Credit Card recharge

jowest312

Hi

Hope someone can help. My husband is a taxi driver and we take bookings over the net, mainly from USA customers. A customer booked a taxi for in April 16th and i used Google Checkout to charge him.

On the day of the journey, the customer did not turn up and my husband waited well over one hour at the pickup destination.
Our T&C state that if you do not turn up on the day of the booked journey then you will not be given a refund.

The customer then went through their credit card and asked for a refund. Google asked for any documents and I sent google checkout a copy of our terms and conditions, I heard nothing until feb this year from Google stating that my account is now in debt and they have charged me £7.00 on top of the original £95.00.

The email reads


Please be advised that the Google checkout only acts like a mediator
between the credit card issuer bank and the seller and the outcome of a
chargeback decided by the Network bank, and Google has to comply with the
decision.

Since our policy doesn't cover intangible goods, such as services and
digital content, this order could not be covered by the Payment Guarantee
Policy and your account was debited.

Surely this is wrong! I cannot contact the customers credit card company as I do not know who they are, secondly surely, the credit card company cannot just decide without finding out all the facts and making a decision some 7 months later!

Can anyone help

Thanks Joanne

InsideInsurance

Merchants almost always lose chargebacks, in fact if you look at some small business forums they don't even recommend to spend any time defending them at all but simply to go straight to writing a letter before action and after the 7 days notice issuing county court proceedings (assuming the costs make it worth while).

Ultimately the customer/ bank would have up to the limitation law of the relevant jurisdiction to do the chargeback within. In england/wales that would be 6 years.

Was this customer US or UK based?

meer53

You need to ask Google for a copy of any documentation regarding the rejected chargeback. Could it be possible the person who booked the taxi was waiting in the wrong location ?

I say this because for them to get their card issuer to action a chargeback, it sounds to me as thought they've stated that they haven't received the service they paid for.

They won't have made a decision to redebit you without investigating first. I don't think you will get anywhere though as Google have already stated that they are a third party and have accepted the issuing banks decision. The issuing bank will have more information but due to Googles involvement, you're not likely to get to see this. Think you'll have to put this one down to experience

Ben8282

I tend to agree with meer53 here but you should also consider the possibility that the card used may have been stolen and the person who provided you with this card number may have had no intention of ever turning up. There are people who would play sick jokes like this.

April 16th is slightly more than 11 months ago. Why did it take 11 months for this chargeback to occur. This is well over any chargeback time limit.

There is another possibility as wlll. You say the customer contacted their credit card company and asked for a refund. Why? What were the stated grounds?

The customer must have told some sort of story to the credit card company for them to have raised the dispute in the first place. Were you not told the grounds for dispute in order to respond to it? Has the customer ever contacted you directly to request this refund? My experience tells me that a credit card company would be reluctant to open a dispute on the grounds of 'refund not received' unless the customer provided them with evidence that you had agreed to the refund but had subsequently failed to action it, but instead advise the customer to contact you at least in the first instance.

That would imply that the grounds for dispute would have been either that the charge was fraudulant or that you had failed to provide the service paid for. If the pick-up location was, for example, an airport, was your husband waiting in the right terminal at an agreed place visible to the client? Was the clients flight delayed? etc .... Did the client make any attempt to contact you? Did he have the means to contact you i.e. a phone number?

Could the chargeback have occurred 'in default' as a result of your failing to respond to correspondence received within a specific time period? A number of years ago, while working for a previous employer, we received a dispute enquiry. The accounts department of the client's company had disputed a large transaction on one of their employees company chargecards because they didn't have the correct invoice or something like that. All we needed to do was send a copy of the invoice showing what the charge was for. Everything was in order. The letter from Amex got lost in our internal mail and was never responded to. The chargeback was upheld and we lost a lot of money for simply failing to respond within the specified time period.

Sending only a copy of your terms and conditions without defending the dispute would not have helped either.

bengal-stripe

jowest312 wrote: »

The email reads

Since our policy doesn't cover intangible goods, such as services and digital content, this order could not be covered by the Payment Guarantee Policy and your account was debited.

If google checkout does not cover 'intangible goods' like services, than for you as provider of services it is not the right medium to use (neither does Paypal cover intangible goods).

There might be no way 'round and to be covered, you will have to open a proper merchant account with a credit card service provider.

jowest312

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Merchants almost always lose chargebacks, in fact if you look at some small business forums they don't even recommend to spend any time defending them at all but simply to go straight to writing a letter before action and after the 7 days notice issuing county court proceedings (assuming the costs make it worth while).

Ultimately the customer/ bank would have up to the limitation law of the relevant jurisdiction to do the chargeback within. In england/wales that would be 6 years.

