Dealing With Credit Card Disputes & Chargebacks and How to Avoid Them Altogether

With chargebacks and disputes on the rise, it is no surprise that we’d want to help our partners better understand how we can all work together to help improve our success rates against any unwarranted customer disputes.

A widely agreed obstacle of modern watersport and small business ownership, we have put several protective measures in place on the TripShock end to prevent undue chargebacks. and recommend your team take some of these initiatives into consideration or create some solid standards that are your own. We have compiled a list of ways to hopefully help us all improve our success rates:

1. Communicate Clearly – The type of info you provide is monumental to our success. Clearly communicate with guests. This means laying out the terms of the transaction as concisely as possible and specifying any cancellation policies, refund information, waiver requirements and other similar requirements.
2. Keep Detailed Records – Be able to provide evidence to support customer participation. The type of info you collect supports our efforts. Helpful items include signed liability waivers that are dated & time stamped, pictures/copies of customer IDs, pictures of customer enjoying the trip, souvenir photos, video surveillance footage, evidence of your voucher being viewed, recorded calls or chats with your team, call logs, receipts for souvenirs or gratuity, manifests, notes, and even social media posts and reviews. Try to digitize as much as you can for easy sharing (read our article about digital waivers for watersport operators for further clarification).
3. Your Process Matters – Best practices should always be followed. When processing a guest’s card for add-ons, fees, other additional services, etc…make sure to get the guest’s id and compare it with the card. Also make sure to get a CVV for any over the phone transactions or any transactions where the card is not present. These types of riskier transactions typically have a much higher rate of fraud.
4. Acknowledging Disputes – Reservations placed through TripShock are handled by our Support Department team. Once a dispute is received, that team will reach out to you to ask you to gather any information you may have about this customer and reservation.
5. Responding to the Dispute Before the Deadline Ends – Each dispute has a deadline, usually less than 10 days so it’s important to let our team know how long it will take you to gather evidence. It is best to submit everything a couple of days before the deadline in the event that further information is needed. Once we have everything we need, a response is written up and all evidence is submitted to the credit card company on behalf of TripShock and you, the partner.

Disputes can be tough, and cost small businesses millions each year. If you follow these steps, you’ll find winning these disputes isn’t as hard as you think. After years of honing our strategy, our win rate is over 80%. And with your help, we can keep the wins coming.