Vendor help - reducing chargebacks?

Hey guys,

I'm a vendor for a few Clickbank products.

One is a IM product with a 11% refund rate (which isn't bad for that niche), but the issue is - our chargebacks are really high (up to 2%). We don't do too many sales, so it's only 4-5 a month, but it still makes a huge difference and has led to us being put on a higher reserve (25%) on Clickbank, but I'm sure it's not long until we get terminated.

The product is good and our support is great. The chargebacks always come from direct sales (rarely affiliates) and are various countries and not always immediate. I haven't seen a chargeback yet where they have spoken to support or anything like that.

Anyone have any experience and ways to reduce this?

Thanks!

It my offline company we require contracts on all products that we accept credit cards.
You sign a contract and a credit authorization form before we will deal with you.

It has cut the amount of charge backs we deal with in half over the last 6 months.

It has only helped us win maybe 30-40% of charge backs though, it seem's to help more with discouraging the charge back to begin with.
I am guessing if people know they have signed 2 pieces of paper they are less inclined to even create a charge back.

I'm sure that would help, but the issue with Clickbank is you can't have anything like a form they need to sign before they purchase, nor do you even get a chance to fight the chargeback. They just automatically credit the buyer and charge us for it.

Your support is great, but do you follow up on purchases? Emails, phone calls, anything to get in touch with the purchaser.

I'm sure that you do, since your in the IM niche... but do you make it known there is a 60 day money back guarantee before they purchase? I feel that if you didn't the buyer would maybe automatically assume that they don't have such privileges and their first reaction may be to call their credit card company. This is just a thought, but like I said I'm sure you make the money back guarantee very apparent. With most IM's that's basically another selling point.

IM niche and digital products have such trash buyers who buy with the intention of doing a dispute/charge back because they can just do it! There is nothing you can do to stop such freebie hunters unless you make sales private where you pick clients from a forum so the chances of hit and run are way less. Something like

"We closed sales for this product but we are only making it available for bhw members. PM me for order link" then ask clients to send you their receipt ID to get fast activation or a freebie and make a record of which member have which receipt number so you know which client did the charge back.

Takes time to manage sales but I guess this approach will work for you while having low number of sales so no much work needed.

I only ever get chargebacks compared to normal refund process rarely, maybe a 1:20 ratio comparison.

Is the guarantee clear on the sales page? I find it hard to believe it is because most people would use it.

Generally speaking, you can reduce refund rates (and chargebacks too) with unannounced bonuses. Especially those that are dependent on being delivered after the refund period is over.

What kind of chargeback codes are you seeing?

Do you see a pattern in the chargebacks you receive? You said many of them are from other countries? Perhaps it makes sense to IP geolocate them before they buy if the orders from those countries results more in chargeback than legitimate orders?

Also, do you track their IP when they use the IM product? I've known other digital goods sellers win the chargeback fight when they can trace the IP address to the user (both for purchase and usage).

I had and still have problems with that. The issue is with payment processor, most of them approve the payment to easy, so in that case you as vendor need to do additional check. I always ask for ID prove or what i feel necessary to be safe. I dont know if this is a solution for you, but my advice is to not rely too much on ur payment processor.

I've realized that some people only buy because they know they can get their money back, and there's not much you can really do about that.