What is a chargeback?
A chargeback is a demand by a credit or debit provider for a retailer to make good the loss on a fraudulent or disputed transaction. The bank will retrieve the funds from Skiddle and return them to the customer unless evidence can be provided that the fraud/dispute did not occur.
For example:
A customer purchases a £40 ticket for your event on Skiddle. They were refused entry without a refund.
The customer later disputes this transaction with their bank, who then refund the customer for their ticket costs and raise a chargeback with Skiddle to recoup their funds.
What happens when Skiddle receives a chargeback?
When Skiddle receives a chargeback, the customer order is automatically put on manual checking to ensure the funds are not remitted.
Our finance team will then review the order for fraudulent activity and if they deem the chargeback to be inaccurate, we have 7 days to defend the chargeback with the bank on your behalf.
Why do I have charges on my account?
When a chargeback is received, two charges will be applied to your account; the first being a reversal charge for the face value of the original order in dispute, and secondly a fixed administration fee of £12.50 + VAT. These charges are added as soon as a chargeback is received.
The administration fee of £12.50 + VAT covers the staff time to review and defend the chargeback for you. Defending chargebacks is part of the Skiddle service and as your ticketing platform, to ensure all orders are legitimate and valid for your event.
Should we successfully defend the chargeback on your behalf, the face value charge will be reversed/cancelled from your account.
What happens if the funds have already been remitted and we receive a chargeback?
Should you have been remitted prior to Skiddle receiving the chargeback, the charges will still be applied to your account and should be paid off by selecting the link in the Promotion Centre on your Dashboard.
How can promoters avoid chargebacks and fees?
Chargebacks are usually raised when the cardholder doesn’t recognise the charge on their card, or they feel they didn’t get the services/goods paid for.
Skiddle have multiple fraud prevention measures to protect you from the former, including 3D secure. We also clearly add your event name to the cardholder’s statement to help with the recognition of charges.
It’s your responsibility to ensure that customers who have paid for tickets are admitted to your event, or a refund is issued to them via the Promotion Centre if you deny entry.
The most effective way to prevent chargebacks in the first place is to provide your customers with easy and efficient refunds. Even though it may feel as though you’ll lose revenue if you offer refunds, the best solution is to keep the customer happy and avoid disputes and negative online reviews.
Click here to find more information on refunding tickets.
How long can a chargeback be raised for after a ticket sale is made?
Chargebacks can be raised up to 180 days after a transaction is made. These timescales are set by the card issuers and may change in the future.
Does this apply to DirectPay via Stripe?
If you opt to use a third party payment processor such as Stripe, we have no involvement in the chargeback process as we are not the merchant of record. Your agreement is directly with Stripe and the responsibility to handle chargebacks is your own. Stripe will notify you directly of any chargebacks raised. Stripe will also notify our servers of a raised chargeback, at which point we will automatically mark the affected order as under review to prevent the ticket being used.
Stripe includes anti-fraud tools as part of its service which you can use to prevent chargebacks. We are happy to provide you with extra evidence to help you defend such chargebacks, please get in touch for information.
For more information on chargebacks and how to avoid them, please see here.