Im curious if you can refund an order through Shopify, even after getting a chargeback case through Stripe.
In PayPal you can send your customer his/hers tracking number, issue refund or to find another acceptable solution to any problem that they may have, so the new dispute case wont never escalate to a claim that could harm the PayPal business account, just because their shipping confirmation email was filtered to promotions -folder of their email provider instead of the inbox.
Now I am wondering can you do the same thing in Stripe with a customer that has filed a chargeback without ever trying to contact our customer support for any help with his order.
Does anyone know what happens if you issue a refund to a customer through Shopify, even after the Stripe chargeback case is made and still open?
It’s always best to go through the primary payment gateway to resolve any dispute issues you have to reduce any complications including cancellations. You can always archive the order through Shopify or Cancel (without the refund option) from within Shopify.
Always resolve your dispute as quickly as possible and refund the customer’s payment to avoid your store being marked as high risk by the payment processors.
This is a great question to ask. I can appreciate the desire to resolve any chargeback situations as quickly as possible to minimize any effect it might have on your merchant account. How you handle the chargeback is entirely in your hands but there are some things to consider when it comes to refunding an order with an open chargeback on it.
If this payment was processed outside of Shopify Payments, this could be different. As each payment gateway is unique, I can’t be sure of all the features available. You mentioned that this order was processed through Stripe, Stripe is one of the companies that help power Shopify Payments so I am going to share some information on what our best steps are for handling chargebacks processed through Shopify Payments (just in case).
It is very important to realize that refunding an order does not cancel the chargeback. In Shopify Payments, if a customer opens a chargeback the money they paid you is automatically debited from your payout account and held in limbo by the customer’s bank until their review of the chargeback is complete. While we always encourage merchants to offer a refund or return of the product to resolve the chargeback you should never be refunding the customer until the chargeback is officially cancelled by their bank and a letter head statement from the bank is provided as proof. The reason for this is that the money the customer paid you is already being handled by their customer’s bank and if you refund them as well and the chargeback is resolved in their favor, the customer is essentially ending up with two refunds. If this is processed through Shopify Payments, our team can assist in reversing the initial refund you created on your own but the process and hassle isn’t worth it when it doesn’t change the outcome of the chargeback to begin with.
If this payment was not processed through Shopify Payments but through Stripe or another payment gateway directly, I would reach out to them to clarify their processes in these situations. We want to ensure that you are making a safe and informed decision when handling these situations.