Chargebacks for a small online shop: the £20, the 7 to 21 days, and what the issuer actually reads

A chargeback is the customer asking their card issuer for the money instead of asking you. It costs the shop before anything is decided, it runs on the card network's clock, and it is decided by someone reading a PDF. This guide sets out the numbers and the evidence for a UK shop on Stripe, which is what sits underneath Shopify Payments and most other small-shop checkouts.

The cost

Stripe's UK pricing lists a dispute received fee of £20 and a dispute countered fee of £20. The first is never returned. The second is returned if you win. So a £30 order that is disputed costs £20 to accept and £40 to fight, with £20 of that coming back on a win. On small orders the arithmetic says accept unless the evidence is strong, and that is uncomfortable but true. Visa and Mastercard compliance disputes add a US$500 network fee to contest, refunded on a win; a small shop should not see those.

The disputed amount leaves your balance when the dispute is raised, not when it is decided. A decision can take up to three months.

The clock

The response window is 7 to 21 days depending on the card network. Stripe tells you by email, in the dashboard and by webhook. Miss the window and you lose automatically. A shop that checks its email twice a week in December is a shop that loses chargebacks it would have won.

What the issuer reads

You get one submission. It cannot be edited or added to. The issuer does not open links, play video or follow instructions to call you, so a tracking URL pasted into the response is blank paper. Evidence has to be in the file: a screenshot of the carrier's tracking page with the delivered scan and the address, the proof of delivery with GPS or photo if the carrier offers one, the order confirmation showing the address the customer typed, the correspondence, and the returns policy as it appeared at checkout. Combine each type of evidence into one file; Stripe accepts one file per type.

Stripe pre-fills some fields from the transaction. Leave those as they are; editing them can affect eligibility for Visa's Compelling Evidence 3.0 process, which Stripe applies automatically to certain card-absent fraud disputes and which raises the chance of a win where the customer has bought from you before.

By reason

Product not received. Proof of delivery to the address on the order, with a signature or GPS point if you have one. This is the dispute that tracked postage exists to answer, and the reason the untracked saving on a £5 packet is not a saving. Our where-is-my-order reply writer produces the file note that becomes this evidence.

Product unacceptable, or not as described. The listing as the customer saw it, photographs, the correspondence, and the returns policy. If the customer never contacted you before disputing, say so with the dates; issuers weigh it. If they did and you refused a return the law required, expect to lose; our returns rights checker is cheaper than finding out this way.

Fraudulent. The customer says they did not make the purchase. Evidence is the match between the card's address and the delivery address, 3D Secure authentication (which Stripe supplies automatically where it applies and which may shift liability to the issuer), the IP and device data Stripe holds, and any previous undisputed orders from the same customer. Where 3D Secure ran, the liability shift often decides it.

Before you fight: email the customer

Stripe's own guidance says it, and it is right: a disputed customer who gets a refund, a replacement or a credit may withdraw the dispute, which costs you nothing further and keeps your dispute rate down. Dispute rates matter separately from the money. Card networks run monitoring programmes, and a shop whose rate climbs gets fees and, eventually, loses the ability to take cards.

Stopping the next one

Most disputes we see described by small shops come from three things: a parcel with no proof of delivery, a return refused that the law required, and a customer who could not reach anyone. Tracked postage, a lawful returns policy shown at checkout, and a reply within a day to every "where is my order" remove most of them. The fourth is a descriptor the customer did not recognise on their statement; make sure the name on the card statement is the name on the parcel.

This is general information, not legal or financial advice. Figures are Stripe's published UK prices on the date shown; other processors differ.