If a business attempts to steal from me I instantly charge back and the onus is on them to prove that I owe them money. I do this all the time and have never been blacklisted.
Some companies like Activision clearly state in their terms that chargeback means you will be permanently banned, no exceptions. You'll lose your account and access to all digital "purchases" forever.
They don't need to prove anything to stop doing business with you.
I live in the EU and have read this in the terms for my region.
> they have no legal obligation to follow through and give you what they promised
Yes, they do. Contracts are contracts. They just don't promise you ownership of anything but a revocable license. Like every platform offering DRM protected content.
I have a few customers like that. They sign up, forget about it, then they see it on their statement and issue a chargeback. Not only do they get their $20 back (that they very willingly signed up for), but I have to pay another $35 to Stripe for the privilege of having a forgetful customer who couldn't even be bothered to email me for a refund.
> I have to pay another $35 to Stripe for the privilege of having a forgetful customer who couldn't even be bothered to email me for a refund.
I've seen some businesses send a pre-billing email telling customers that they'll be charged on a certain date, so that customers have time to cancel if they want.
Cloudflare does that for domain renewals, sending out emails 30 and 60 days before.
Of course, there are also some businesses that hope that customers forget that they're subscribed, so that there's breakage.
Mine is a one-off payment :( They just forget they paid for it, plus the company name isn't the same as the app name, so they just go "welp, someone must be stealing from me!" and request a chargeback.
Completely by accident, I have a setup that sends a pdf invoice to customers a couple of days after the sale. I’m pretty sure it’s a stripe option I must’ve misclicked.
Anyway- turns out that on the rare occasion someone’s had an issue, this gives them a really easy mechanism to write to me and tell me about it. They let off their steam in the email and then we make things good together. (Yet another reason why I always oppose noreply email addresses)
I still don’t know what or where the setting is, mind.
That's a great idea, thanks! I've found and enabled a few emails, though I think the actual invoice email is a checkout parameter. This should help, thanks!
Anecdotally I helped a client entirely eliminate their chargeback rate by creating a new subsidiary named directly after their product, so that the billing line item was obviously the product. They also saw a slight increase in inbound sales, which surprised me.
That's a great idea, but it's only helpful above a certain sales volume, which I don't really have. It's just disappointing when the charge back happens, but the economics of the business don't really warrant doing anything about it.
Were you dealing with some other payment processor or bank that didn't allow custom statement descriptors? Stripe and PayPal let me write whatever I want there.
You joke but I got bbb involved with a scammy business insurance company that is easy to sign up for but you can't cancel or stop renewal or change billing info. Company has an infinite hold line and never responds to anything. Filed a complaint on BBB and it was responded to next business day.
Believe it or not, back in the mists of time we had these things called “public institutions” which were at least notionally chartered to, and in fact somewhat did, act in the public benefit.
The BBB was one of those — not always perfect, but consumer-friendly and not out to scam or profit. Yelp is just another VC-backed money play. They do not now or have they ever claimed or intended to make the world a better place without regard for their own profit.
I don't think it's helpful to think about this as the company "trying to steal from you". There is no intention here. It's just something that got lost in a bad IT system. You gain nothing from issuing a chargeback. You imperceptibly nudge some statistic and a "banned for life" flag might automatically get flipped in a database. There's no righteous comeuppance here.
You try to contact support, pester them a bit, call someone if possible, and eventually, you may get your money back. If you don't, then you issue the chargeback.
> You don’t think it’s funny how the mechanism for taking the money is never broken?
I dunno, sometimes it is.
The most broken I've seen in my favour was a ~$600 purchase where the order flow broke partway through. Customer support was a major pain to get in contact with in order to figure out how to give them my money. When I eventually managed to talk to someone, they advised that maybe their third-party fraud algorithms didn't like my email. I changed my email, the order worked when I placed it again, and I received my product a week later.
Several months later, without any communication from the company, I received a second product in the mail, presumably from the first order that I didn't pay for. Based on how much of a pain it was to contact support the first time, I wasn't about to do so again based on their mistake. To be charitable, I kept the package in my garage for a couple months in case the company contacted me to arrange return shipping. Not hearing from them, I just sold it off.
> Work with a large company who won’t pay your 30 or 45 day invoice for 90 days before you broadly decide this.
I have had this experience. I don't see how a chargeback would've helped. Typically, you would invoice someone for time you've worked for them, or sometimes you buy a product from one company and invoice another for the expense.
Chargebacks don't help you get a company to pay your invoice. Debt collectors do.
In any case, this is something different from refunding a purchase as a customer, which was the topic at hand.
was giving the benefit of the doubt on the intention of big companies putting no effort in to fix their workflows if it makes them more money to work with you improperly.
Absent any useful context about the situation at all, it’s very strange for a girl to ask a random guy for a ride home. Most women I know would 100% ask a girl. I think it’s very reasonable to think something is up here.
I usually dislike when people talk to me in public. Some people have nothing to say but they trap you in a conversation anyways. Some people are genuinely interesting and energizing to talk to. Either way, every conversation i've had in public has stuck with me and I can remember these conversations 6+ years later.
