Monica Eaton Warns Against ‘Blind-Eye’ Approach to Disputes
Monica Eaton, a world-recognized leader in payment disputes, says that retailers need to get tough on chargebacks in a recent feature for WWD.
WWD (also known as Women's Wear Daily) is an iconic and long-running trade journal for the fashion industry. Sometimes called "the bible of fashion,” WWD attracts tens of thousands of readers each month including retailers, designers, and fashion enthusiasts.
Chargebacks remain a serious and growing problem facing online merchants. Some estimates project chargebacks may cost businesses up to $150 billion every year in both direct and indirect losses. To make matters worse, most of those losses are potential cases of friendly fraud, rather than legitimate disputes.
Instead of turning a blind eye, as is often the case now, Monica suggests that retailers take a more proactive approach in response to this problem. However, it will ultimately take a larger, coordinated effort to affect real change.
“Credit card issuers must exert diligent investigations and adjunction when consumers demand chargebacks, instead of catering to them as a concierge service…consumer bad behavior will increase, disowning legitimate purchases on the e-commerce merchants and a personal consequence for the consumer — an exponential increase in prices for products and services.”
