Mastercard chargeback taking more than 3 months

This is really helpful info, thanks!

Yes, but the funds go back and forth every time it’s escalated. I don’t think anyone would appreciate the money going into and out of their account multiple times.

4 Likes

This is correct. However we don’t know if we’re going to win a dispute, which means we’re taking a risk on having a customer take the money out of their account, and then going into an unauthorised overdraft when the chargeback is lost.

Calling some of the claims fraudulent is probably stronger language than I should have used. But goods and services chargebacks (and this must be a good and services chargeback because we always refund upfront for fraud) are difficult because we don’t know how reasonable our customer is being. Some customers dispute very minor problems, and ultimately the merchant is able to prove that.

We are working on improving this, and providing refunds if we think we have a high chance of winning, with data to back that up. We will probably also look at our customers history, so we’ll be much happier to refund upfront if a customer has a long history of paying in their salary vs one that only has a few online transactions and a couple of quid in their account.

8 Likes

I have looked at your specific situation and I’m happy to go into more detail directly with you, if you’d like @urban :slight_smile:

I think it’s also important to note that even if you are entirely morally correct, you may not be entitled to a chargeback under the Mastercard rules. It is also possible for chargebacks to be won and lost on technicalities in the process - if a party fails to submit sufficient/correct evidence they forfeit the right to continue to continue defending their side.

It’s quite technical and we do spend a lot of time reading rulebooks to understand when a chargeback is valid, or not. It would be unfortunate to refund a customer upfront to find out 3 months later they needed to give us the money back as we discovered that a specific loophole allowed the merchant to win.

(As a side note, I am happy to answer questions on the process, within reason, since Dispute Resolution is essentially what I do :stuck_out_tongue: )

8 Likes

Hi @HughWells, yes that would be really interesting, thanks.

When I had my card stolen Monzo said they could not refund my money. I was told I would have to wait months.

Fortunately the merchant graciously refunded me, even though the services were already provided.

While that is very kind of the merchant, that should not have had to happen. Chargebacks for fraud should not result in merchants giving up out of the kindness of heart because of some Mastercard anomaly

5 Likes

I’m unsure if this refers to a UK or US account - the rules and regulations differ :slight_smile: It will also depend on the exact situation - fraud has a very specific definition in the UK and whilst getting “scammed” by a merchant might result in a customer saying they were a victim of “fraud”, it is still a cardholder dispute chargeback.

So your specific problem relates to a clearing issue.

In December we have been migrating to the Claims Manager API. Previously, chargebacks were submitted in outbound clearing files to Mastercard and evidence went via Mastercom. From January 1st all banks are required to migrate to submitting via the API so we had to build some new tooling throughout November and December to allow us to submit our chargebacks via the API and upload the documentation in a new way.
Because this now doesn’t go via clearing, we expect to get the chargebacks reconciled in the next clearing cycle, shortly after they are accepted by Mastercom. This particular file is a T5G2 and essentially just moves the money back into our ledger from Mastercard, or vice versa if the other side represent.
A few files haven’t arrived with us and we’ve been working with Mastercard to understand the root cause of the issue and have the files resent. This only impacted a very small number of chargebacks (as it was individual files we didn’t receive).
Your particular chargeback would have been included in one of the files that wasn’t reconciled. This meant there was no money to release from the hold when you won the chargeback, so you were not refunded automatically. However, this is one of the files we did subsequently receive and so I manually kicked off the refund for you :slight_smile:

This impacts an ever dwindling number of people - it’s been an unfortunate issue in an otherwise smooth migration :frowning:

7 Likes

Amazing! Thanks for the info. I see the money back in my account, so thanks so much for doing that. Does that mean we won the chargeback against the merchant and that the case is closed?

Yes :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Wonderful, thanks for the hard work of you and your team!

A feedback, and a very happy footnote.

Feedback: in cases like this, it would be useful if COps could say - something looks weird, I’ll escalate this. Rather than just: it’s not resolved, keep waiting.

And a footnote: this chargeback was about a card supplement that MyTrip.com was illegally adding for credit cards (they considered my Monzo MasterCard debit card as a credit card). I just made a test booking on MyTrip, and look what has changed:

2 Likes

In most cases they’ll be able to tell you the current status :slight_smile: The reason they were confused is your dispute had negative 22 days until won showing, because it hadn’t been reconciled :sweat_smile: So it would have been escalated for someone to take a look at the stuff behind the scenes to work out what was going on :+1:

For what it’s worth, something being illegal or unlawful does not necessarily permit a chargeback. Mastercard is only concerned with contractual disputes. For example, whilst it may be out of line with the Consumer Contracts regulation to not permit return within 14 days, if the merchant disclosed the terms at time of purchase that say no returns are permitted, a chargeback right would not exist.

In your case, there is a a chargeback right for surcharges (but it’s intra-EEA only) :+1:

2 Likes

Why wouldn’t they say that though?

It was theft of my card in the UK.

Monzo was unable to refund TfL transactions which posted after the card was frozen. (I don’t use my card for travel)

Is that a joke? Surely it’s ridiculously low value.
Any other bank would’ve just straight up refunded it and not even bothered filing a formal chargeback.

1 Like

Nope, Monzo does not remove or mark fraudulent transactions in the feed. My number 1 entertainment venue in My Year in Monzo is a bar I have never bought drinks from…

To be clear I mean instantly refund. They said it would take a few weeks to 3 months.

2 Likes

This doesn’t sound right :confused: Could you DM your email and I will have a look into what has happened?

1 Like

How do you know If your dispute is a clearing issue, mine has been open since October as well.

It is unlikely to be affected - if you could DM me your account email I can check for you :+1:

This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.