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Comment by maaaats | Hacker News Reader

Problem is most vendors will then block you from ever using their service again. Might not be such a big bummer, after all they're helping people steal your money. But here it was through Apple Pay, so it may have bigger ramifications to block the card.

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I don't see a problem by being blocked from a service I would never use again anyways.

Plus the following dialogue: what was your name?...I am reporting you to xyz state attorney general's consumer fraud division is incredibly effective.

I've got to ask, when have you _EVER_ said this and had it actually result in what you wanted?

I worked in call centers for years and we laughed at people like you for a whole multitude of reasons.

The main reason being once you say this I'm no longer obligated to help you. Since you've decided to make this a legal situation instead of a customer service one you'll now need to talk to our team of lawyers that are on retainer. Anytime you call or email you'll get auto routed to our legal department forever who will go out of their way to not help you.

The reality is that people make legal threats dont actually follow through because they aren't people that understand the law or how it works, if they did they'd be taking actual legal action against us, not making idle threats to people making $19 dollars an hour.

Legal threats work for me about half the time, but I threaten small claims court only after getting escalated to a manager while collecting as much info as possible (it also helps if you're in a one party consent state and can play back parts of the phone call to the manager). It works for big companies better than small ones but it does take a little longer for the escalation to go through the legal department and I haven't really bothered trying it for small disputes (anything under a few hundred dollars). The few times I have followed through on the threat resulted in a settlement with one local business and default judgement against two big companies now.

I have used it 3 times or so and it was effective. The thing is I am not threatening to sue personally. I am threatening to refer the issue to the government. I personally had no intention or interest in pursuing legal options, but maybe the AG would. In one egregious case where the situation was resolved I still informed that office if the attempted fraud.

Again I'm not threatening to bring legal action. I'm just letting the 800 lb gorilla know about the situation and they perhaps might want to do something.

> Problem is most vendors will then block you from ever using their service again.

Who is "most vendors" exactly?

An example: Uber drivers requesting fake cleaning fee was recently discussed here on HN. Uber refuse to handle it properly, so people solve it by doing chargebacks only to find themselves blocked from the service.

Also heard it with lots of other vendors, but won't name without having something more substantial to back it up with.

Again, being blocked from a service that is screwing with you don't seem that bad.

I would never touch a company again that did that to me anyway.

It kinda depends on the service, though.

If I have a shitty customer service interaction with an Amazon rep, I might have to weigh the chargeback versus the value of my Kindle library, my AWS instances suddenly going dark, etc.

In the case of Uber, I might find myself severely restricted in transit options in an unfamiliar city.

It seems to be part of the "Distrupt!" business model. The "customer" "service" team is basically disaster mitigation, probably taught to screw with the customers. Like AirBnB, $2000 worth of damage to your apartment? They'll delay for a few days and offer you $200 if you agree to an NDA. Or that guy whose dog died after being walked by someone who used someone's account an dog-walking-service...

> offer you $200

If you're lucky. Otherwise they'll offer you "credit".

They may have been embellishing that claim; however, I think what they were getting at is that in some situations using the chargeback mechanism can have wider repercussions. For example: if you are "ripped off" through Steam on a particular purchase and use a chargeback, they may shut down your account. In that case, you would lose access to all of your games purchased through Steam. Similarly, if you use a chargeback with a Google Play Store purchase you may lose access to your entire Google Account.

Ah so not "most vendors" would ban you for reporting fraud to your bank, then.

What are you trying to achieve here?

Calling out blanket claims...

Thanks for the downvotes.

I’ve seen Uber respond to a chargeback by leaving the account active but disallowing all payment methods. With most companies I’d expect it was a customer support mistake rather than vindictiveness, but with Uber it’s hard to be sure.

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