Was this customer US or UK based?[The customer is US based]

jowest312

The customer is from the US

Ben8282

jowest312 wrote: »

Ultimately the customer/ bank would have up to the limitation law of the relevant jurisdiction to do the chargeback within. In england/wales that would be 6 years.

It really would help if you could actually answer some of the points that have been raised about what happened. Then we could understand more and help you better.

jowest312

Thanks for all the replies. The customer is US based.

The charge back was made in July, Google sent me and email while I was on holiday in Italy, I sent them a copy of the original booking and a copy of out T&C. That was the last I heard about it until Feb, this year!

I have now asked Google to send me all correspondence and will see what happens.

According to the customer he says that he telephoned to say that he would not be arriving until the following day but there was no contact from him at all. My husband said that he had waited over an hour and would be quite willing to refund some money less waiting time! My husband told the customer to contact us when he returned to Canada and we could sort something out, we heard nothing from May 8th 2011 until we received the email from Google 28th July 2011 by then we had assumed that the customer had realised that it was their mistake for not contacting us and making sure he spoke to someone! The taxi was booked for Saturday 7th May 2011 at 2pm and we know that the customer did not arrive in Dover until later that day but did not contact us.
If I can prove he did not get on the correct ferry to Dover to connect with the original time of 2pm, does anyone think this would help? I have had no contact with his card holder, only google, who said that his card company had decided in his favour!
We are so angry at this person, wasting everyones time and money and feel apart from charging with a merchant account which is not worth our while as this kind of work is only during the summer. I am going to make customers from now on sign an agreement that they were happy with the journey. In this case it would not of worked as he did not turn up but we cannot take chances in any other circumstances.

meer53

jowest312 wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies. The customer is US based.

The charge back was made in July, Google sent me and email while I was on holiday in Italy, I sent them a copy of the original booking and a copy of out T&C. That was the last I heard about it until Feb, this year!

I have now asked Google to send me all correspondence and will see what happens.

According to the customer he says that he telephoned to say that he would not be arriving until the following day but there was no contact from him at all. My husband said that he had waited over an hour and would be quite willing to refund some money less waiting time! My husband told the customer to contact us when he returned to Canada and we could sort something out, we heard nothing from May 8th 2011 until we received the email from Google 28th July 2011 by then we had assumed that the customer had realised that it was their mistake for not contacting us and making sure he spoke to someone! The taxi was booked for Saturday 7th May 2011 at 2pm and we know that the customer did not arrive in Dover until later that day but did not contact us.
If I can prove he did not get on the correct ferry to Dover to connect with the original time of 2pm, does anyone think this would help? I have had no contact with his card holder, only google, who said that his card company had decided in his favour!
We are so angry at this person, wasting everyones time and money and feel apart from charging with a merchant account which is not worth our while as this kind of work is only during the summer. I am going to make customers from now on sign an agreement that they were happy with the journey. In this case it would not of worked as he did not turn up but we cannot take chances in any other circumstances.

If the customer says he called you to say he was arriving the next day, then that's why the chargeback failed. I can't see why you say that the customer is wasting everyones time and money ? Did you call him at any time to see where he was ? Did you get a contact number from him, i would have thought that would be the first thing you would do when taking a booking ?

It's hardly likely to be a scam is it ? There's absolutely no benefit for a fraudster in this case. I think you should just forget it and accept that it was a breakdown in communications by all parties.

Ben8282

jowest312 wrote: »

According to the customer he says that he telephoned to say that he would not be arriving until the following day but there was no contact from him at all. My husband said that he had waited over an hour and would be quite willing to refund some money less waiting time! My husband told the customer to contact us when he returned to Canada and we could sort something out, we heard nothing from May 8th 2011 until we received the email from Google 28th July 2011 by then we had assumed that the customer had realised that it was their mistake for not contacting us and making sure he spoke to someone!

This is somewhat contradictory. And what has 8th May got to do with anything? The booking was for 16th April.

jowest312 wrote: »

The taxi was booked for Saturday 7th May 2011 at 2pm .

Not according to your OP.

Are you sure your husband actually went to Dover on the correct date?

So it now looks as if the taxi was booked for 7th May and not 16th April and, reading between the lines even though you deny it, I believe the customer was in contact with you on 8th May? Is that right?

jowest312 wrote: »

If I can prove he did not get on the correct ferry to Dover to connect with the original time of 2pm, does anyone think this would help? I have had no contact with his card holder, only google, who said that his card company had decided in his favour!

Here we go again. You say you have had no contact and yet ....

And how could you possibly prove this? The Data Protection Act will have prevented the ferry company from revealing this information to you. If you have knowledge of which ferry the customer travelled on then you must have been in contact and aware of his movements.

If your communication with google was so confused are you surprised the chargeback was upheld?

7 months is a long time for the chargeback to be under consideration as well.