January's Chargebacks Start in December

In late January a notification arrives. A customer has disputed a payment from December 18 and says the parcel never came. You remember the order, vaguely. You have the payment and an address. You don't have the delivery photo, the rider's confirmation or the WhatsApp message where they wrote "received, thanks". You have a few days to respond, and you lose.

Cardholders read their December statements in January. Chargebacks911 expects holiday disputes to peak 45 to 60 days after purchase, when the season feels finished and nobody is watching. Riskified's data puts November and December orders at 31% of a year's refund claims. Some are honest mistakes. Some come from people who learned a "refund hack" from a video. For a small store, one lost dispute can wipe out the profit on several honest orders.

Banks decide on what you can show them. The shops that win kept the evidence at the moment of sale, attached to the order, without anyone having to remember.

• The checkout record. IP address, device, the email and phone the customer typed, and their acceptance of your refund policy with a timestamp.
• Delivery evidence. Courier tracking, a photo at the door, a one-time code the customer gave the rider, or a signature on the rider's phone.
• The conversation. WhatsApp or email messages about the order, saved to the order instead of left in someone's phone.
• Usage, for digital goods. Download or login records showing the customer used what they bought.

A small layer around the store and gateway you already have.

1. Every order record collects the checkout details and policy acceptance automatically.
2. Riders confirm delivery with a code or photo from a simple page on their phone, and it lands on the order.
3. When a dispute comes in through Stripe, Paystack or Flutterwave, the system assembles a dispute pack as a PDF with the order, payment, delivery and messages, in the order the bank expects.
4. Risky orders get flagged before shipping: a new customer, a mismatched country, an unusually large basket, a last-minute address change. You decide whether to call them first.

It won't stop every dispute, and nothing honest can. A customer whose parcel didn't arrive should get their money back. It makes sure you can show the deliveries that did happen.

I wrote an open-source escrow contract in Cairo that holds a buyer's payment and a merchant's return bond until delivery terms are met, which is the same problem solved on-chain. My private document generator turns structured records into branded, print-ready PDFs, and a dispute pack is one of those.

• Payment Gateway Integration from $130. Refunds and a payments log come with the $340 package, reconciliation reports with the $780 package.
• PDF Document Generator from $180 for the dispute pack template.
• Marketplace Escrow Contract from $650, if you sell high-value goods between people who don't know each other.

Most of this can be in place before your December orders ship, which is when it needs to be running. Book a free call and bring your last lost dispute if you have one. I'll show you what evidence would have changed the outcome.