Get in Charge of Your Chargebacks

Merchants can be focused on trying to get every cent they can in chargebacks to vendors. At the same time, vendors want to make sure all charge­backs are viable and avoid paying for what’s not their fault.

How do vendors review chargebacks? Jessica Butler, principal of Attain Consulting Group, starts by identifying a vendor cli­ent’s biggest chargebacks. Then she helps the ven­dor create or improve an internal communication system to make sure that everyone who needs to know the retailers’ require­ments do know them and that all parties involved work together to ensure that the requirements are followed.

Butler also looks for chargebacks that seem to be the vendor’s fault and helps the vendor resolve these. Then she encour­ages the vendor to con­tact the retailer to report on the recently made improvements and ask for some of the money back that the retailer had levied as chargebacks for those errors.

“If you admit that you were wrong and then emphasize that you have solved the problem, retail­ers may be willing to return some of the charge­back charges,” Butler explains. In one case, she was able to help a vendor reduce chargebacks 77% by applying some basic reporting structure and discipline to its compli­ance efforts.—WA