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How to Stop Chargebacks From Destroying Your Profit Margins · eCommerce Podcast

• 0:04
  Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast.
• 0:08
  My name is Matt Edmundson, and it is great to be with you on what
• 0:11
  can only be described as a very cold day at the time of recording.
• 0:16
  Uh, it is a little bit chilly, I'm not gonna lie, uh, but
• 0:19
  it's good to be with you.
• 0:21
  I hope you are doing well.
• 0:23
  I hope, uh, life and business is good.
• 0:26
  If you are new to the show, uh, we, we, the, the, you know what.
• 0:30
  The title kind of explains what we talk about.
• 0:31
  We talk about e-commerce, all things to do e-commerce.
• 0:35
  Uh, it's a show we've been doing since 2019.
• 0:38
  Can you believe it?
• 0:39
  This is our seventh year doing the show.
• 0:42
  Um, and so very warm, welcome to you if this is your first time with us,
• 0:46
  and of course, many people listen to the show time and time again, and
• 0:49
  it's great to have back if you're.
• 0:51
  Very, very warm.
• 0:52
  Welcome to you guys as well.
• 0:55
  Uh, just love the fact you keep coming back.
• 0:56
  Genuinely enables me to keep having these great conversations,
• 0:59
  which we're gonna be having today, again, with people like Jeff.
• 1:01
  So, thank you for sticking around.
• 1:03
  If you wanna know more about the show, more what we get up to.
• 1:06
  Um, there is a website.
• 1:07
  You can see all the past episodes on that archive.
• 1:09
  You can search by topic.
• 1:11
  I mean it's, it's just singing that website at the moment.
• 1:14
  Go to eCommerce Podcast net.
• 1:16
  Go check that out.
• 1:18
  And of course, if you haven't done so already, check out Cohorts,
• 1:21
  um, which is our monthly call.
• 1:23
  It's a, it's a group that we have with a bunch of e-commerce
• 1:26
  entrepreneurs from around the world.
• 1:29
  We all get together different calls, different time zones.
• 1:31
  It's all good fun, all international.
• 1:33
  We all run e-commerce businesses and we all talk about e-commerce, talk about
• 1:36
  the challenges that we're facing, uh, and we just all help each other out.
• 1:40
  And it's a beautiful thing and it's totally free.
• 1:42
  And if you would like to find out more about that, go to the website.
• 1:44
  Just click on the Cohort link.
• 1:46
  It kind of explains it in a bit more detail.
• 1:48
  Um, but yeah, come join us in Cohort.
• 1:50
  It will be great to see you there.
• 1:53
  Now that's enough from me.
• 1:56
  Rabbiting on.
• 1:56
  Jeff.
• 1:57
  Welcome to the show, man.
• 1:58
  How are we doing today?
• 2:00
  Uh, fantastic.
• 2:01
  Thank you.
• 2:01
  Uh, thanks Matt.
• 2:02
  Thanks for having me.
• 2:03
  I appreciate it.
• 2:04
  Oh, that's great.
• 2:04
  Great to have you.
• 2:05
  Uh, all the way from sunny Florida.
• 2:06
  Is it sunny?
• 2:07
  Actually, yes.
• 2:07
  I just, it sunny.
• 2:08
  It is sunny.
• 2:09
  I, I won't, don't, won't even tell you the temperature.
• 2:12
  Uh, I wouldn't understand anyway, but I, I, I took the garbage
• 2:15
  out in shorts and a t-shirt.
• 2:17
  Uh.
• 2:21
  Yeah, I, I would say I did the same thing, but I genuinely did.
• 2:24
  Um, so it was great to have you, uh, Jeff, for those, um, that might not
• 2:29
  know, just explain a little bit about who you are, what you do, what you get
• 2:32
  up to, and why you are on the show.
• 2:35
  So we're on the show today to talk about a new, uh, product that we developed,
• 2:40
  uh, over the course of last year.
• 2:42
  It's last year now.
• 2:44
  Interesting.
• 2:44
  Uh, first time I've said that, um, called Quick refund.
• 2:49
  Uh, we, we sort of, I, I identified a gap in the market, you know,
• 2:53
  in the e-commerce market.
• 2:55
  Uh, there's been a pretty significant tightening, uh, you know, on, on, on
• 2:59
  all sides in terms of, you know, refunds and chargebacks and stuff like that.
• 3:04
  And we sort of stumbled into something, uh, that, that seems
• 3:08
  to be working out very well.
• 3:10
  Um, it's, it's, you know, sort of a, a, a new trusted third party that, you know,
• 3:15
  sits in between, uh, the banks and the merchants and the, and the consumers.
• 3:22
  And, uh, we've been at it now for, well, we, we've been at it for over a
• 3:27
  year, but we went live in the fall and, and, uh, we're doing, we're doing well.
• 3:32
  We're excited about it and we're excited to talk about it.
• 3:34
  Fantastic, fantastic.
• 3:36
  And of course, this is something that affects everyone in e-commerce
• 3:38
  because we all take money, at least I think that's the general rule of
• 3:42
  an e-commerce business is you take money for a product or a service.
• 3:45
  So we.
• 3:46
  We're gonna be all of these things, so, great.
• 3:49
  Uh, great to have you, Jeff.
• 3:50
  I think these are the kind of topics that we don't really talk
• 3:52
  about, uh, is my experience.
• 3:54
  Everyone likes to talk about email marketing or, you know,
• 3:56
  whatever the latest trend is.
• 3:58
  Um, but if you, I mean, you know, with chargebacks, refunds, payment
• 4:02
  processing, all that sort of stuff, with e-commerce, if you could
• 4:06
  wave a magic wand and solve it.
• 4:09
  One key problem that you see customers facing time again and again and again.
• 4:14
  What would that problem be?
• 4:16
  Um, and why?
• 4:17
  I, I, I think the issue, uh, generally is that there's no, there's no
• 4:23
  central repository for information.
• 4:26
  You know, the issuers have their information, the processors have
• 4:29
  theirs, the merchants have theirs, and, uh, you know, the consumers
• 4:33
  have, uh, you know, their confirmation emails or, or whatever it is.
• 4:37
  But I think a lot of the issues and the problems that we're trying to solve
• 4:42
  are based upon the fact that everybody is really working from a different.
• 4:46
  Database, so to speak.
• 4:47
  Right.
• 4:48
  Um, it's, it, it, it's not that interests aren't aligned.
• 4:52
  I think that interests are aligned largely.
• 4:55
  Um, it's that everybody is, you know, sort of backed into their
• 4:58
  own corner and, and sees these issues from their own perspective.
• 5:03
  And when that happens, you know, there's a lot of finger pointing and, and you
• 5:07
  know, a lot of blaming and, you know, and, and because there are multiple
• 5:13
  ways that you can resolve these things, um, it just becomes over complicated
• 5:18
  and like a lot of things, I mean, I've been doing this for almost 30 years.
• 5:23
  Um, it seems like a lot of the efforts to try to clean things up.
• 5:28
  Um, at least in the short term, tend to make them more complex and more difficult.
• 5:35
  And I think that's a situation that we're in now, and I think those are the kinds
• 5:39
  of problems that we're trying to solve.