I'm skeptical. Tariffs affect the cost of business same-day. If we were going to see a change in consumer prices id expect to see an inkling of a change 12 months in. I'm open to being wrong but claims that tariffs are destroying the American consumer feel like gas lighting given the CPI data.
How? The day the tariff goes into effect is after vast amounts of on-shore stock has already landed, purchased for a far lower price. The purchases done on the day the tariffs took effect and after are costing more, but have not landed yet. So no, it's practically never a "same-day" effect.
>claims that tariffs are destroying the American consumer feel like gas lighting
If you live in the US, and don't notice the price of everything has been steadily increasing last year, and continues to increase this year, then I don't know what to tell you but that you're arguing in bad faith.
> The day the tariff goes into effect is after vast amounts of on-shore stock has already landed
Tariffs took effect in February 2025. We saw CPI go up 2.7% in 2025 and 2.5%/4 in Q1 2026 so I'm skeptical of the inventory lag theory. Maybe we're stressing some other part of the economy and gearing up for catastrophic failure, but I don't see that in the economic data.
> If you live in the US
I live in the US. Gas prices spiked in 2024 and prices went up, gas prices went down and CPI leveled off, tariffs started in 2025 and CPI remains stable. Maybe tariffs are cutting into some drop shipper's profits but I'm definitely not paying for it.
>Maybe tariffs are cutting into some drop shipper's profits but I'm definitely not paying for it.
I have a small hardware startup (parts from China, assembled on-shore), and I guarantee you that my customers are paying for every cent of the tariffs that make my product cost ~30% to 100% more (depending on the whims of an imbecile). No way am I paying it. I can't afford it. The parts cost what they cost, and there simply is no alternative part that can be purchased locally. If my customers can't swallow the extra cost, then I have less customers, which kills my small business. If you were my customer, you would be paying for the tariffs.
> Republicans are getting what they voted for and they STILL want what’s happening.
Trump was elected as a specific reaction to the previous administration’s immigration policies. You’re right that voters supported that, but they didn't sign up for the rest. If you look at the polling, the tariffs and the Greenland push are explicitly unpopular.
> having free elections doesn’t make you the good guys if you elect a tyrant.
it does. The point of democracy is that voters make mistakes. Even European countries have elected tyrants in the past. The difference is that a free system allows you to survive a bad leader and vote them out; an authoritarian one doesn't.
This excessive faith in democracy is problematic. The founders of the United States, the Romans, and the Athenian philosophers who came up with democracy all openly talked about one of the risks of democracy in mob rule. Sometimes the most popular idea is in fact not nice. Good things don't just automatically come from adding a little democracy to the mix.
Sometimes (it's not so rare) the majority of people WANT horrible things to be perpetuated by their government. It isn't just "mistakes" or being tricked or some sort of scam, governments act with the consent of the people and a ruling majority voting for atrocities is not uncommon.
I'm not saying democracy is bad, but I am saying it's delusional to think that just having democracy cures all ills.
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I have heard first hand people I know, seen people in videos online, and seen plenty of comments online to the tune of "ICE is doing EXACTLY what we want, keep going". A lot of people want exactly what has happened and while I think either the majority is eroding or already lost in support for these things, it is by no means a landslide in public opinion against the rising fascist politics in America. Sitting by and expecting to win the next election and just gritting your teeth until then is not the right response.
A huge portion of why this has happened is democratic "knowledge" that they deserve to win so they will, and making really bad political decisions based on this attitude.
China is buying 50% of Russian gas and supplying them with drone parts and gunpowder which is directly used to kill Europeans and destabilize Europe.
They are also exporting their surveillance state technology to dictatorships in Pakistan, Iran, and Venezuela. Look at Iran, 16000 protestors are dead in two weeks. That is the Chinese model of stability.
Bad leaders exist everywhere, Europe included. But in the US, they leave. Trump is gone in two years. Good luck aligning your economies and value systems with China. I’m firmly on the side of liberal democracy.
The US just kidnapped the leader of Venezuela, Iran got into this theocratic regime situation in the first place because of US interference, and our closest NATO allies are legitimately preparing for war with the US and decrying the new world order. Not to mention the previous decades of destabilizing, arming, overthrowing, etc. many many countries to serve our own self interest.
You're a European leader looking at this situation frankly trying to decide whose atrocities and foreign policy is worse, it's not exactly obvious and choosing China because at least China isn't trying to annex your neighbors and is behaving rationally even if it's not nice things it's predictable.
There's a big difference between "We're the good guys, we stopped the bad things happening in our country before they started" and "I know we're doing awful things but I bet it'll stop soon with our next election".
I think that the biggest problem with Iran right now, is that there is no clear opposition party.
South Africa had Mandela, India had Gandhi and Chile had Aylwin. We only have "Reza Pahalavi" being pushed by United State and Israel. He is nowhere qualified to run the country and hasn't stepped a foot there for decades.
None of these movements are going to succeed, unless someone from within the country forms a strong party and unifies everyone.
Either way, I'm afraid that Iranians are going to be suffering for a long time.
Isn’t China buying 50% of Russia’s Gas and supplying them drone parts and gunpowder which is directly being used to kill Europeans and destabilize Europe?
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