At MyChargeBack, we stand out from the pack by being the experts on the consumer’s side in complex dispute resolution. But that raises the question: just what exactly is a complex payment dispute anyway?
The easiest way to start might be to give an idea of what the opposite might be.
Simple Payment Disputes
There are many types of card transactions, and the simplest payment dispute of all is ordinary fraud. If your card was stolen and used to make purchases at a store or gas station, with no PIN or signature, that’s as simple as it gets. An online purchase made with stolen credit card data, without strong customer authentication, is a rather uncomplicated dispute.
Even in the realm of authorized disputes, some are simpler than others. For example, imagine you buy something at the local store, but once you take it home and unpack it, you realize it’s damaged. Let us further suppose that for some reason, the merchant simply refuses to take the product back or replace it. So you raise a chargeback with your bank, and in that case it would be a fairly straightforward and simple dispute.
Card-Not-Present Transactions (What is CNP?)
The rise of e-commerce started gradually in the 1990s, becoming very common by the 2010s, and then getting a massive boost as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting lockdowns. In the U.S. for example, online sales grew by almost 22% in 2020, representing nearly a quarter of all retail sales.
The dark side of the growth of card-not-present (CNP), meaning in general online sales, is the parallel growth of complex payment disputes. Let’s say that you order a pair of Nike sneakers from an overseas online store, but you are sent counterfeit Nikes instead. The merchant refuses to refund you. In order to get your money back, you need to provide proof that the sneakers are fake, not to mention the multijurisdictional nature of the dispute.
Let’s imagine a different example. You decided to try to make some money via online trading, found a broker, made a number of deposits, and got to work. Only later did you learn that the broker was unregulated and no actual investment services were provided. In order to qualify for a chargeback, you will first of all need to prove that you never received the contracted services. This is easier said than done, as the merchant will in all likelihood be expending considerable energy trying to prove the exact opposite. And you won’t even get to that stage if, as happens so often, the bank employee in the dispute department takes one look at the word “investment” and rejects your claim because failed investments don’t qualify for a chargeback. (That is technically correct, but irrelevant to the actual case at hand.) In addition, these CNP transactions also tend to involve merchants and acquiring banks overseas, often in relatively regulatorily opaque countries such as Belize, Bulgaria, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, or the Marshall Islands, to name a few.
The bottom line is that many issuing banks are simply undertrained and understaffed to effectively deal with complex payment dispute scenarios such as the above examples. But the disputes are only becoming more complex and more frequent. The merchants bring in outside experts to help them resolve the cases in their favor. Even the issuing banks are increasingly relying on external third party systems to take over complex dispute resolution. The consumers are the only ones left hanging. What’s needed is an expert dispute resolution system on their side. That’s MyChargeBack’s job.
Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin Transactions
As its name suggests, everything about cryptocurrency is built around security and anonymity, for better and for worse. Bitcoin was released in 2009, becoming the world’s first cryptocurrency, and it remains by far the most popular one to this day. Buying and selling bitcoin on exchanges, spending them by means of blockchain transactions with merchants, and storing them in digital wallets are all points where something can go wrong, and an unethical person or company on the other side may become enriched at your expense.
Certain cryptocurrency exchanges have been proven to be fraudulent, stealing investors’ money without actually performing any useful service. Others have been compromised, with millions of dollars worth of bitcoin stolen. Similar issues exist with wallets, where some are phony, and others having been hacked.
As for a bitcoin transaction, what happens if you don’t receive what the merchant promised? What if your coins were acquired in bad faith? Consumer protection in the world of cryptocurrency is in its infancy, and the anonymous nature of crypto transactions makes finding the recipient difficult. Difficult, but not impossible. MyChargeBack uses its expertise along with the latest technologies to track bitcoin transactions down the path your coin took from the moment it left your wallet all the way to its final destination.
Bank Wire Transfers
Sometimes, a transaction might be too big to conveniently perform via a credit card. Or some other legitimate reason may exist to engage in a bank wire transfer. Or the reason may seem legitimate to you, but not to an unethical merchant or other recipient. Once you’ve wired your money, then discover the error, what can you do?
As with cryptocurrency transactions, there is a commonly held misconception that bank wires are irreversible. While it’s true that they are more complicated, time consuming, and limited in scope than chargebacks, bank wire recalls can be done.
MyChargeBack has developed the expertise, technologies and best practices to favor the consumer in these and other challenging situations. We have recovered millions of dollars for our clients around the world, and we’re just getting started.
If you are in the midst of a complex payment dispute, contact MyChargeBack today for a free no-commitment fund recovery consultation.
