Shopify Chargeback? What to Do Before the Deadline

The email you did not want

Somewhere between the order and today, a customer went to their bank instead of to you. Shopify’s email says a dispute has been opened on an order, and there is a deadline.

It is tempting to read it as an attack. Usually it is not. A lot of chargebacks start with a customer who could not get an answer quickly enough, did not recognise the name on their card statement, or believed the parcel was lost. That matters, because it changes what you do first.

Chargeback or inquiry: check which one it is

Shopify shows two kinds of dispute, and they behave differently:

An inquiry is the bank asking a question. No money has been taken yet. Answer it well and it can close there; ignore it and it can turn into a chargeback
A chargeback means the bank has already taken the disputed amount back from you, plus a chargeback fee. If you win, the amount comes back, and depending on your country the fee may too

Both come with a response deadline, usually somewhere between 7 and 21 days. It is firm: once it passes, you cannot add evidence. Put the date in your calendar the day the email arrives.

Managing disputes inside the Shopify admin applies when you take payments with Shopify Payments. With another payment provider the buttons live in that provider’s dashboard, but everything below still applies.

Find out why before you reply

Open the order. The chargeback details show the reason the bank gave, and sometimes an Issuer claim with more detail from the cardholder’s side. Shopify sorts reasons into a handful of types, and three come up most for small stores:

Product not received. The customer says the parcel never arrived. Often it is late, stuck at a depot, left with a neighbour, or marked delivered but not found
Fraudulent or unrecognised. The cardholder says they did not make the purchase. Sometimes that is true. Sometimes someone else in the household ordered, or the name on the statement looked unfamiliar
Product unacceptable, or credit not processed. The item arrived damaged or not as described, or the customer sent it back and is still waiting for the refund

The reason tells you which evidence matters, and whether you should fight at all.

Write to the customer — carefully

When the reason is “not received” or “credit not processed”, a short email often sorts it out, because what the customer wanted was the parcel or the money, not a dispute. Keep it calm and factual:

Subject: About your order #{number}
Hi {first name},
Your bank has let us know there is a dispute on order #{number}. We are sorry it came to that — we would much rather sort it out with you directly.
Here is where the order stands: {tracking or refund status, in one sentence}.
If that answers it, could you let your bank know you would like to withdraw the dispute? If something is still wrong, reply here and tell us what you need.
— {your name}, {store name}

Two cautions before you send anything else:

Do not refund on top of an open chargeback. Once a chargeback is open, the bank has already taken the money, and Shopify does not let you refund it. With an inquiry a full refund is possible, though Shopify does not recommend it — and a partial refund does not stop a chargeback. If the customer is right, accepting the dispute is cleaner than paying twice
“I cancelled it” is not proof. The bank has to confirm the withdrawal. Shopify asks for an official withdrawal letter from the customer’s bank — a screenshot of a statement is not enough — which you add as evidence. Until then, treat the dispute as open

If the reason is fraud and the cardholder really did not place the order, do not email the address on the order asking for details. That address may belong to whoever used the card. Your answer goes to the bank, not to them.

Decide: accept or respond

Not every dispute is worth fighting. Ask one question: would a stranger, looking only at your evidence, agree with you?

Accept when the customer has a point — the parcel really did not arrive and you cannot show delivery, or a return is sitting on your shelf unrefunded. In the order’s chargeback banner, Accept chargeback sends the money back to the customer. The fee is not returned, but you stop spending hours on a case you would lose.

Respond when you can show what happened. Click Add evidence in the banner, add what matters on the Chargeback response page, and Save. With Shopify Payments, the response is submitted automatically on the due date, along with order details, addresses and fulfilment and tracking data. You can also Submit now — after that, the evidence cannot be edited.

Evidence that actually helps

Match the evidence to the reason, and put the strongest proof first:

Not received: tracking that shows delivery to the address on the order, a signature or delivery photo if your carrier provides one, and any message where the customer mentions having it
Unrecognised or fraud: matching billing and shipping addresses, earlier orders from the same customer, and delivery confirmation
Unacceptable or credit not processed: the product page as it looked at purchase, your return policy, return tracking, and the refund record if you have already refunded
Every case: a short, plain account of what happened, in date order. Whoever reviews it reads many of these; one clear paragraph does more than ten screenshots

Leave the emotion out. “This customer is lying” persuades nobody. “Delivered on {date} to the address on the order; the customer emailed two days later about sizing” does.

Then wait. The card company can take weeks to decide — Shopify says a chargeback review can take up to 75 days after submission. Tag the order so you can find it when the outcome arrives.

Stop the next one before the bank hears about it

At a small store, most chargebacks are the last step of a story that started with a question nobody answered in time:

Answer “where is my order?” before it becomes a dispute. A customer who knows where the parcel is has little reason to call the bank. The order status templates cover the lost and marked-delivered cases
Refund returns quickly, and say so. “Credit not processed” is often a refund the customer did not know was on its way. Your return policy should say when you refund, and a refund email should confirm it
Reply fast to damaged and wrong items. A slow answer is how a fixable mistake becomes a dispute — the damaged or wrong item reply covers what to say
Check the name on the card statement. If it does not look like your store, customers will not recognise the charge. Look at what your payment settings show, and change it if it does not match
Review high-risk orders before you ship. Shopify’s fraud analysis flags some orders as high risk. Reviewing and cancelling those is far cheaper than a chargeback later

Where we come in, briefly. Order Genie is the AI Order Agent we build at ShopAppsLab. It sits on your storefront, looks the order up in your store, and answers “where is my order?” — plus the shipping, returns and FAQ questions that tend to follow it — 24/7, without you in the loop. When a message is a decision rather than a lookup — a refund, an address change, a parcel that is actually lost — it does not act on it. It collects the request and hands it to you, with the conversation attached. A dispute with a bank is never its job; that stays with you. Where it helps is the step before: the unanswered order question that sends a customer to their bank in the first place. It starts free with 25 conversations a month, and paid plans begin at $29. Everything above works without it — that is the honest version.

If you do one thing this week

Open Orders, filter by Chargeback and inquiry status, and write down every open deadline. Then look at your last few disputes and note the question each customer asked — or tried to ask — before they went to their bank.

That question is the one to answer faster next time.