Short answer
A chargeback is a forced reversal of a card payment: the customer disputes a charge with their bank, the bank pulls the money back from the merchant, and the merchant can contest it with evidence. It exists to protect cardholders from fraud and from sellers who never deliver.For a Shopify store, a chargeback costs more than the order. The sale is reversed, the payment processor adds a dispute fee, the product is often gone, and a high dispute rate can put the merchant account at risk. The reasons customers give are usually ordinary: the parcel never showed up, the item was not as described, they did not recognise the charge on their statement, or they asked for a refund and heard nothing.
That last group is the one support controls. A shopper who emails about order #1057 on Monday, gets no reply by Thursday and sees the tracking stuck on "label created" will often call the bank instead of writing again. To them, the dispute button is just a faster support channel. Many chargebacks are support tickets that went unanswered long enough to become a payments problem.
The common response is to treat disputes as a finance task: collect evidence, submit it, win some, lose some. Evidence matters, but it starts after the damage. The fix that saves both time and fees sits upstream: answer the order question quickly, with the real status, before the customer decides the bank will listen and the store will not.
Common chargeback reasons and what prevents them
| Reason the customer gives | What usually happened | What prevents it |
|---|---|---|
| Item not received | tracking stalled or delivered to the wrong door | a fast, specific answer from live tracking |
| Not as described | wrong size, colour or damaged on arrival | a clear return or replacement path |
| Unrecognised charge | store name on the statement looks unfamiliar | order confirmation that names the store clearly |
| Refund not processed | the request sat in a queue | a reply confirming what happens and when |
Aide answers the questions that turn into disputes while the customer is still asking the store. It looks up the order and its carrier scans first, tells the shopper what is really going on with the parcel, and hands genuinely stuck deliveries to the team with the history attached. When a refund is the right outcome, Aide prepares it and a teammate approves it by default, so money never moves without a person deciding. See how Shopify refunds with approval work.