Just FYI, my wife has to fight a lot of outright fraudulent Stripe disputes filed against the company she works for (things like a customer claiming they never received <digital goods> when she has an extensive paper trail of them receiving, using, and thanking the business for said goods) and she's mentioned how Stripe's signals aren't especially accurate--in the past month she's won several major disputes that Stripe predicted she had a low chance of winning. You can't win them all, but it's not totally futile!

As a consumer who has only tried honest chargebacks within their 'consumer rights' and has never won them, apparently you can fight them, and apparently companies deem them worth fighting.

> Stripe advices to refund based on signal's they get that a disput is requested.

I think that's if you're lucky enough to receive an early fraud warning, in which case, you have maybe ~12 hours to refund the money, but who knows, it's completely opaque to the merchant. As a merchant, I've even had previously refunded payments become disputes hours after issuing the refund.

Most of the time, the charge back is sprung on the merchant without warning. It can be worth fighting some. I've successfully countered several, it feels like I win maybe around 50% of those that I counter. I usually counter when the reasons are nonsensical, such as "Subscription renewed after cancelling", yet there was only one payment for the subscriptions creation.

To add insult to injury, Stripe charges an additional fee to counter the dispute (which you might get back if you win).

The whole process is infuriating. Charge backs are a tiny % of transactions, but cause a large amount of distress. I can't see why Stripe / banks don't offer an early dispute window, in which the merchant has say 7 days to refund without penalty. If they ignore or decide not to, it becomes a standard dispute.