Chargebacks you losewithout answering.

When a customer disputes a payment, your payment provider gives you a deadline to respond. If nobody responds in time, the dispute is decided against you, the money stays with the cardholder and a dispute fee is usually charged on top.

This is the most avoidable loss in payments. It happens because disputes arrive by email to an inbox nobody watches, or because the evidence is spread over three systems and nobody has time to collect it.

The reason code tells you what the bank will look at. Send that, clearly labelled, and nothing else.

• Fraudulent or unrecognised: the order record, billing and shipping details matching the cardholder, earlier undisputed orders, and for digital products login and usage records.
• Not received: carrier tracking with the delivery scan, and the delivery address matching the order.
• Not as described or defective: the product description at the time of purchase, your returns policy, and messages with the customer.
• Subscription cancelled: the terms accepted at signup, the cancellation policy, and usage after the date they say they cancelled.
• Credit not processed: your refund record, or proof the return never arrived.

Once a week, export open disputes with their due dates and sort by deadline. Answer the oldest first with a template per reason, filled with the evidence above. Keep a short log of what you sent and the outcome, so your templates improve.

Deadlines and evidence rules are set by the card networks and your provider and change over time. Use the due date shown in your provider's dashboard as the truth.

Some lost disputes can still be challenged in a second round, depending on the network and your provider. Look first at disputes lost for reasons your records clearly contradict, such as "not received" with a delivery scan.

Silentleak runs this check and the others like it on redacted exports, recovers what is owed in your name after you approve each claim, and charges only on money that reaches your account. Start a free scan of your own exports, or an estimate from four numbers.

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More guides: Refunds where the item never came back. · Failed renewals nobody retried. · Your carrier invoice, checked line by line.