• 5:42
  It's interesting listening to you talk about this because what you,
• 5:47
  what I've noticed I think over the years in e-commerce is, um,
• 5:51
  we, we sort of go down a path.
• 5:53
  We find a whole bunch of problems and then somebody somewhere fixes that problem.
• 5:57
  Right.
• 5:57
  And then you move on and, and you, you get to the next problem.
• 6:00
  And so, um, but perhaps the most obvious one was shipping, you know,
• 6:04
  and, and the ability to ship quickly.
• 6:07
  Um, in the uk ESP especially, I mean, I know you know, the uk, but in the UK
• 6:10
  there was only one, there was a royal male, you know, there was a few other
• 6:13
  bits and bobs, but nothing significant.
• 6:15
  You had the Royal Mail, and now, um, 10 years later, one of the things
• 6:19
  that you can say eCommerce has done.
• 6:22
  Everything now ships quicker and easier.
• 6:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:24
  And there's a system in place that just makes that whole thing, usually not all
• 6:29
  the time, but usually work with payments.
• 6:34
  It, it kind of feels like the systems that we were using, perhaps in 2005, they're
• 6:43
  not too dissimilar to what you have now.
• 6:45
  You, you, you have an internet merchant account.
• 6:48
  There seems to be.
• 6:50
  Now a few key players that have emerged.
• 6:54
  Maybe you've the obvious one being Stripe, you know.
• 7:02
  I, other than things like Apple Pay, maybe, um, Google Pay, I don't
• 7:08
  know if there's been any major innovation that I can point to.
• 7:11
  Am I, am I remembering the history well here or am I missing something?
• 7:16
  No, I think you've got it right.
• 7:17
  And I think that there, you know, for, for that entire time period, I
• 7:21
  mean, I, I've been in it since 1998 and I will tell you like since 1998.
• 7:26
  Uh, you know, people have been trying to come up with, uh, with a
• 7:30
  replacement, uh, to the credit card, you know, for online transactions.
• 7:35
  Uh, I think the stable coin is now, you know, sort of the big mover, at
• 7:39
  least in terms of, you know, overall publicity and things like that.
• 7:42
  Crypto sort of had its chance.
• 7:45
  Uh, you know, there were a lot of people that were trying to, trying to do that.
• 7:49
  It's difficult to get much traction with a, with a currency that less than 1% of
• 7:55
  the people in the world have any of Yeah.
• 7:57
  Um, but yeah, I mean, there is, you know, the, the thing about payments
• 8:02
  is, is that there has been, uh, it is, you're, you're exactly right.
• 8:05
  It's largely the same now.
• 8:07
  Is it always has been.
• 8:09
  I mean, we were in the payment back in two.
• 8:16
  You know, we passed the first CVV, uh, transaction ever
• 8:19
  in the history of the world.
• 8:21
  Right.
• 8:21
  Uh, we did the, we did the first verified by visa, uh, transaction ever
• 8:26
  and, you know, through our gateway.
• 8:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:28
  Um, we had, you know, we sort of piled up, I think 11 or 12 different firsts in
• 8:34
  just a couple of years because, you know, because there were so many issues that
• 8:39
  were identified as soon as we started trying to accept payments on the internet.
• 8:44
  Um.
• 8:44
  But then really around 2000 6, 7, 8, uh, things sort of stabilized from,
• 8:50
  you know, a technology standpoint.
• 8:52
  There's, there's been no new CVV, there's been no new, you know, verified by Visa.
• 8:57
  No.
• 8:58
  Uh, new sort of, you know, fraud prevention or security
• 9:01
  based, you know, platforms.
• 9:02
  We're all just dealing with the same stuff.
• 9:05
  Um, I think the issuers have gotten a lot more sophisticated, right?
• 9:09
  That the issuers understand a lot more about our patterns as individuals.
• 9:13
  Yeah.
• 9:14
  And so rather than, you know, the, the merchants being burdened with, you
• 9:19
  know, sort of figuring out where the potential problems are, uh, the issuers
• 9:23
  are now doing that on behalf of their card holders as opposed to the merchants
• 9:27
  and doing it on behalf of themselves.
• 9:29
  Yeah.
• 9:30
  Um, but it's, uh, but, but you know, disputes are, are, are largely the same
• 9:37
  now as they have been since I got into the business, you know, almost 30 years ago.
• 9:42
  Yeah.
• 9:42
  Um, you, you have two choices.
• 9:45
  You can either call the merchant and ask for your money back, or you can
• 9:49
  call the bank and tell them to tell the merchant to give you your money back.
• 9:53
  Yeah.
• 9:54
  Or just get it back from the bank and then, you know, the, uh, the bank.
• 9:59
  Takes it from the merchant, which is essentially what's it,
• 10:02
  what, what, what a chargeback is.
• 10:04
  Yeah.
• 10:05
  Um, it's interesting, isn't it, that there's been no real
• 10:10
  innovation.
• 10:10
  I mean, I, I, I, I do like Apple Pay.
• 10:13
  From a consumer point of view, that's easy.
• 10:16
  Um, I don't know, actually thinking it through whether.
• 10:21
  Because it's Apple paying.
• 10:23
  You've had to use face id, whether that means it's much
• 10:26
  harder to get the chargeback for fraud on the other end or not.
• 10:30
  Um, but I, I, I think it's an industry like that that almost feels
• 10:36
  like it's rife for something quite interesting to come along and, and,
• 10:40
  and solve a lot of the problems around chargebacks and fraud because.
• 10:45
  And whilst, you know, credit cards work on the halt, for most people,
• 10:48
  most of the time it's still, there's still quite a big chunk of profits
• 10:51
  which disappear thanks to them.
• 10:53
  Right?
• 10:54
  So Apple Pay is a good example, um, of, of a, a way, and I use Apple Pay constantly.
• 11:01
  Um, it's just the easiest, whether you're on your desktop or your laptop or your
• 11:05
  phone, you, you know, you hit that button.
• 11:07
  You, you, I put the fingerprint thing on my, on my keyboard, or I double click
• 11:12
  the side of my phone and it's finished.
• 11:15
  Let's just assume for, for an example, you, you bought something on Apple Pay.
• 11:19
  It doesn't matter what it's, let's just say it's a bottle of diet pills
• 11:22
  or something along those lines.
• 11:24
  And, um, you know, they either don't arrive or they show up and you take
• 11:29
  'em for a week and they make you sick.
• 11:30
  Whatever it is, you decide you want your money back.
• 11:34
  And let's just say for example, that you've got three or four different cards
• 11:37
  that are, that are, uh, on your Apple Pay.
• 11:41
  Um, and you can't remember which one you used.
• 11:45
  So there's two things that you, well, there's one thing that you know for
• 11:48
  sure you're not unhappy with the product and you want your money back,
• 11:51
  but then there's this whole, you know, sort of complex issue that you have.
• 11:57
  Am I calling Apple, not, not calling physically, but am I going on to
• 12:02
  Apple Pay and trying to figure out how to dispute it from there?
• 12:05
  Do I dive down into my card?
• 12:08
  Whichever one it is that I used, assuming that I can figure that out
• 12:12
  and on Apple Pay specifically, there's no central, you know, I was told, I
• 12:17
  talked earlier about, you know, working from the same set of information.
