She’d purchased an item from an online store using Shop.com on June 25th for $87, receiving it on July 2nd only to discover it was the wrong item entirely. Her initial attempts to reach the seller by phone went unanswered, so she followed up with an email to the address listed on their website. Trying again the morning of July 3rd, she finally reached someone, likely the owner himself, who sounded sincere, apologized for the mistake, and asked her to text over her order information along with a photo of the incorrect item she’d received. She did exactly that, and he told her he’d get the correct item shipped out to her.
Given the holiday weekend falling right in the middle of that timeline, she waited until July 7th before following up again through both call and text, receiving no response to either attempt. She tried once more on July 8th with the same result, silence. By July 10th, eight days after receiving the wrong item and with no correct replacement or further communication from the seller, she initiated a chargeback through her credit union on her Visa credit card, submitting comprehensive evidence including photos of the incorrect item and its packaging, screenshots of her texts, records of her calls, and her original email.
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The Email That Arrived After Weeks of Silence
Today, she received an email from the seller, the first communication of any kind since that July 3rd phone call, more than a week of complete silence broken only once a chargeback had already been filed. The email claimed a return label had been sent when she first emailed, instructed her to send the item back so they could process an exchange, and warned her to tell her bank to close the chargeback before she “lost,” claiming their policies protected them from chargebacks and that she’d end up losing her money plus a $15 charge.
She’d never actually received any return label or corresponding email, a claim she confirmed by searching her spam folder thoroughly without finding anything matching that description. Had a return label genuinely been sent and the return process actually discussed as an agreed upon path forward, she noted she would have followed through with it rather than needing to escalate to a chargeback in the first place.
Why the Timing of This Message Matters
The sudden reappearance of communication, arriving only after a chargeback had already been formally filed and after more than a week of complete silence despite her repeated attempts to reach out, raises real questions about the sincerity of the message. If the seller had genuinely sent a return label back on July 3rd as claimed, there would have been no need to wait until a chargeback was already underway to bring it up, he could have followed up proactively during any of her unanswered calls and texts on July 7th or July 8th to confirm the label had been sent and check on the return status.
That gap, an entire week of unresponsiveness during her actual attempts to resolve this directly, followed immediately by a return label claim only after the chargeback appeared, fits a pattern more consistent with a reactive attempt to avoid the chargeback process than a genuine, previously initiated return that simply got lost in communication.
Why the Warning About Losing the Chargeback Doesn’t Hold Much Weight
Claims that a merchant’s “policies” automatically protect them from a chargeback, or that a cardholder will simply lose their money and face an additional fee, aren’t really how the chargeback process actually works. Chargeback disputes through card networks like Visa are evaluated based on documented evidence submitted by both the cardholder and the merchant, not by a merchant’s internal policy statements alone. A merchant claiming their own policy overrides a legitimate dispute process doesn’t reflect how these disputes are typically decided.
Given that she’d already submitted thorough documentation, photos of the incorrect item, records of her outreach attempts, screenshots of communication, and a clear timeline showing she’d made good faith efforts to resolve the issue directly before escalating, her case appeared well supported by evidence rather than resting on assumption or a weak paper trail.
Why Adding This Latest Email to Her Case Was the Right Move
Submitting the seller’s email as additional evidence to her chargeback case was a reasonable and useful step, since the email itself, arriving only after the chargeback was filed and containing an unverifiable claim about a return label she never received, actually reinforces her position rather than undermining it. It demonstrates a pattern of the seller becoming responsive only once financial consequences were already in motion, rather than during the period when she was genuinely trying to resolve the issue directly and receiving no response at all.
Where This Leaves Her
Her instinct not to reply directly to the seller and instead let her documented evidence speak for itself through the formal chargeback process was a sound approach, particularly given that the seller’s message read more like an attempt to pressure her into abandoning a legitimate dispute than a genuine, good faith effort to resolve the underlying issue. The credit union’s dispute process exists specifically to evaluate situations like this based on evidence rather than a merchant’s unilateral claims, and her documentation trail, consistent outreach attempts, and the seller’s own delayed and unverifiable response all supported the legitimacy of her case moving forward.
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