What are effective ways of fighting chargeback fraud?
Context: I'm one of the bunch of people for whom Prepfully is a weekend project. The primary paid service is a 1-1 mock interviews / coaching service.
The problem: Over the last 3 months, I received a bunch of "Transaction marked as fraudulent" chargebacks, from candidates who used the service. My volumes are small enough that I emailed each one of these users to check -- and they gave a range of reasons, from forgetting they used Prepfully, to having a credit card stolen, to just filing this chargeback accidentally. They also all promised to withdraw this chargeback.
However - I lost 2 / 4 such chargeback disputes. This is inspite of submitting the email thread (including where they acknowledged their mistake), as part of the evidence to dispute this chargeback. Naturally Stripe advises there is nothing they can do in this situation (I understand it is in the hands of the banks which issue these cards - Citi, JPM etc), rather than Stripe's.
What I already do: 1. If anyone cancels a session, they receive a refund. There are charges for last minute cancellations to avoid leaving coaches hanging out to dry -- but I have never received a chargeback in such a situation (I did receive two threats of chargebacks and just ate the cost myself rather than risk one, but by and large people are understanding) 2. If someone is unhappy either explicitly (eg. requests a refund) or implicitly (eg. gives a review of less than 3/5) - I email them to check what went wrong, and issue a refund 95% of the time. 3. When I do get a chargeback, I upload pretty much all evidence, including reviews the candidate / user has left, IP logs, emails they've sent me confirming the dispute was accidental or mistaken etc etc.
What I'm afraid of: 1. I sometimes lose disputes even where the user acknowledges their mistake 2. It seems even the disputes I win against the "I made a mistaken chargeback" category from credit card users, count against my chargeback rates. At my volumes even a small increase in chargeback volumes would basically get me suspended from Stripe.
Question to the community: What should I be doing differently? I will already be raising prices by about 3-5% to cover the risk of chargeback fraud (sadly this will be borne by legitimate customers, but I operate at break-even so paying this out of pocket is pretty painful). But is there any advice from the community on defending against this sort of friendly fraud?