• 12:21
  There's, there's no list of your transactions on Apple Pay.
• 12:23
  You have to go into each individual card to find out, uh, you know,
• 12:27
  what you've done on that card.
• 12:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 12:30
  Or do you call the merchant.
• 12:31
  And if you call the merchant, how do you tell 'em that you paid?
• 12:35
  Yeah.
• 12:35
  Um, and so you're faced with a situation where you don't
• 12:40
  even really know what to do.
• 12:42
  You'll know that you want your money back, but you don't really have a clear path,
• 12:46
  uh, you know, to getting your refund.
• 12:48
  Um, so sometimes we solve problems, uh, on the front end, like how do
• 12:54
  I make it easier for Matt to buy?
• 12:57
  Uh, you, you know, some, some diet pills or, or whatever it is.
• 13:02
  Um, but I add a bunch of complexity on what happens if Matt is unhappy.
• 13:08
  So, yeah, it's, it, it, it, what we're dealing with right now
• 13:13
  I think is more complex just because of those kinds of things.
• 13:17
  PayPal's the same thing, you know, they were the first ones.
• 13:20
  Then with PayPal, you've got, you know, they've got a PayPal credit, you know,
• 13:24
  which is a line of credit within PayPal that doesn't even link to a card.
• 13:27
  Now what do I do?
• 13:29
  I still owe PayPal the money.
• 13:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:33
  It's interest because, and there's a multiple of these now coming out,
• 13:35
  like in the UK we've got Carney, you know, the buy before interest
• 13:39
  free payments thing or whatever it is, and it's never interest free.
• 13:42
  Um, but I, you know, that, that aside, but it's, it's one of those where.
• 13:48
  I can see the problem and I mean, I, you know, I can see from my own data,
• 13:52
  um, the problem, and I suppose as a merchant, the easiest and best thing
• 13:58
  I can do, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Jeff, is to make sure it's easy
• 14:04
  for customers to come and get refunds.
• 14:05
  So the system that we have are customer emails or callers, and
• 14:08
  we need to give 'em a refund.
• 14:10
  They don't even need to remember the card that it was on because the payment
• 14:13
  provider has remembered the, the card.
• 14:16
  Sends it back to it, then it's all fairly straightforward.
• 14:18
  They're not complaining to the bank.
• 14:20
  I'm not getting into trouble anywhere else, and I've got
• 14:22
  somebody who's satisfied with the customer service, right?
• 14:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:25
  They're kind of like, well, this is good customer service.
• 14:26
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:27
  So that strikes me maybe as the best way to deal with these things.
• 14:31
  Um, but it would be, it would be interesting to, to also think
• 14:40
  about, you know, the amount of times we would've had orders and.
• 14:46
  Two weeks later, the, the, the bank says, oh, that was a fraudulent transaction,
• 14:50
  and, and clause the money back.
• 14:53
  And you're like, well, hang on a minute.
• 14:54
  We, we did the base checks.
• 14:55
  Why?
• 14:55
  What, why are we being penalized for this?
• 14:58
  Um, mm-hmm.
• 15:01
  I loved what I, I was reading through your information, Jeff, actually, we
• 15:04
  obviously, like I, I do with, I guess I just wanna know what I'm talking about.
• 15:08
  Um, there was this really interesting phrase that you use called friendly fraud.
• 15:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:14
  Um, and how this has become a behavioral issue, not just a criminal one.
• 15:18
  I'm really curious, what do you mean by friendly fraud?
• 15:25
  So, I guess fre the first, the, the first differentiation for friendly
• 15:29
  fraud is that it's not, you know, systemic or criminal fraud, right?
• 15:32
  It's not a ring of people that are, uh, you know, sort of, uh, traipsing the,
• 15:38
  you know, the global eCommerce world, uh, trying to, you know, steal things,
• 15:43
  you know, in order to sell them or, you know, or something along those lines.
• 15:47
  It is simply, um.
• 15:50
  A lot of this really increased significantly during the pandemic.
• 15:54
  Um, I got something, I'm perfectly happy with it, but I know I can call
• 16:00
  my bank and, uh, tell them a different story and they will give me my money
• 16:06
  back and take it from the merchant.
• 16:08
  Um, we, we, we, we've, there have been, you know, literally hundreds
• 16:12
  of surveys and, and you know, we have access to a lot of data around this.
• 16:16
  The vast majority of friendly fraud is not even what we would call intentional.
• 16:21
  You know, it's not something that when you, you're buying the item,
• 16:24
  you necessarily are deciding at that moment that I'm gonna get
• 16:27
  my money back for this anyway.
• 16:30
  Um, it's something that maybe is a little more expensive than you should
• 16:33
  have bought in the first place.
• 16:34
  You know, a bill comes in that you weren't expecting.
• 16:37
  Your things are a little tight, maybe.
• 16:39
  I mean, this is one of 10,000 scenarios.
• 16:42
  And you say, you know what?
• 16:42
  I'm just gonna call my bank and tell 'em I didn't get it.
• 16:45
  And, you know, and they'll gimme my money back and it'll be fine.
• 16:49
  Um, there's nothing that you can do.
• 16:51
  I was in the fraud prevention business.
• 16:54
  Uh, you know, it was, you know, part of my career.
• 16:56
  I started out in the payment gateway business and I sold that
• 17:00
  company to a British company.
• 17:02
  Uh, that was in the, was one of the, uh, initial leaders of e-commerce fraud.
• 17:08
  Really, there's very little that we could have done then, or that you can do now
• 17:12
  to, to determine that friendly fraud, you know, is now or eventually gonna happen.
• 17:18
  It's just something that is largely behavioral and there's nothing, you can
• 17:22
  only really deal with it on the back end.
• 17:25
  Um, you know, when somebody has made the decision that they want their
• 17:28
  money back, whatcha gonna do about it.
• 17:31
  The issue that merchants have, uh, with, with friendly fraud is not that, oh,
• 17:36
  well, geez, I, I, I don't wanna give them their money back because unfortunately
• 17:41
  the, the cards are stacked against them.
• 17:44
  The issuers will refund their money if you call your, your
• 17:48
  issuer, they've made it very easy.
• 17:50
  In most cases, when I say your, um.
• 17:55
  When I say, when I say call, I mean there's a dispute button, you know,
• 17:59
  next to almost every transaction.
• 18:00
  Like I go onto your Amex app, there's literally, yeah.
• 18:03
  You know, every single transaction, just a little button that you
• 18:06
  hit, okay, gimme my money back.
• 18:08
  So they've made it very easy on consumers.
• 18:12
  Um, and so as a merchant, uh, one of the things that you
• 18:15
  have to figure is, okay, well.
• 18:18
  I've got X percent of friendly fraud that I'm gonna be dealing with as a business.
• 18:22
  How do I wanna deal with it?
• 18:24
  Do I wanna, do I wanna just give them the money back and limit the expense and
• 18:28
  the exposure and the, you know, the, the time that we consume on these things.
• 18:34
  Or do I want to go the other way and, you know, fight and deal with the bank
• 18:38
  and, and all the rest of that stuff.
