A Stripe dispute opens with the money already gone. Stripe has taken the disputed amount from your balance, the customer's bank is holding it, and the Dashboard shows a deadline that is usually between 7 and 21 days away. You cannot refund the payment while the dispute is open, so the only route back to that money is the response you send.
That response is submitted once. Stripe lets you save a draft, but when you press submit the evidence goes to the card network as it stands and cannot be changed. Merchants who upload a receipt and a tracking number the moment the email arrives have used their only attempt on the weakest version of their case, which is why most of the work should happen before anything is uploaded.
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Begin with the reason the bank gave. The Dashboard labels the dispute as fraudulent, product not received, not as described, subscription cancelled and so on, and behind each label sits a network reason code with its own test. A fraud claim on a Visa card is decided on whether the cardholder took part in the purchase, so the evidence that matters is the history linking this customer to earlier undisputed orders. A product-not-received claim turns on delivery to the address the customer gave, and a subscription claim turns on whether the cancellation terms were shown and followed. Sending the same bundle to all three is how good cases are lost.
The evidence form has fields for receipts, shipping records, customer messages and a free-text explanation. Most merchants leave that last field short or empty, yet it is where a bank analyst learns what the documents prove. A clear chargeback response, uploaded as a PDF and written to the specific reason code, tells the reviewer what happened, which piece of evidence answers the claim, and where to find it. The analyst at the bank spends minutes on each case and decides on what is easy to verify.
Stripe also offers to assemble a response for you. That saves time on small disputes, but a generic submission tends to argue every point at equal weight, and the bank has seen the format many times before. For a dispute worth your margin, a response built around the reason code is the stronger choice.
representments.com writes that response. Forward the dispute email from Stripe, and within 48 hours you receive an editable Word document written for the reason code, the issuing bank and your business, with marked places for your own records. You stay in control and submit it through Stripe yourself. The first response is free.