Chargeback Fraud Removal

Episode #56

🍜 Same calendar, same Monday, same chance to break the loop. The Ramen Hustle is your reset button: one underpriced niche, one weird service gap, one playbook that turns “later” into a booked call this week.

A Shopify founder scrolls through their payment dashboard and sees a row of chargebacks labeled “Fraud” and “Item Not Received.” It looks like a few random refunds until they realize it is thousands of dollars gone, plus fees, plus lost product.

✅ You’re selling recovered margin, not customer support.

WHY THIS WORKS

Chargebacks are a paperwork problem disguised as a money problem. Most brands lose disputes because the response is slow, incomplete, or sloppy. The bank wants a clean story with evidence. The brand is busy shipping orders. So the deadline hits, the brand submits a weak response, and they lose by default.

This is why a chargeback fixer works. Your job is to turn each dispute into a fast evidence pack: order details, tracking proof, delivery confirmation, policy screenshots, customer messages, and a simple timeline. You respond quickly, you standardize the process, and your win rate moves.

The hidden angle is repeatability. Most dispute reasons repeat. Once you build templates for “fraud,” “not received,” and “product not as described,” the work becomes a checklist and a timer. The brands that need this most are not tiny stores. It is the messy middle: shipping volume is high enough that disputes happen weekly, but the founder still owns every operational fire.

Winning looks like an “Evidence Vault” you build once, then reuse. Every future dispute becomes faster and cleaner.

PROOF IT’S REAL

Chargebacks look like “just a refund” until you see how ugly the math gets. Chargeflow’s 2025 chargeback stats roundup walks through why one dispute can turn into a $450 hit after fees, labor, and lost product, and it even cites real merchant horror stories like Jacob Baker sharing how a single client’s disputes can snowball into tens of thousands in losses. That pain created a whole ecosystem of dispute-fighters, software, and operators because merchants can’t ignore it when banks start watching their ratios.

Chargeback.io’s data pages make the same point from the other side: even when the average chargeback amount looks “small,” the downstream costs and fraud multipliers turn it into a margin killer. And platforms like Shopify spell out the formal dispute process step-by-step, which is a hint that this is common enough to require its own playbook.

THE ECONOMICS

Two common models: (1) a monthly retainer to manage disputes or (2) a setup fee plus a success fee on recovered funds.

A believable starter range to validate: $500/month per brand depending on dispute volume, plus an optional 5%–15% success fee on recovered chargebacks. Your costs are mostly time, plus whatever tools you use to pull tracking proof and screenshots.

Simple math: if you charge $500/month and it takes 2–3 hours/week once templates exist, 4 clients is roughly $2,000/month. To hit $10k/month, you need 20 clients, or fewer if you add a success fee.

THE PLAYBOOK

FIRST CUSTOMER SCRIPT (copy/paste)

“Hey [Name] — quick question. Are chargebacks showing up as random refunds for you lately? I build a 48-hour ‘evidence pack’ system that helps brands win disputes back. If you want, I’ll audit your last 20 chargebacks and show exactly where you’re losing money and what to fix.”

One of the weirdest signals of the year was also one of the clearest: people are searching for authentication. Google called out the question “How do I know if my Labubu is real?” as a standout “How do I…” query in its Year in Search recap. That is not just toy drama. That is a demand pattern. When something gets popular, the next wave is fear of fakes.

This creates a scrappy opening for “trust services” that sit next to hype markets. Collectibles, sneakers, cards, vintage gear, resale fashion. People do not want a lecture. They want a yes/no with proof. The opportunity is fast verification content: side-by-side photo checklists, fake-spotting guides, and quick inspection services. A tiny operator can win here by being the first to publish the clearest checklist. Not a long article. A single page with 10 quick checks, a photo example for each, and a short form to submit pictures for review. If the market is anxious, clarity converts.