• 18:39
  And, and the issue generally for our customers comes down to the economics.
• 18:44
  Hmm.
• 18:44
  Um, you know, you wind up making about the same number of refunds anyway.
• 18:49
  Uh, the expense of having to deal with the bank and the charge chargeback and
• 18:53
  the, and, and, and all of the rest of that stuff can be 6, 7, 8 times as much.
• 19:00
  As, you know, using a system like ours, which I say a system like ours, I mean,
• 19:05
  we, we have really the only one right now.
• 19:08
  Um, but uh, just say, okay, well look, it's, it's 1% of my transactions.
• 19:13
  These people are gonna get their money back one way or the other.
• 19:16
  Let's just give 'em the money back.
• 19:20
  It's interesting, isn't it?
• 19:21
  It.
• 19:23
  Friendly fraud.
• 19:25
  So it, it sounds so soft and palatable, um, right.
• 19:29
  Um, but it, it's, it's also quite distasteful, isn't it?
• 19:32
  And I, I, I get it.
• 19:34
  I, I, I understand it from, from both.
• 19:36
  And this is where I think actually your idea of having a shared set of data
• 19:39
  would be really interesting, because if I could, when I took your credit
• 19:43
  card details, when I took your order.
• 19:47
  If there was a system where I could somehow go and check and say, well,
• 19:49
  Jeff, actually, no, he's a good guy.
• 19:51
  He's got a, a bias score of 98%.
• 19:55
  Like Jeff, I'm sending this out to you tomorrow, but Esella over
• 20:00
  here, and I'm sorry if your name's Estella by the way, you'd start
• 20:03
  to pick, let's pick a random name.
• 20:05
  Uh, but uh, if you are, if you are a stellar over here and actually you.
• 20:10
  Actually there, there's a, there's a little check on your name because you
• 20:12
  do quite a lot of these chargebacks.
• 20:14
  A lot of these disputes, you've only got a score of like 30.
• 20:17
  I'm like, Hmm, I don't think I'm gonna send these to you.
• 20:21
  Uh, Estella, I think I, I, I think I'd rather not actually take the risk.
• 20:25
  Um, I can see why a central repository of data that I as a merchant could access
• 20:34
  and that everybody could access, I think would be a really interesting thing.
• 20:38
  Um.
• 20:39
  I appreciate that, just by suggesting that there will be hoards of people
• 20:44
  up in arms, around privacy and, you know, all that sort of stuff.
• 20:49
  Um,
• 20:52
  but I, I'd like you, I go, well, we're just gonna have x amount
• 20:55
  percent refunds every year.
• 20:56
  And so we just have to account for that in our costings.
• 20:59
  It just, it is what it is.
• 21:00
  It's not brilliant.
• 21:01
  It's not, and there are some people who genuinely need a refund and there
• 21:03
  are some people who are taking the mick and you, you can't distinguish them.
• 21:07
  You go, you're right.
• 21:08
  The economics are just so bad.
• 21:10
  I just, why, why would I want to find them on this?
• 21:13
  I, I, I think if you wake up, you know, so we're on, we're in January 5th, right?
• 21:17
  I mean, really probably the first business day of the year.
• 21:19
  And I'm an e-commerce merchant and I'm gonna do, you know,
• 21:22
  $10 million in sales this year.
• 21:25
  I know that, uh, that I'm gonna have, you know, 250 or $300,000 in, in, in
• 21:31
  what I would call disputes, right?
• 21:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:33
  Like friendly fraud, uh, you know, chargebacks, whatever it is.
• 21:38
  Uh, the, the question is, um, how, how much of a penalty do I
• 21:43
  wanna pay on top of that $250,000?
• 21:47
  And how can that penalty exacerbate itself, right?
• 21:50
  Because if, if the, if the percentage is too high, you know, I wind up
• 21:56
  getting all of these additional fees and fines and, uh, you know, it,
• 22:00
  it tumbles pretty quickly, uh, into something that becomes unmanageable.
• 22:06
  The, the acquiring banks and the sponsor banks out there have got a very low
• 22:13
  tolerance threshold at this point.
• 22:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 22:16
  And so you could literally get yourself into a situation where,
• 22:20
  I mean, we were, we were actually joking around about this last night.
• 22:23
  Uh, one of my partners and I, I mean, imagine your bank calling
• 22:27
  you up and threatening to shut your business down because only 98% of
• 22:31
  your customers were perfectly happy.
• 22:34
  With what they bought.
• 22:36
  Right.
• 22:36
  I mean, imagine if a politician had to deal with those kinds of stats.
• 22:40
  Yeah.
• 22:40
  You know, nobody, every elected official would be gone their first week.
• 22:44
  Well, yeah.
• 22:44
  That there'd be no government, but Yeah, I hear what you're saying.
• 22:47
  Right, right.
• 22:47
  So, so, but those are the actual thresholds.
• 22:51
  I mean, if you've got 2% chargebacks as a merchant, you're in big trouble.
• 22:56
  Not, not only is it costing you a Fortune 25, 35 55.
• 23:01
  Dollars per transaction.
• 23:03
  And imagine somebody who's selling something that costs $25.
• 23:07
  Yeah.
• 23:07
  You know, having $75 in, in fees and fines, you know, on
• 23:12
  each of their transactions.
• 23:14
  Now a $250,000 problem is a million dollar problem.
• 23:17
  Yeah.
• 23:18
  And you know, you've got a, you've got a sponsor bank potentially
• 23:21
  pointing a gun at your head.
• 23:23
  Yeah.
• 23:23
  Um, and it is, we're, we're largely in a sort of blame the merchant.
• 23:30
  It's always been a little bit blame the merchant.
• 23:32
  Yeah.
• 23:32
  Right.
• 23:32
  Like if somebody, if, but, but you know, I, I'm 58 years old and, and I was,
• 23:38
  you know, I, I was around at the very beginning of e-commerce and, and um, and
• 23:44
  I remember very vividly how difficult it used to be to charge something back.
• 23:49
  You know, I mean, if you called up your bank and said, Hey, you know, these
• 23:54
  guys didn't deliver this, or I'm unhappy with it, or there's some big problem.
• 23:59
  They would send you this reef of papers and like every other paper
• 24:02
  would basically say you're gonna be arrested immediately if any of
• 24:05
  this doesn't turn out to be true.
• 24:07
  Yes.
• 24:07
  You know, you fi like you really, I mean, you, you felt like you were
• 24:10
  taking your life in your hands a little bit and it was gonna take a month
• 24:13
  to resolve and all the rest of that.
• 24:14
  None of that exists anymore.
• 24:16
  Like I said, they, everybody's built a little dispute button and you answer a
• 24:19
  couple of questions, they give you your money back and they sort it out with the
• 24:22
  merchant and they go back to the merchant and say, well, you must be running a
• 24:26
  terrible business if people are unhappy.
• 24:28
  Yeah.
• 24:29
  And that's just, that's just how the world has turned.
• 24:33
  Um, you know, one of the systemic issues that we have, I think, um, is that there's
• 24:39
  a lot more money in the issuing business than there is in the processing business.
• 24:42
  Yeah.
