HI!!
I know, weird to receive a Monday newsie, but… there’s something we need to talk about. It’s the new evolution of shoplifting. Instead of a ski mask, they are using laptops and their AMEX, and it’s ripping massive chunks off your bottom line.
Back when I ran CX, we had a Google Sheet called “Problematic Customers.”
It was a decently quiet little list most of the year, until this time of year.
Names and addresses we recognized, emails with a few too many dots, chargebacks with delivery photos to prove otherwise, refund requests on fourth and fifth orders from the same person, and so much more.
Sometimes, someone would dispute a charge they had already emailed to say thank you for.
We didn’t expect to stop every scam, but we knew how to spot the ones that would cost us the most if we shipped again, and created Shopify flows to block them. It wasn’t elegant, but it kinda worked.
This edition is for that moment.
You can make it harder for people to take advantage of your business. And you can save your CX team from building 40 Stripe responses during peak season while they are trying to respond to WISMO tickets from customers who actually want their order.
I have faith we might be able to stop friendly fraud (aka digital shoplifting) entirely.
Let’s jump in.
This special edition Newsie is brought to you by Chargeflow Prevent!
Digital shoplifting, like refund abuse, return manipulation, and chargebacks filed on real purchases, now costs brands over $125B a year.
Most fraud tools aren’t built for that.
They screen transactions before purchase and try to guess which card might be stolen. But they’re blind to what actually matters: the behavior of the person placing the order. The refund history, the chargeback trail, the reputation that follows someone from store to store, none of that shows up in a checkout fraud score.
Chargeflow Prevent takes a different approach.
It approves every order upfront, so your conversion rates don’t tank. After checkout, it screens the customer by analyzing behavior patterns seen across 15,000 other merchants. It sees identity abuse, refund manipulation, repeat chargebacks, and more.
If the order looks fine but the person doesn’t, you’ll know before it ships. You can decide to ship, hold, cancel, or verify, all without changing your workflow or adding new tools for your team to babysit.
Prevent runs automatically in the background and flags only the orders that need a second look. No spreadsheets. No tagging systems. No guessing.
It launches today, September 29th.
The first 1,000 transactions are free.
After that, you get 50% off through the end of the year.
If you’ve been looking for something to help your team survive Q4 with fewer disputes and more margin — this is it.
Get 1,000 free scanned transactions and start catching fraud now!
The playbook to stop chargebacks (aside from Chargefow Prevent)
1. Clean up your billing descriptor
Whatever shows up on the customer’s credit card statement should be your brand name. Not your LLC. Not your 3PL. Not something they’ve never seen. Unrecognized charges are one of the top reasons for disputes, and they’re completely avoidable.
2. Make your confirmation emails useful
These should go out fast, and they should answer actual questions. What did they order, when is it shipping, how will they know it arrived, and how can they reach someone if it doesn’t? This is not the place for a brand story or a UGC block.
3. Communicate before they ask
If an order was supposed to ship in two days and you’re falling behind, tell them. Send a new ETA. Be honest. Most people will be fine with a delay if they’re informed. If they’re left hanging, they’ll go to their bank and solve it their way.
4. Don’t confirm delivery unless it’s actually delivered
Some carriers scan things early. They bulk-scan. They say it’s delivered when it’s still on the truck. Your customer checks their porch, finds nothing, and the timer starts. If you can delay that “delivered” tag until it’s real, do it.
5. Stop letting PDPs create confusion
If your product looks navy but arrives black, just say that. If the packaging is different the photos, if it runs small, say that too. Include review photos, size guides, fit notes, and disclaimers. It prevents “not as described” disputes later.
6. Let CX refund early, not after a fight
If a repeat customer has one delayed order or a broken item, let your team fix it fast. You can still log the issue or follow up. But giving them the tools to refund before the customer escalates will save you on disputes and make CX way smoother.
7. Stop building dispute packets by hand
If you’re manually pulling tracking numbers, IP addresses, and screenshots every time a chargeback hits, you’re wasting time. Chargeflow’s original product builds these automatically and has a strong win rate. Your team should be solving real issues, vs. dragging emails into PDFs.
8. Add friction only where needed
You don’t need to ID-verify every order. But if a brand-new email places a $400 order with mismatched billing and shipping, maybe ask a question. Add light checks for edge cases — not for your best customers. If someone walks away, they were probably going to dispute anyway.
9. Track people, not just orders
If “J. Smith” keeps showing up with different emails, or if one address has multiple chargebacks under different names, you want to know. Stripe won’t show that. Shopify won’t either. But your team can — if you keep a simple log and actually use it.
10. Store the receipts now, not later
Delivery photo with timestamp. Email chain confirming the order. Customer IP. Carrier scan logs. All of that becomes evidence when the dispute hits. If it takes 90 minutes to find, you’ll never submit it in time. Build a system to store it in advance.
The network advantage
Here’s the real unlock with Chargeflow Prevent: it doesn’t just look at your customer, it looks at how they behave across 15,000 other brands. If someone has filed the same refund excuse three times this month, you’ll know. And you can stop the order before it becomes your problem too.
You can build all the internal logic you want. But you won’t see that customer’s full history unless you’re part of something bigger. That’s what Prevent gives you — without building a fraud team or duct-taping your own detection system together.
Why this matters now
Q4 will break your system at the exact moment your team has the least time to fix it. You’ll miss things. You’ll ship things you shouldn’t. You’ll get hit with the disputes you saw coming — but didn’t have time to stop.
You don’t need perfection. You just need to reduce the stupid stuff.
Make it harder to scam you. Make it faster to respond. Make it easier for your CX team to focus on actual customers.
That’s usually enough.
