What happens when a dispute is made on my Read for My School fundraiser?
The customer disputes a transaction made to your fundraiser. This usually occurs either through a customer's online or print banking statements.
The customer makes a formal dispute of the charge to their bank.
The customer’s bank notifies Stripe of the dispute.
The bank automatically deducts the disputed amount (donation transaction value) and a dispute processing fee of $15 from Stripe.
Stripe removes the funds from the merchant’s Stripe account balance to cover the dispute deduction.
Stripe notifies the account owner of the dispute, passing along all information received from the bank related to the dispute via the Dashboard and over email.
Once the dispute is opened and the funds have been deducted, Read for My School and fundraiser account administrator has the opportunity to submit evidence in the Stripe Dashboard in order to prove the charge was legitimate and potentially overturn the dispute.
The bank judges the evidence and determines the result of the dispute. They'll make a decision around 60-75 days after the evidence due date.
What are the steps to take to resolve the dispute?
1. The first thing you should do is contact the cardholder/donor when a dispute is made on your fundraiser. When a dispute is made, Read for My School receives a dispute notification and will reach out to you as the administrator as well as the donor via email to highlight the dispute and to see what can be done to clarify the reason for the dispute as well as resolve the dispute. The email will explain the misunderstanding or resolve it and ask the donor to take the necessary steps to withdraw the dispute.
2. To withdraw the dispute, the cardholder should reach out to their bank. Upon formally withdrawing the dispute, the bank will re-bill their account for the disputed charge and sometimes provide a letter of withdrawal, typically via mail within 7 business days. If they don't receive a physical letter, the cardholder should get a notification electronically either via email or on their associated online account. Once the cardholder obtains the letter of withdrawal or a screenshot of the re-billing as it appears on their statement, please provide the information as an attachment to Stripe support. Whether you receive proof of withdrawal on time or not, you must respond to the dispute and its specific reason code with evidence.
Before the evidence submission due date/s, you must submit evidence specific to the reason for the dispute. Otherwise, the bank will assume that you don't contest the dispute and will automatically rule it in the cardholder’s favor.
What kind of evidence is required during the submission process?
You'll typically want to try and tailor your evidence to the dispute's main reason, and write up your documentation professionally, as if you're speaking directly with the cardholder's bank. Along with this, you basically want to make sure your evidence is as clear, full, and complete as possible before submitting it.
If you want to upload evidence (either through the API/Dashboard), we support PDF, PNG, and JPEG formats for any images/screenshots. Audio evidence such as .mp3 files are not supported. Dispute evidence cannot be over 5MB or over 50 pages in PDF format, so that's important to keep in mind when you're putting together your information.
Note that banks review evidence only once, so you can only submit evidence once. You may start your draft as early as possible and use the "Save for later" option when compiling any future evidence submissions, as this will allow you to update your evidence as many times as needed prior to the evidence due date.