• 24:43
  And so, you know, the, the issuers all have a much, much greater
• 24:48
  economic opportunity keeping their, their cardholders happy.
• 24:53
  Uh, than, than the processors or the, or the merchants have, you know, on
• 24:59
  a, on a one by one transaction basis.
• 25:02
  Yeah.
• 25:02
  I mean, you can see why they favor the, the customer.
• 25:06
  Yeah.
• 25:06
  That's where their money is, right.
• 25:08
  Yeah, I mean, I, I had it explained to me by a very large merchant.
• 25:11
  We were at a, there's a show in the US called Money 2020, which is sort
• 25:15
  of the, you know, the mecca for, you know, payments and FinTech and stuff.
• 25:18
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:19
  Uh, and, and uh, that was in October.
• 25:22
  And I, I was talking to a guy who runs a very, very large,
• 25:26
  you know, sort of premium issu.
• 25:28
  Portfolio for one of the major card brands in the US and he said, listen,
• 25:33
  Jeff, we, we know what's going on.
• 25:35
  You know, we, we know when, when Matt calls up and says, you know,
• 25:39
  he doesn't like this $200 thing or whatever, he's probably perfectly
• 25:42
  fine with it, but we don't care.
• 25:45
  You know, Matt's spending $17,000 a month.
• 25:47
  We're getting e premium interchange on all that money.
• 25:50
  Yeah.
• 25:50
  Uh, he's rolling about half of that into the next month.
• 25:53
  And, and, and we're getting, you know, almost leg breaking interest rates,
• 25:57
  uh, you know, from him, uh, on that.
• 26:00
  And, you know, we, we just want Matt to be happy.
• 26:03
  We don't give us, we don't, we, we don't care if he wants to steal something
• 26:05
  worth 200 bucks every other month.
• 26:07
  Yeah, that's sure thing.
• 26:07
  It's fine with us.
• 26:08
  Yeah, that's right.
• 26:10
  Yeah.
• 26:10
  Deal with, because it's definitely not my problem.
• 26:12
  Says the bank.
• 26:13
  Right.
• 26:13
  It's not my problem.
• 26:14
  It's your problem.
• 26:15
  Yeah, but the bank is gonna say, Matt, you called the right people.
• 26:20
  You have no problems.
• 26:21
  Yeah, exactly.
• 26:23
  And I get that.
• 26:23
  I get you're sorted.
• 26:24
  Yeah.
• 26:26
  It's just a danger of free market economics, isn't it?
• 26:28
  In many ways that, you know, the, the bank's gonna go where the money's going.
• 26:32
  Um, and the go.
• 26:32
  No one's, no one's crying out for the merchants.
• 26:35
  It's not like the government's gonna go and introduce new
• 26:37
  law to protect the merchants.
• 26:38
  I think all that's gonna happen is the merchants are gonna do what we do now.
• 26:41
  We're gonna go, well there's this percentage.
• 26:43
  We're gonna have to put prices up so the consumer ends up paying more anyway.
• 26:46
  Um.
• 26:48
  Thanks to people that maybe abuse the system slightly.
• 26:51
  It's one of those, isn't it?
• 26:52
  I, I've talked to a lot of people about this and everybody you speak to, and Jeff,
• 26:57
  maybe you, this is, it's interesting with the business that you are in, because I
• 27:00
  can imagine that every customer that you have on the, on, you know, using your
• 27:04
  software solution is probably using it.
• 27:07
  'cause they're really angry with at least one of their customers doing something
• 27:12
  illegal and getting away with it.
• 27:15
  And there's nothing that they can do.
• 27:17
  They can almost, they almost feel powers, right?
• 27:20
  Um.
• 27:21
  What's your counsel to people that, that feel that way?
• 27:24
  Just suck it up and get on with it.
• 27:25
  Y you know, I, I, we joke around about having to have it like a staff
• 27:29
  psychiatrist, uh, you know, to, you know, in our customer service department, um,
• 27:33
  because it really is terribly frustrating for, for these merchants, right?
• 27:39
  Because at the end of the day, we only only have one, one thing to say,
• 27:43
  just give 'em their damn money back.
• 27:45
  Right?
• 27:45
  Yeah.
• 27:45
  I mean, they're gonna get it anyway.
• 27:46
  Yeah.
• 27:47
  And I know it's painful.
• 27:48
  It's sort of like, I mean, if, if, if you removed all of the emotion
• 27:53
  from the legal system, how many lawyers would lose their job tomorrow?
• 27:56
  Right.
• 27:57
  I mean, there, there are so many people out there spending, you know, four or
• 28:00
  five, $700 an hour on lawyers to fight something that they probably won't win
• 28:05
  anyway, just because they wanna feel like they're right and they wanna feel
• 28:09
  like, you know, I'd say it's not right.
• 28:11
  It's not, it's not moral and ethical for me to give up.
• 28:15
  At the end of the day, there's just a, there's just a practical,
• 28:18
  uh, view OO of all of this.
• 28:20
  And like I said, you have $250,000 in people that are gonna want their
• 28:25
  money back, legitimately or not.
• 28:28
  Um, do you want that $250,000 to cost you an extra 50,000 in fees
• 28:34
  or do you want it to be 800,000?
• 28:36
  But like, how much of your sort of moral and ethical balance comes into.
• 28:42
  Um, sustaining your profit margins?
• 28:45
  Um, I don't know.
• 28:47
  I mean, if I, I, I assume there's a lot of people that run e-commerce
• 28:50
  businesses that are, that are listening to this and, and so they're all very
• 28:55
  familiar with, uh, you know, the Visa monitoring program and, you know, the
• 28:59
  Visa and MasterCard in 2025 significantly tightened, uh, you know, and, and
• 29:07
  lowered thresholds for almost every.
• 29:11
  Um, and, and change some of the rules significantly.
• 29:15
  And, and there's sort of additional fees and fine now that are, uh, in place.
• 29:20
  And we, you know, I, I mean the, the sponsor banks that we work with
• 29:26
  directly have, have removed thousands from their customer, you know,
• 29:32
  because, because they were acting exactly the way that they were, uh.
• 29:37
  Prior, but when they, when you lower the threshold, uh, and you change the rules,
• 29:43
  then sometimes the rules say, well, it was perfectly fine for you to do this before.
• 29:47
  It's like changing the speed limit on a highway, right?
• 29:49
  So it used to be 70 and we changed it to 55 and there's a bunch of
• 29:54
  people that don't realize it's 55, but you can still get pulled over
• 29:58
  and get a ticket for going 75.
• 30:00
  Yeah.
• 30:01
  Um.
• 30:02
  So frankly, we we're in this business right now because we're
• 30:09
  also in the acquiring business.
• 30:10
  We've got large portfolios of merchants, some of whom are in, you know, what
• 30:15
  Visa, MasterCard would call high risk businesses, uh, you know, nutrition
• 30:20
  supplements, uh, you know, e-gaming, um, you know, all sorts of stuff like that.
• 30:26
  And.
• 30:27
  We needed a solution for them because they were under pressure y
• 30:31
  you know, they were coming to us and saying, I look, I can't get below 1%.
• 30:36
  I can't do it.
• 30:37
  There's too, there's too many people that are stealing from me.
