I was directed here by Sidekick. They provided me with bad information, telling me a customer had initiated a double charge back with both PayPal and their credit card. I was told that this is fraudulent and to file a dispute. I just learned I lost the dispute, but that it was never a double charge back! Chat just said oops. It just happened this morning, so I have no idea if more money will be coming out of my account.
Sidekick can also give incorrect answers about Shopify APIs and code even when you ask it to check with the latest documentation. It’s helpful but not 100% reliable. Sorry you had to learn that lesson.
If you want to share feedback with the Shopify team, go here: https://help.shopify.com/ and Click the chat button in the bottom corner which at least currently says “Chat with a human” although that could change in the future. Tell the chat bot that you have issue to report and that you want to connect with a support advisor.
Sorry you got burned on this one — and the “I only found out after I lost it” part is the worst version of it.
One thing that might help going forward: the dispute-related things Sidekick does are scoped narrower than they look. In the chargeback response form there’s a “Help me respond to the claim” entry point, and clicking the reason code on a dispute opens guidance too — but what those give you is an explanation of what evidence tends to matter for that specific reason code. Sidekick doesn’t inspect the dispute’s actual state, doesn’t draft your response, and doesn’t submit anything. So asking it “what happened on this order” is outside what it’s built to answer, and you can get a confident-sounding answer that isn’t grounded in the case.
The authoritative view is the dispute record itself in your admin (Orders > the disputed order > the chargeback section). The reason code there is what determines which evidence is even relevant. Worth checking what it actually says, because a “double chargeback with both PayPal and their credit card” wouldn’t normally be one case - a PayPal dispute is handled inside PayPal and never shows up as a Shopify Payments chargeback. Two separate processes, two separate places to look.
Also worth knowing for next time, because almost nobody mentions it: if you don’t touch a Shopify Payments dispute, Shopify still files a response for you on the due date, built from the order data it can see - products, addresses, carrier and tracking, order and fulfillment dates, customer IP. That’s a real safety net, but it only contains what Shopify can look up. Anything that lives in your inbox - the customer confirming delivery, a call you logged, a refund you already issued - isn’t in it unless you add it to the evidence form before the deadline. The deadline is set by the card network and issuer, usually somewhere in the 7-21 day range, and once it passes there is no reopening it.
On the money question, since nobody answered it: a lost dispute means the disputed amount was already withdrawn, plus the chargeback fee. It’s a one-time reversal, not something that keeps pulling from your account.
(Disclosure: I build merchant-side tooling in this area; not affiliated with Shopify.)