Saturday, February 05, 2005

The Chargeback Challenge

By John Conde

“Nobody goes into business to lose money. You work hard for every penny, and every penny counts. To have that taken away from you months after a sale was completed is not only bad for business but extremely frustrating. Too many chargebacks usually spells doom for an online merchant.

The best tools for avoiding a chargeback are not available for online merchants. Retail-style businesses can perform certain actions that render them virtually bulletproof to chargebacks (they're still vulnerable, so don't be too envious just yet). They can either swipe the customer's credit card through a processing terminal or get a manual imprint of the card. Plus they can get a signature on that receipt at the time of sale. All of these methods verify that the customer, merchant, merchandise, and credit card were present and satisfactory at the time of sale. It's pretty hard to dispute that.

So what is an online merchant to do? Since giving up is not an option, education and prevention are an online merchant's best weapons. Having some basic policies and procedures in place can significantly reduce the number of chargebacks your business will receive. In this article, we will discuss the realities of chargebacks and identify some strategies that will lower your potential for needing to deal with them.

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/chargeback-challenge

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