• 30:40
  You know, there's too much confusion in the market.
• 30:41
  Like, if, if you're telling me I'm gonna lose my business unless I lower
• 30:46
  it, you know, below this, I don't, you know, we don't know what we're gonna do.
• 30:50
  And, um.
• 30:53
  One of our, one of our partners actually came to us with the, with
• 30:56
  the original product, the original Quick refund product that they had
• 31:00
  built in response to the Federal Trade Commissions, uh, click to Cancel law,
• 31:06
  which took several years to pass, which wound up getting, you know, sort of,
• 31:11
  uh, crushed, um, you know, in lawsuits just before it was supposed to launch.
• 31:16
  But the idea was.
• 31:19
  We talked about this a little, you know, uh, at the start, if it's
• 31:22
  super easy to pay for something, it should also be super easy to cancel
• 31:26
  it or, or get your money back.
• 31:28
  And, and so the original Quick Refund product was built in response to
• 31:32
  that because, you know, the FTC said all these merchants are gonna need
• 31:36
  a solution that makes it just as easy to get your money back as it
• 31:39
  was to pay that lawsuit went away.
• 31:43
  Um, and in the middle of all of this, uh, visa, MasterCard significantly tightened.
• 31:48
  Uh, you know, the, the thresholds by which you're judged as a merchant
• 31:52
  and changed some of the rules and started, you know, finding them for
• 31:55
  things that they didn't previously.
• 31:57
  I mean, I don't want to get too technical, but it, it's become a significant problem.
• 32:04
  And, you know, when I was, when I was first introduced to it,
• 32:07
  because I didn't think of it, um, I thought, Hmm, making refunds easier.
• 32:13
  Well, why didn't somebody, what isn't somebody already doing that?
• 32:17
  I mean.
• 32:18
  It seems so simple.
• 32:21
  Right.
• 32:21
  Um, but nobody did.
• 32:23
  Right?
• 32:23
  Nobody did.
• 32:24
  And when you said earlier, you said what, you know, obviously the smartest and
• 32:28
  easiest thing is to just, you know, sort of let the processor deal with it, right?
• 32:32
  Just refund it back to the original card and everybody moves on.
• 32:37
  That's actually not what happens in most of the cases with refunds.
• 32:42
  Most refunds are a forced deposit in the same amount back to either the original
• 32:47
  payment method or another one, and then the bank has to sort of match those up.
• 32:53
  It's not, you're not, you're not actually doing anything.
• 32:56
  You're not affecting a refund based on the original transaction.
• 33:00
  You're producing a new one.
• 33:02
  In, in the same amount, you know, in the opposite direction.
• 33:06
  Um, but I think something like 25% of all chargebacks are transactions
• 33:11
  that have actually already been refunded, believe it or not.
• 33:15
  Okay?
• 33:15
  But the bank didn't match 'em up, right?
• 33:18
  So, you know, you, so, you know, you get, you get something in the mail.
• 33:22
  So let's just say that, make it easy.
• 33:24
  So there's no shipping or anything.
• 33:25
  You, uh, you need to do a presentation.
• 33:28
  Uh, and you, you, you've seen this, uh, AI tool on Instagram that makes it look
• 33:32
  like, well, I'm just gonna throw my logo and a couple of declarative sentences in
• 33:36
  and I'm gonna get this thing that looks like a 50,000 television commercial.
• 33:41
  So you buy it or you subscribe to it, you can't figure it out.
• 33:44
  It's not intuitive.
• 33:45
  You don't know what to do with it.
• 33:47
  Um, and you know you want your money back.
• 33:51
  Well, it's, it's.
• 33:52
  It's not that.
• 33:53
  It's, so maybe it's been a couple of weeks and the company goes, yeah, great.
• 33:57
  1995. Here's your money back, Matt.
• 33:59
  They just put, do a force deposit onto your, your card.
• 34:03
  Um, but a forced deposit sometimes takes days.
• 34:06
  Sometimes it can take a week.
• 34:07
  Depends on where the co you know, where the company is.
• 34:10
  You randomly checking your bank app.
• 34:12
  You go, I don't see this 1995.
• 34:14
  I'm not calling those guys back again.
• 34:16
  I'm gonna call my bank.
• 34:17
  So you call the bank or you, or you dispute it online.
• 34:21
  These transactions are two weeks apart.
• 34:23
  The forced deposit and the original transaction, they don't catch it.
• 34:27
  They also process a refund on top of that.
• 34:30
  Maybe give the merchant their money back again and a $25 fine or a 35 fine.
• 34:36
  And if there's enough of those, there could be another fine for $8 or $10.
• 34:41
  And if there's enough of those, they could wind up with 20, $30,000 a month.
• 34:45
  And just some arbitrary amount that they decide to charge the merchant
• 34:48
  because there's too many So it, you know, it, it, it tumbles pretty quickly.
• 34:54
  Yeah, and it's at a very, very low threshold.
• 34:56
  You know, when I got into this business, the threshold for chargebacks was 3.5%.
• 35:01
  Then they changed it to one and everybody figured it out.
• 35:04
  Now it's freaked out.
• 35:06
  Now it's going down to half a percent.
• 35:08
  Yeah,
• 35:11
  I mean, imagine your bank of accusing you of being a failure because only
• 35:15
  99.5% of your customers are happy.
• 35:20
  It's like the dad who says to his son.
• 35:23
  When his son comes and says, dad, I got 99 point half percent on my test.
• 35:26
  Well done.
• 35:27
  Instead of saying, well done, he said, well, what happened to the other half?
• 35:29
  Yeah, that's Yeah.
• 35:30
  What, what did you get wrong?
• 35:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 35:33
  I just wanna punch you in the face right now, dad.
• 35:35
  It's one of those, isn't it?
• 35:36
  And I, I,
• 35:39
  it feels like as an e-commerce operator that we're kind of
• 35:43
  at the mercy of all of this.
• 35:45
  It's not like we can just all sort of band together and change the outcome.
• 35:48
  We just kind of have to deal with it.
• 35:51
  Well, that's right.
• 35:52
  And then, you know, so you've got, uh, you've got, you know, visa and MasterCard.
• 35:58
  You've got, uh, the sponsor banks on both, you know, the acquiring
• 36:01
  and the issuing side, you know, the processors and acquirers, the merchants.
• 36:06
  And then you've got all of these third parties, right?
• 36:08
  So you've got front end fraud prevention vendors that are gonna try to tell
• 36:13
  you as a merchant what's good and what isn't good, you know, before you accept
• 36:17
  the transaction in the first place.
• 36:19
  That was the business that I was in when I was, you know, working in the uk.
• 36:23
  And then there are a whole bunch of companies that help you to sort of
• 36:27
  manage the chargebacks that will, will provide you with alerts, you
• 36:32
  know, um, if you hit the dispute button, for example, on your bank app.
• 36:37
  And the first question is always, you know, have you contacted the merchant
• 36:41
  because they won't give you your money back if you haven't at least attempted
• 36:44
  or claimed to have attempted, uh, to get to, to contact the merchant.
• 36:49
  And you say that, no, I haven't.
• 36:51
  And they say, we'll, get in touch with the merchant.
