How to prevent chargebacks as a coach

A chargeback, or dispute, is a client asking their card issuer to reverse a payment. The money leaves your Stripe balance straight away, with a dispute fee, and the issuer decides the case. Stripe passes your evidence on, but it doesn’t choose the outcome.

Coaching is paid in advance and delivered over weeks, which leaves time for plans to change. The disputes coaches see fall mostly into four of Stripe’s dispute categories (opens in a new tab), and each has its own way to prevent it:

• The payment. It leaves your Stripe balance when the dispute opens, and comes back only if you win.
• A $15 dispute fee in the US, which Stripe keeps even if you win.
• Another $15 if you respond, returned only if you win outright. Accepting the dispute costs the first fee and nothing more.
• Time. The bank usually decides 60 to 75 days after you send your evidence, and the whole process can take two to three months.
• Your dispute rate. Every dispute counts, won or lost, and card networks treat more than 0.75% of payments as excessive.

For a coach with a handful of clients a month, one dispute is a large share of payments. Stripe’s advice for businesses with fewer than about 100 payments a month is to refund suspected fraud more readily, because one or two fraud disputes can move the rate on their own.

1. 01

   Step 1: Show your terms in full before payment

   Put your cancellation and refund terms on the page where the client pays, in full, with a step they have to complete to agree. Stripe warns that a checkbox containing only a link to your terms may be rejected as evidence that the client saw them.

2. 02

   Step 2: Have the client sign them

   A typed signature ties a name, a time and the exact wording together. In a cancellation dispute, the question under Visa’s rules is whether your policy was disclosed, and accepted, before the payment.

3. 03

   Step 3: Describe the program as it is

   Sessions, length, format and what’s included, the same in your agreement as on your sales page. A dispute about quality turns on whether the service matched its description.

4. 04

   Step 4: Use a name they’ll recognise

   The statement descriptor is the name on the client’s card statement. In your Stripe account’s settings, set it to your business name or your website, in 5 to 22 characters.

5. 05

   Step 5: Be easy to reach

   Make your email or phone easy to find, and reply quickly. Visa’s rules ask a client to try to resolve a dispute about services not received, or not as described, with you before their bank opens one.

A refund request is often a dispute that hasn’t happened yet. If your terms say the client is owed money, refund it, in full and quickly: a fully refunded payment can’t be disputed, but a partly refunded one can, for the whole amount.

If your terms say they aren’t owed it, reply in writing, quote the clause they signed, and keep the conversation. Messages showing you explained the policy are evidence later.

Once a dispute is open, you can’t refund the payment: the issuer has already given the money back to the client. Your choice then is to accept the dispute or answer it. If the client should keep the money, Stripe’s advice is to accept the dispute rather than ask them to withdraw it.

Stripe tells you when a dispute opens. You usually have 7 to 21 days to respond, depending on the card network, and if you miss the deadline you lose automatically. You get one submission, so gather everything before you send it.

Even a strong case can lose: Stripe itself says it’s very difficult to overturn a disputed payment, even in the most favourable cases. That’s why the steps before the payment matter more than the response.

Card networks typically allow 120 days from the payment, and more in some cases. For a service paid in advance, the window generally starts on the date of the service, not the payment, so a deposit for a program that runs for months can be disputed long after it was paid. Under Visa’s rules, a dispute about services not received can come up to 120 days after the last date the client expected them, and never more than 540 days after the payment.

So keep each client’s signed terms, messages and session records until at least 120 days after their last session.

IntakePay puts the steps in the order that prevents disputes. Each client gets a private link: they answer your questions, read your terms in full and type their name to sign them before they can pay, and the deposit goes to your own Stripe account. The signed copy stays with the payment: the exact wording, the name, the time, and the IP address and browser it was signed from.

If a client disputes a payment anyway, their row in your dashboard changes to Disputed, and IntakePay drafts your response in your Stripe account: what was sold, how and when your terms were shown and signed, and the terms word for word with the signing record. Nothing is submitted for you. Add your session dates and messages, attach the signed terms PDF from their record in your dashboard, and submit it in your Stripe Dashboard.