A few words about bank disputes.

Yesterday Stripe sent me a very 'happy' notification: Improvy OÜ has a second open dispute from a customer who paid us $33 for a monthly subscription and used Fullyst for the entire month. What does this mean for a small startup like Improvy?

We have two options:

1. Accept the dispute. In this case, the customer gets a full refund and we lose money on top of that, because they used paid features that cost us money with OpenAI and other third-party APIs.

2. Fight the dispute. If we decide to counter it, we have to upload dozens of proofs that the customer used the product, never tried to contact us, and so on.

If our counter works (like it did with the first dispute), we keep the $33 and everything is fine.

But if we lose… First, the customer still gets the $33 back and we also have to pay a dispute fee of about $25. On top of that, we get a 'strike' on Stripe, and believe me, that is not good.

What I have done so far:

1. Disabled the customer’s account

2. Sent a notice of termination of services without the possibility of appeal

3. Started collecting all the proofs I mentioned above

So if you are thinking about opening a dispute with your bank to get your money back, first try to contact the company, especially when it is a small startup.

If you are interested, ask me in the comments and I will explain how bank disputes can destroy startups.