• 36:53
  And you know, again, this is all digital.
• 36:55
  Well, that results in a bunch of these companies sending the merchant
• 37:00
  an alert, Hey, Matt's upset, he hasn't charged anything back.
• 37:04
  Guess what that alert's gonna be $35.
• 37:07
  Right.
• 37:07
  So even if they, even if they jump on the phone with you and resolve
• 37:10
  it, it still cost 'em 35 bucks.
• 37:12
  Yeah.
• 37:13
  Just because they went to the bank first.
• 37:15
  Yeah.
• 37:16
  So it's to, to your point.
• 37:18
  Exactly.
• 37:18
  I mean, I, I, these, these merchants are all, and we're in that business,
• 37:21
  you know, we've got large, you know, portfolios of, of merchants who we
• 37:24
  process for, and they are definitely feeling like they're in a much smaller
• 37:29
  box now, uh, than they, than they were.
• 37:32
  And I think the, the biggest problem for everybody eventually is gonna
• 37:37
  be in that they're, they're, they're in a lot less profitable box.
• 37:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:41
  So when.
• 37:43
  When regulations or, or, um, you know, the Visa, MasterCard thresholds, you
• 37:49
  know, change or tighten, um, when, uh, banks and acquirers start to get
• 37:55
  more aggressive about, uh, you know, cleaning these things up and with
• 37:59
  fees and fines and, and sometimes, uh, you know, just eliminating the
• 38:04
  merchant accounts altogether, everybody gets into this survival mode, right?
• 38:09
  And it's sort of like, well, you know, as long as I survive, I am fine.
• 38:13
  Um, and I think everybody's largely been in that, you know, sort of like they're
• 38:17
  on a raft in the middle of the ocean.
• 38:20
  Yeah.
• 38:20
  Um, but I think, you know, by the time we hit, uh, you know, spring, summer
• 38:25
  of this year, there's gonna be a lot of people that sort of put their head
• 38:29
  up and say, well, yeah, we survived, but we're not making any money anymore.
• 38:32
  Right.
• 38:33
  These, you know, all of these, uh, you know, tightened restrictions and
• 38:37
  everything else are costing us a fortune.
• 38:40
  Yeah, with the same number of disputes as we had before.
• 38:44
  And so that's, you know, that's, again, I think that's part of how we, we're not,
• 38:50
  we're not solving the problem, right?
• 38:51
  I mean, we're not, we're not gonna tell you the merchant, well, you've got
• 38:55
  $250,000 in friendly fraud or any other kind of fraud, and we're gonna prevent it.
• 39:00
  We're telling you that we're gonna limit your exposure based on what that is.
• 39:05
  We're just, we're gonna facilitate, uh, you know, an easy refund.
• 39:10
  And it's gonna cost you less money.
• 39:12
  And all of these, you know, sort of black marks that you get on your
• 39:16
  record with Visa and MasterCard and the banks and so forth, disappear
• 39:20
  because you've resolved it on your own.
• 39:23
  Nobody else is involved.
• 39:25
  So if we can take care of if, if, if the problem is you're at 2% and you
• 39:30
  need to get to 1% and we get you there.
• 39:34
  Um, not only is, are your costs lowered, uh, obviously by, by a bunch, but the
• 39:42
  thresholds by which your business is judged by Visa, MasterCard, the sponsor,
• 39:46
  banks, and so forth, is also much cleaner.
• 39:50
  Yeah.
• 39:50
  Uh, and so you, you're making more money, but you also money, you know, to, to
• 39:55
  those third parties look like, you know, a much, you know, cleaner, better business.
• 40:01
  Yeah.
• 40:01
  Um.
• 40:03
  So it's a real, you know, you get into the weeds on this stuff and
• 40:06
  it's, it, it's easy to get despondent.
• 40:09
  I mean, we, you know, I deal with merchants all the time that are like,
• 40:12
  I just can't, like, this is insane.
• 40:15
  Um, but, you know, sometimes there's an easier solution than
• 40:19
  you think there was going to be.
• 40:21
  Um, you know, we're, we're, we, we own the product and we're as surprised
• 40:25
  as anybody that, that it, that it didn't exist in the first place.
• 40:30
  Yeah.
• 40:32
  The, the, the analogy that I started using, right?
• 40:34
  Because everybody was like, well, doesn't that, isn't that already around somewhere?
• 40:39
  I mean, it seems like it would, you know, that that would already exist.
• 40:42
  It seems like an obvious thing that somebody would've, would,
• 40:44
  would've done a million years ago.
• 40:47
  And I say maybe this is more of a US thing, but I mean, it took
• 40:50
  78 years for the postal service to turn the stamp into a sticker.
• 40:54
  You know, we spent, we,
• 40:58
  okay.
• 40:59
  That's a stat I'm gonna use.
• 41:02
  Uh, I'm, I'm gonna quote you there, Jeff.
• 41:04
  I'm not gonna lie.
• 41:07
  I love that.
• 41:08
  Well, no, but I, and listening to you to ride it, it sounds to me
• 41:11
  like the smart play here is for merchants to go, you know, what?
• 41:15
  We are gonna get royally shafted with chargebacks, right?
• 41:20
  It is what it is.
• 41:20
  It's inevitable.
• 41:22
  Um, we can lower the amount of chargebacks from refunds by being
• 41:25
  smart and the refunds and chargebacks that we have, we can do those
• 41:29
  well to again, lower the charges.
• 41:31
  So the smart play is not necessarily to go to your, uh, local counselor
• 41:39
  or senator or wherever you're in the world and complains smart place to go.
• 41:43
  How do I minimize loss?
• 41:45
  Yeah, that's right.
• 41:46
  How do I, how do I make the I, I acknowledge there's gonna be loss.
• 41:49
  I don't think it's fair.
• 41:51
  It doesn't matter whether it's fair, there's gonna be some loss.
• 41:54
  How do you minimize it and how do you move on?
• 41:56
  And that sounds like the smart play, doesn't it?
• 41:59
  When it comes to dealing with customers that use credit
• 42:02
  cards to buy from your website.
• 42:05
  I, I, I have a, a to that point exactly, and it's not an e-commerce issue,
• 42:09
  but it, I think it's a good analogy.
• 42:11
  So one of, one of our clients, uh, also owns slash owned, uh, 150 odd, uh, sort
• 42:20
  of hyper markets, uh, you, you would call 'em in the uk, uh, in, in, in urban areas.
• 42:28
  And in, in the US in particular, they owned, uh, I think 40 or
• 42:32
  50 in the, in New York City.
• 42:34
  And, uh, they ended up shutting them down because there was, you know,
• 42:39
  there's always gonna be shoplifting, you know, people are always gonna, you
• 42:42
  know, grab, grab some stuff and go.
• 42:45
  Um, and.
• 42:47
  Their original solution was to put security guards, you know, to just
• 42:50
  prevent it, not necessarily to stop anybody, because believe it or not,
• 42:54
  here in the US you can't stop anybody.
• 42:56
  You know, you put your hands on somebody who's just stolen a candy
• 42:59
  bar and you got a, you know, multi, you know, 20, $30,000 lawsuit on your
• 43:04
  hand, but just as a prevention, right?
