Two merchants forward us 13.1 disputes in the same week (13.1 is Visa's dispute reason for goods or services not received). Each has a tracking confirmation, a full billing-address match (AVS Y) when the bank approved the payment, post-delivery login activity and a clean checkout. Chase decides one case and Bank of America the other. The Chase case clears in the merchant's favour within 11 days. The Bank of America case is upheld against the merchant on the same evidence. The merchants assume luck. The customer's bank and how it reviews disputes matters at least as much as the dispute reason.
The first 6 to 8 digits of the disputed card name the bank before you write anything. Chase, Bank of America, Capital One, Citi and Synchrony each review disputes with different priorities. One reply sent to all of them suits none.
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Chase reads the billing-address match heavily on physical-goods disputes. A 13.1 case with an AVS Y or M match and a clean tracking record clears Chase at higher rates than Bank of America, so leading with the AVS result suits Chase. Bank of America treats the AVS match as a minimum. It looks for signature confirmation, a delivery photo or delivery to the billing address on file. Capital One weighs the communication trail more closely than the card-brand average. Emails from before the dispute, support tickets and refund offers carry more weight there. Synchrony carries co-branded retail cards and gives customers the benefit of the doubt more often than major banks, so expect to need stronger evidence.
No public rulebook publishes these patterns. They come from thousands of dispute outcomes and shift as banks change how they review. A merchant whose reply changes only by dispute reason uses half the available signal. One whose replies are tuned to current bank patterns wins more of the same evidence.
Look up the card's first digits first on a new notice. That tells you who is reading your reply, which evidence should lead and which arguments need depth. representments.com tracks how each major US bank decides disputes, updates that record as outcomes come in, and writes each response for the bank reviewing it.