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How to win chargebacks on physical goods: the order records you need

Physical-goods cases are won in your order log, before the chargeback arrives.

A physical-goods seller defends chargebacks with different evidence than a software or subscription business. The common disputes are goods that did not arrive, defective merchandise, and returns where the refund did not go through. They arrive mostly as Visa 13.1, Visa 13.3 and Visa 13.6, with Visa 10.4 alongside. The sellers who win these consistently captured the right records at the order, before any dispute existed.

The most decisive record is the Address Verification Service (AVS) result from when the bank approved the payment. AVS shows whether the billing address the buyer entered at checkout matched the address the customer's bank has on file for the card. A "Y" or "M" code means a full address and ZIP match. An "N" means no match. A match supports the case that the buyer was who they said. A mismatch or a missing result is a problem to argue around. Most payment companies (Stripe, Shopify Payments and the like) return AVS when the payment is approved. Most order logs do not store it. The seller then has to dig it out of the payment company's record at dispute time, or goes without it. Cases without AVS lose more often on 13.1 and 10.4, whatever the seller's actual fault.

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Tracking comes second. A carrier "delivered" status is now one input among several for the customer's bank. It can mean a package left in an apartment lobby, a wrong address that accepted the parcel, or a misroute the customer never received. Keep the tracking number, the carrier confirmation and the delivery method (signature, photo, or delivery to the address on file). Tracking plus a signature from a name matching the billing record closes a dispute quickly. A bare "delivered" status leaves the case open to the customer's account.

On Visa 10.4 fraud disputes, the customer says they did not authorize the purchase. The seller shipped a physical item to the billing address and the customer kept it. An AVS match, delivery to the billing address on file and past orders from the same card show the bank a known buyer. Visa's Compelling Evidence 3.0 (Visa's rule that lets you use a customer's past orders as proof) applies where a case qualifies. It lets the seller present the buyer's earlier legitimate transactions with the same card.

Returns and defective-merchandise disputes fall into two groups. A buyer who returned goods inside the policy window and is owed a refund is a refund case. Fighting it loses on the merits and hurts your chargeback ratio. A buyer who claims "not as described" on a product that matched the listing, or who returned goods after the window, is worth defending. You need to have captured the product description at the point of sale and kept the return-policy acceptance record. You also need to show the buyer agreed to the policy. Most sellers who lose 13.3 and 13.6 cases never saved the policy as it stood at the original sale. The bank treats the version on your current site as weak evidence of what the buyer agreed to.

The fix is inexpensive. Store the AVS result in the order log next to the order ID and transaction details. Attach the tracking number and delivery method to the shipment record for that order. Save the product description, price and return policy as the buyer saw them at checkout, once per order. Link every order from the same card to one buyer record so past-order evidence is a query. Most of this is one schema change away from an existing order log.

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