• 43:07
  I'm just gonna have a guy standing there who's gonna make it seem
• 43:10
  like it's not a good idea.
• 43:12
  Yeah, the, the insurance rates increased so much, uh, in each of these stores
• 43:18
  in New York that if the shoplifting had doubled, it still wouldn't have
• 43:24
  been as expensive as preventing it with one guy standing at the front.
• 43:29
  And I think that's sort of, uh, symbolic of what we're looking at, right?
• 43:33
  I mean, nobody, nobody wants to say, yeah, okay.
• 43:36
  Just go ahead and take the stuff.
• 43:38
  Um, you, you know, we'll make it easy on you just so it's easier on us, but
• 43:42
  at the end of the day, those are the pragmatic decisions that we have to make.
• 43:45
  You know, particularly at volume.
• 43:47
  Scale makes total sense.
• 43:49
  I love this idea of, I suppose, of understanding it, of e-commerce,
• 43:53
  shoplifting, uh, I think is a really interesting idea.
• 43:56
  Um, very good.
• 43:58
  Jeff, listen, I'm aware of time, um, and I, I thoroughly enjoying the conversation,
• 44:03
  but, but how do people reach you?
• 44:05
  How do they connect with you if they want to do that, what's
• 44:07
  the best way to find that more?
• 44:08
  So, our website is, uh, www get quick refund.com.
• 44:17
  Uh, there's a bunch of information on there.
• 44:19
  There's a, you know, there's a contact us, uh, form, uh, that
• 44:22
  you, you can, you can fill out.
• 44:25
  Um, you can also email, uh, info@quickrefund.ai.
• 44:31
  And those are two completely different domains.
• 44:34
  We actually.
• 44:36
  I got the, I got the AI domain 'cause I thought it was really cool.
• 44:39
  We built the platform on it and then my IT guy said, you can't
• 44:42
  run email off this thing, Jeff.
• 44:44
  We're actually running the platform here, so we, we got a different
• 44:47
  one for the, uh, for the website.
• 44:49
  Um, so yeah, so info@quickrefund.ai.
• 44:54
  Uh, anybody can reach us there and if you would like to just learn more about quick
• 44:58
  refund, you can go to get quick refund.
• 45:05
  Of course, link to that in the show notes as well.
• 45:08
  And you can click those links.
• 45:09
  And of course, if you sign up to the newsletter, they'll
• 45:11
  be in your email inbox.
• 45:12
  Uh, but of course, whatever podcast player you are listening to this
• 45:15
  on, or whatever you are, you are on YouTube or whatever, just scroll down.
• 45:18
  It'll all be in the description as well.
• 45:20
  Sure, in there.
• 45:22
  Um, but Jeff, thank you man for coming on this show.
• 45:25
  Genuinely loved the conversation.
• 45:27
  Learned a lot.
• 45:28
  It's my pleasure.
• 45:29
  Take it also seriously, uh, is probably the, you know, don't get so angry, man.
• 45:33
  Uh, it's, it's probably the, the be the best bit of advice.
• 45:36
  Um, one of the things that we do like to do in the last two minutes,
• 45:39
  Jeff, we like to do this thing called saving the best or less, so those
• 45:43
  that have stuck around to the end.
• 45:45
  What is your top tips for someone specifically starting out in eCommerce,
• 45:49
  who's kind of new to eCommerce, who's listening to you talk, going?
• 45:53
  Man alive.
• 45:53
  I just, I, I, I've still gotta find a good supply for the products.
• 45:58
  I'm, I'm getting a little bit lost with it all.
• 46:00
  What's your top tip for them?
• 46:02
  The mic is yours for the next two minutes, Jeff.
• 46:06
  So, uh, my top tip for anybody and we deal with all sorts of
• 46:09
  merchants of digital goods, physical goods and things like that.
• 46:13
  Um, the, the most important thing and, and what prevents us, uh,
• 46:18
  frankly, from ever having to get involved is around fulfillment.
• 46:22
  And customer service.
• 46:24
  You know, whether you're providing somebody with a, you know, with a, a
• 46:27
  downloadable digital good, or you're shipping them, uh, you know, a, a, a
• 46:31
  sweater, uh, or, or, uh, you know, a pair of shoes or something like that.
• 46:36
  Uh, getting, uh, your product to your customer as quickly as
• 46:40
  possible and over communicating with them through that process.
• 46:45
  The number of, of disputes, refunds and things that we see on a daily
• 46:50
  basis that are based on a lack of communication, uh, from the merchant
• 46:56
  is something that every single merchant can easily solve in its entirety.
• 47:02
  Uh, you know, it's, it's just in that specific case, there's all
• 47:05
  sorts of stuff that we can't control, and that's, that's the world that I
• 47:09
  live in, you know, most of the time.
• 47:11
  But what you can control, literally down to the last item, it just takes, you
• 47:15
  know, discipline and organization is, you know, fulfillment and customer service.
• 47:20
  Get your goods out, uh, overcommunicate with your clients, follow up, uh, to
• 47:25
  make sure they got what they got and that they're happy with it and so forth.
• 47:29
  And because the number of, of disputes and refunds and chargebacks and things
• 47:33
  that I've seen through my entire career, I'd say there's a large,
• 47:37
  large percentage, you know, maybe 25, 30% that are based on confusion or
• 47:42
  frustration or lack of communication.
• 47:46
  And those, if you can just solve those problems, you know, forget about.
• 47:50
  Refund versus chargeback or anything else.
• 47:52
  Mm-hmm.
• 47:52
  If you can just, you know, make sure that your, your stuff arrives on time and if
• 47:57
  it doesn't, just communicate about it.
• 48:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 48:00
  And I think a, that, that will eliminate a huge percentage of what
• 48:04
  we have to deal with on the back end.
• 48:07
  Fantastic.
• 48:08
  Love that.
• 48:08
  And I just, it, it, it puts the power back in your hands, doesn't it?
• 48:12
  This is what I can control.
• 48:13
  This is what I can do.
• 48:15
  Um, don't try and shaft your customer 'cause you'll always
• 48:18
  come off worse it seems.
• 48:19
  But.
• 48:20
  Go out there, do a good job over deliver, and you'll find these things
• 48:23
  go, you know, further and further down.
• 48:26
  Jeff loved it man.
• 48:27
  Thank you so much for coming on this show.
• 48:29
  It's been an absolute treat, my friend.
• 48:32
  It's my pleasure.
• 48:32
  Thank you for having me.
• 48:34
  Wow.
• 48:34
  There you go.
• 48:35
  Another fabulous episode of the eCommerce Podcast.
• 48:38
  All wrapped up and handed to you on the metaphorical silver plate.
• 48:42
  Uh, of course, uh, but thank you for joining us this week.
• 48:45
  Make sure you come back next week because we've got more great conversations
• 48:48
  lined up and I don't want me to miss any of them, so make sure you do
• 48:51
  all the like and subscribe thing.
• 48:53
  Um, uh, but that's it from me.
• 48:55
  That's it from Jeff.
• 48:55
  Thank you so much for joining us wherever you are in the world.
• 48:58
  I'll see you next time.
• 48:59
  Bye for now.