When you make a living selling things online, you will undoubtedly have to deal with nasty customers from time to time.

What would you do if you had a customer lie about an item you sold, then file a fraudulent chargeback to get her money back?

That is what happened to the seller in this story, so she disputed the chargeback and won, and also got the item back, so she could keep the money and resell the product.

Check it out.

Rude buyer threatens me with a chargeback, then loses both the item and her payment

A woman bought a designer handbag from me online, then about a week later sends an extremely rude message, claiming it had damages and smelled funny.

She wanted her money back IMMEDIATELY, and demanded I send it to her on Venmo (against policy and massive red flag for fraud) or else she would file a chargeback (threatening sellers with chargebacks is also against policy).

I certainly don’t blame her for not wanting to deal with it on the weekend.

Being as it was the weekend, and her language was really abusive and gross, I decided not to interrupt my weekend and waited till Monday morning to respond, which is within the TOS.

She was really aggressive, and sent me more rude messages demanding I relent and pay her off site “or else.”

I checked her feedback and at least one other seller reported that she also tried to coerce them into an off site refund with a chargeback.

Buyers are typically given anything they want.

Buyers have enormous latitude in online sales, and tbh, I just didn’t want to deal with her anymore so on Monday I responded offering her a full refund in exchange for a free return.

Though I did not believe she was being honest, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and said maybe it was damaged in transit.

I fully expected her to return the wrong item, but after I gave her a free return/refund option, she filed then a chargeback anyways claiming the item is not as described, then left very negative feedback.

Both the feedback and existence of a chargeback claim harms my presence on the site and hits me with fees and an automatic refund for her, taking money out of my account automatically and messing with my budget.

Chargebacks aren’t meant for this type of thing.

There’s a reason why most sellers will do most anything to avoid chargebacks, it really is inconvenient and damaging for us.

Now being as this used to be my profession, I know that it’s considered fraudulent to file a chargeback when the retailer has offered a full refund.

So naturally, I appealed the case and it was decided in my favor, and her refund was reversed.

I blocked her and moved along.

Nice, she got the item back too.

Fast forward about two weeks, and the original item shows up on my doorstep, returned, and without any of the damages that she complained about.

Now, I realized in this situation I have no legal obligation to refund her at all, but better still, is that when I went to the seller dashboard to try, I don’t even have the option to refund her because the case SHE OPENED was closed and decided in my favor.

I still felt a little funny about relisting, so I emailed the site for more direction.

It sounds like relisting it is 100% fine.

Apparently, when you file a chargeback you are forfeiting your right to seek a refund directly from the retailer in favor of seeking a refund from your financial institution.

She had apparently messaged the site and modified my feedback to demand a refund after the chargeback failed, and sent them the tracking number of the item she ultimately returned, saying that since she had a tracking number they had to refund her.

Failed chargebacks are serious business.

But a failed chargeback is final in this case, and because her behavior was deemed fraudulent, the website itself is not able/willing to refund her anymore either.

The only way I could give her her money back was if I unblocked her, exchanged info, and sent the refund on venmo or paypal, which are linked to my personal email and phone number.

Given how rude she had been I have no interest in opening up any unmediated communication, and I’m certainly not going to give her my personal contacts of any kind.

This buyer jumped right to the nuclear option, and it backfired.

So by following through on her coercive threat to file a chargeback against me, she managed to lose both the item and her money.

A chargeback is not the silver bullet people often think it is.

If she’d been even reasonably polite, I’d have had no issue communicating with her directly to give her money back, even if she had filed the chargeback.

Hey, this seller is just following the rules; it isn’t her fault the buyer shot herself in the foot.

Take a look at the comments below to see what other people think about it.

This person had something similar happen years ago.

Fraudulent chargebacks are the worst.

Yup, enjoy the windfall.

This person had the opposite happen.

This happened to this commenter as well.

It is hard to feel bad for a scammer when their scam backfires on them.

It’s a rare bit of justice indeed.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.