When a customer disagrees with a charge that has been made on their payment card for services that your company has rendered, they should first discuss this issue with an appropriate staff member from your business. In the event that the dispute cannot be resolved and the customer is still unsatisfied, the customer has the option to request a chargeback with his or her payment card company. Even relatively few chargebacks can impact Stripe's willingness to do business with your company.
To prevent the likelihood of chargebacks, it is imperative that you do your best resolve payment issues with customers before they reach out to their payment card company. What's better than resolving problems is avoiding them in the first place.
Below is a list of tips for ensuring that you and your customers understand each other before and after service is rendered. This understanding will lead to fewer disputes.
1) Ensure that your terms and conditions are up to date
Your terms and conditions should outline how your services will be delivered, what guarantees you provide, and in what situations the customer may be entitled to a refund. Additionally, you should outline scenarios where the customer may be responsible for payment even when service wasn't delivered (eg. service was cancelled by the customer immediately prior to the appointment).
Essentially, any factor that may impact the quality, deliverability, or pricing of your service should be outlined in your Terms and Conditions.
2) Use the Booking Form Notes within the setup to outline key policies
All of your terms and conditions should be outlined on the 'Terms and Conditions' page of your website. Customers will be required to agree to these prior to completing a booking on your website, however not all customers will read through them.
To avoid problems and misunderstandings, you should consider documenting critical policies, such as your cancellation policy, directly on your booking form. You can do this by utilizing the Booking Form Note 2 field on the Booking Form Settings page.
3) Ensure that your pricing is up to date on your booking form
If you are using your booking form to provide live quotes to your customers, you'll want to make sure that the pricing indicated is accurate and up to date.
4) Ensure that invoices indicate that questions should be directed to you
Use the Invoice Note field within the Booking Form Settings to print a note on each invoice that indicates that questions regarding the invoice should be directed to your company. The existence of this note will encourage your customers to reach out to you regarding pricing problems, for example, rather than going directly to their payment card company.
5) Request payment rather than charging a customer's card on file
To avoid surprises, we suggest that you use the "Request Payment" feature on your invoices rather than charging customer's payment card that is on file. If you'd like to charge a client's payment card that you have on file, ensure that authorization has been given for the work and that they understand the total amount due as per the resulting invoice. In addition, the client should give you authorization to charge the card and you should retain evidence of this authorization.
Please note that if your booking form accepts payment at the time of booking, clients will be notified that the card will be retained on file to support future transactions.
6) Send invoices promptly
After delivering service and charging a card on file, be sure to immediately send the client a copy of the invoice. You can do this by clicking the following button while viewing the invoice.
7) Deliver high quality services
This means arriving on time or within the time window specified, communicating issues to the client, and completing all work that the client has paid for in a manner that reflects attention to detail. Any delays in the work or your arrival should be communicated to the customer.
To ensure that you're delivering high quality services, use the survey functionality within the platform to understand what your customers think of your service.
8) Address customer questions or concerns associated with payment card charges immediately
Concerns regarding invoices or charges should be acted upon immediately so that the customer understands that their concern is being heard and addressed. If left unaddressed for too long, the customer may reach out to his or her payment card company with a complaint.
Below are some other tips to ensure that your account remains in good standing with Stripe
1) Never charge your own payment card on your live website as a means of testing the form. This is not allowed as per Stripe's terms.
2) For more advanced users of Stripe who are looking to reduce reduce the likelihood of fraudulent transactions being processed, there is Radar. This system allows you to indicate the transaction risk level that you're willing to accept among many other things. For more information on Stripe radar, please visit the link below.