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Comment by kingcharles | Hacker News Reader

When I tried to get a chargeback from my bank they terminated my account as it was too much trouble.

I bought some electronics, turned out it was a scammy company. After six weeks, nothing shipped, merchant agreed to refund me. Asked card company (Cash/Square/Block) for a chargeback. Week later merchant ships something, FedEx fails to deliver and it gets returned to merchant.

3 months later Square asks me for all documentation. I give it to them. They say I can't have a refund as the package was delivered. I tell them "yes, delivered back to the merchant". They say "sorry, our policy is that if it was delivered somewhere then we won't do a chargeback. I know that's not the outcome you wanted." Then they terminated my account. LOL

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Thanks for this. It's a good thing warning to stay away from square.

I've had to do chargebacks with two different banks and both were painless even though something was delivered.

I've done a number of charge backs over the years, and they most often are painless. I did have one not go my way though. A hotel I stayed at charged my credit card $100 for parking. I had taken a taxi to get to the hotel. They refused to listen to me, so I did a charge back. They sent my bank a copy of a parking receipt that had no identifying information on it, just basically said, "overnight parking, $100". My bank said that was good enough, and reversed the charge back, no appeal allowed.

But at least the other time a merchant pushed back on a charge back, it worked out better. A South American airline charged me for a flight between two cities in a continent I had never even been to in my life. They used as proof a record that simply showed the flight did actually fly. My bank sided with me.

If you wrote to square saying you are taking them to small claims court in the US, I bet they would have immediately buckled.

If you file in small claims court, they might settle. Saying you're going to file doesn't work like that (because people say it all the time and very few people follow though). At most large companies, the script if you threaten legal action is to notate it in their file, refer them to the legal department and stop communication except through legal.

Long story short, don't threaten lawsuits. Just file the suit.

I figure it is worth trying anyway, as the cost to send an email/phone call is almost nothing compared to the time it takes to fill out paperwork for the small claims court and actually go and deal with that.

IIRC they have one of those bogus arbitration clauses in their ToC. I told them I wanted them to appoint an arbitrator and now they won't respond at all.

And as someone who litigates for shits and giggles, it can be pretty expensive in Small Claims, about $400 often just to file and do service on the defendant. And some courts won't accept suits that are less than the filing fee. And a lot of the time you can't get back your costs from the defendant either. And.. I'm not sure you can sue the bank for not charging back. I guess the correct process is to sue the merchant for never delivering the merch.

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