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Comment by jwmoz | Hacker News Reader

Always makes me laugh when a company says something like this and normies tend to believe it. You are able to refund it you just choose not to.

Issue a chargeback. Cause them more problems.

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This is the only thing that keeps me from going insane.

There is something properly cathartic about submitting a claim after a pointless back and forth with some customer support agent regarding these matters.

You may also find more success by mentioning that you will be performing a charge back if the interaction does not conclude to your satisfaction up-front.

At some level, every business cares about this way more than your $100 purchase. Too many charge backs can cripple your ability to operate as fees increase and processors drop your ass.

What worries me is dealing with something stupid enough to make me go -sane-.

Yeah, I once issued a chargeback in a European store (not Nintendo). Was banned for life.

Chargebacks are not the way you do things in Europe. It's a solution for the US because consumer protection laws are non existent, but most European countries require you to provide dozens of documents for a chargeback. Going through normal channels,escalating to the mediator of the state is the way it's done.

Also, issue à chargeback to Steam, Apple, Microsoft, Google and you will also be banned for life

Admittedly, spending 5+ hours trying to get a refund for something that cost $80 is counter productive. If you don't care if you ever do business with the company again, and you have a clear reason for a refund that you have explained to them, and they refuse to help you, then a chargeback is a single, efficient way of putting an end to all of it. Plus it punishes the company, because the more chargebacks they have against them, the more it costs them to do business using credit cards.

Those companies ban you because they have insane charge back rates (constant flow of charge backs), high enough to where servicers do not want to deal with them. They ban you in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

I used to sit next to a compliance department at a card servicer and it was Google, Google, Google all day long, every day. Charge backs from the play store. Very costly for servicers to man call centers to process a constant stream of charge back requests from these companies. Nevermind the cost of the actual refund.

Essentially it is often forgotten to note that chargebacks are outside clear fraud really the option of nearly last resort. Basically saying that I want my moneyback and I will risk not dealing with your company ever again.

It should be against consumer law to ban customers for issuing chargebacks. Or credit card companies should make respecting it part of the requirement for taking payments. Can't handle chargebacks? Then don't accept Visa/Mastercard etc.

So companies should be mandated to allow fraud? Ship something paid with credit card, the person does chargeback. And now you need to keep sending them new stuff?

Maybe it would be better to mandate better customer service. Stopping companies from banning those who do chargebacks is wrong solution to the problem.

You can't just do a chargeback for no reason. You have to show to the credit card company you have not received something, or got damaged goods etc. and you have tried to resolve it with the company.

All that takes coordination and manual labor at both the card servicer and the retailer. That overhead is tremendous. The actual refund is the least concern.

I'm not sure what your point is. They have to do that now, and the overhead is manageable. The vast majority of purchases do not involve a credit card chargeback.

Sounds like you lost nothing of value.

If they like buying stuff from that store then clearly they did, this is the problem: even when users exercise their rights they still get punished

Issueing a chargeback is not always as simple “exercising you right.” You get your money back, ok. But you may still owe the provider the amount that you have taken back - or the goods received. The credit card provider is not legally entitled to make a decision on that matter. So the store owner is entirely entitled to refrain from servicing you until you pay up.

Well I offered to pay up, but they told me that the ban cannot be reversed.

The problem is that I have issued a chargeback by mistake (I confused the charge from the store with something else, as they have changed the name in credit card reports). I immediately called my bank back and explained that this was a mistake, but it was too late — the chargeback processed, the card reissued, my last order in the store marked as “fraudulent”, and I am banned for life from this store. I even cannot pay again for that order, as they are not accepting anything from me, and their support is telling me there is nothing they can do.

I liked that store.

Have they banned you for life, or just that card? I can't really see how they (especially assuming not a tiny low-volume owner-run business) could do the former.

They have my real name and date of birth. I can register perhaps by using a fake name, but decided not to bother.

There really needs to be a consumer protection law against retaliation for valid chargebacks.

Chargebacks are not an effective consumer protection tool when using it can get you banned. Doubly so when the company is the exclusive provider of a good (e.g. app stores), or when the company is a majority of national eCommerce (i.e. Amazon).

So you fight fire with fire and create a new account if it's that critical.

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