Chargeback response template: the Stripe dispute rebuttal, and the email to send the customer first

The templates

The first two are emails to the customer and the last is the email for a dispute you accept. The three in the middle are evidence summaries for the processor: paste the body into the free-text field of the dispute form, use the subject line as its title, and attach every document a line refers to. Delete any line you cannot back up.

Subject lines for the email to the customer

Name the product, the amount and the date, so they can match the email to the line on their statement, and leave the words chargeback and dispute out of the first one. It is a question, not a notice, and a customer who feels accused stops reading.

• About your [amount] payment to [Product] on [date]
• A question about your [Product] payment on [date]
• Re: [their last subject line] (if they had written to you before)
• Your [Product] dispute: you will get the money back

The evidence that tends to matter for software

• Proof of delivery and use. The licence key email, download records, activation logs with dates, sign-ins. For software this does the job a tracking number does for a parcel. Stripe’s evidence fields include one for access and activity logs.
• The terms they accepted at checkout. Your refund and cancellation policy, and how it was shown: a screenshot of the checkout page with the policy next to the pay button is worth more than a link to a page that may have changed since.
• Receipts and invoices sent to the customer’s email address, with the dates they went out.
• Communications. Their emails to you after the purchase, especially ones asking how to use the product. An email about activating a licence is hard to square with a claim that nothing arrived.
• History. Earlier payments from the same card or account that were never disputed. For fraud claims especially, a customer who paid you four times before is evidence.
• Facts in date order, on one page. Whoever reviews it reads a lot of these. A timeline with attachments does more than an argument, and anger or accusations against the cardholder do nothing for you.

Respond before the deadline, or decide not to

Every Stripe dispute shows the date by which you must respond. Miss it and the dispute is decided in the cardholder’s favour, whatever your evidence. Once you submit, you generally cannot add to the response, so gather everything first. Stripe also charges a dispute fee, and its pricing page lists what applies to your account.

That makes some disputes cheaper to accept than to fight:

• You were wrong. They asked to cancel and you missed it, you charged twice, a trial converted without the reminder you promised. Accept, apologise and fix whatever let it happen.
• The card really was stolen. Accept, deactivate the licence, and do not email the address on the account, which belongs to whoever used the card.
• The amount is smaller than your time. One month of a small subscription is rarely worth an hour of gathering logs and screenshots.
• You have no evidence. If you do not record activations or keep the checkout terms, a response is a letter asking to be believed.

Card networks also watch how many disputes a business receives, and a high rate can mean extra fees or losing the ability to take cards. The cheapest dispute is the one that never opens: a clear statement descriptor (set in your Stripe settings) that matches the name customers know, a refund when someone asks for one within reason, and a reply to every cancellation request.

Where a dispute is usually explained

The explanation for a dispute is often in your inbox, not in Stripe. The customer who replied “please cancel” to a receipt three weeks before the renewal. The one who emailed on day two asking how to activate the licence, which is the best evidence you have that the software arrived. The one who wrote once, heard nothing, and went to their bank instead.

With Stripe connected, Moorline shows a customer’s plan and payments beside their emails, read-only, so the disputed charge and the conversation about it sit on one screen while you write the response. It cannot refund a payment, accept a dispute or submit evidence; all of that happens in Stripe. What it does earlier is keep the “please cancel” email on your list until it is done and the customer has been told, which is how a dispute never gets filed. If the conversation starts as a refund request instead, how to decline a refund request politely covers when saying no costs more than the refund.

Questions people ask