated a chargeback against a seller I've purchased from. I have received quite a few over the years, most caused by the buyer simply being overly impatient and not reading delivery estimates.. so I am led to wonder: What do the credit card companies need from you, as a consumer to initiate a chargeback?
One thing I am absolutely positive of: Customer is not required to work things out with the seller prior to resorting to a chargeback. 99% of mine were usually the first time I heard a peep out of the customer in question.
Is it really as easy as it seems, from the seller's point of view?
Does anybody know why, in almost every instance the seller is guilty until proven innocent? Are buyer track records involved? If so, why are seller's histories not considered?
Some cards allow this by phone, others actually require a signed letter stating the "facts" of the incident. You'll probably remember commercials from some credit card companies saying your purchases are protected under any circumstances. For them, that pretty much means the customer can dispute the charge if the color of the widget you received is not the exact shade of red they wanted.
Unfortunately, most have no requirement that the customer actually try to resolve the dispute with the merchant first. There also appears to be no sort of tracking to flag "problem" customers that dispute lots of charges, most of which result in the merchant's favor.
I think that is all cases, the customer should be charged the chargeback fee when they lose disputes. The card issuers have made the policies on disputes so lax, yet the costs are borne by the merchants.
