Exactly. And I wouldn't threaten the chargeback. If they refuse the refund or ignore you, then just file a chargeback.

To me, ideally the end result is a chargeback instead a customer support refund. Otherwise they have no incentive to change. A high chargeback percentage could be that incentive.

I think the credit card companies expect you to attempt to talk it out with the merchant first though, so you'd still want to reach out to customer support first to "give them a chance".

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joshstrange 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That's fair and the practices here do allow for immediate chargeback in my book. My suggestion for reaching out to support comes mostly from being on the other end of chargebacks and being frustrated when that's the first/only tool people reach for.

Chargebacks don't tell the full story, telling support "Hey you told me to pay $5 to see my pictures but there were no pictures. Give me my money or I'll file a chargeback" has a better chance of making it up the chain and changing policy. A chargeback on its own could mean any number of things and it's easier for management to write it off a "just fraud" or similar.

If you just want to screw the company but potentially not encourage them to change = Immediate chargeback

If you want to try and change the company's policies = Support + Chargeback if not fixed

I'm not making a judgement call either way, I think both are acceptable in this scenario. I'm just pointing out that if change is your real desire, the support route has better odds.

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calc_exe an hour ago | parent [-]

Gotcha, I may have made some assumptions on how the process works. From the handful of chargeback stories I've heard from merchants, the credit card company passed along the cardholder's reasoning to the merchant when issuing the chargeback. So the merchant was able to figure out why the customer was unhappy. But that's anecdotal, I don't actually know if that's standard.

	▲	joshstrange an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The chargebacks I've received all just have a very generic category [0]. I've never see free-form text entry reasons that would allow the customer to explain the "why". Maybe their bank asks them for that info but it's not passed along. [0] https://docs.stripe.com/disputes/categories?dispute-category...