chargeback

A refund is something you agree to and process yourself. A Resolution Center request is a payment you ask a guest to make on the platform, which they can accept or decline. A chargeback is neither: the guest goes to their bank, the bank reverses the payment, and the first you hear of it is usually a notification telling you funds have been withdrawn.

That inversion is what makes it uncomfortable. In a claim you are asking to be paid. In a chargeback you have already been paid, the money has been taken back, and you are arguing to keep it. The process runs on card-scheme rules rather than on platform policy, which is why the chargeback defence guide treats it as a separate discipline.

The party the bank holds responsible is the merchant of record, meaning whoever processed the card payment. On a booking paid through a platform, that is normally the platform, and most disputes are handled by them without the host ever assembling a bundle.

On a direct booking, or a partner-platform stay where you charged the card yourself, you are the merchant. The deadline, the evidence and any dispute fee are yours. Hosts who work across channels often discover this mid-dispute, which is the scenario covered in the non-Airbnb chargeback and direct-booking damage with no AirCover.

Every chargeback arrives with a reason code: services not rendered, not as described, unauthorised transaction, duplicate charge. The code is not decoration. It tells you exactly which fact the issuer wants evidence about, and a response that argues something else is dismissed no matter how strong it is.

A claim of an unauthorised transaction is answered with the booking record and the authorisation. A not-as-described claim is answered with the listing, the messages and dated photographs. A damage charge disputed as unauthorised is answered with the clause the guest accepted plus their written agreement to the amount.

Unlike a platform claim, the timetable comes from the card scheme through your acquirer, and it is typically measured in days rather than weeks. A late bundle is not considered, whatever it contains. Diarise the date the moment the notification arrives and assemble the documents before you research the argument.

The evidence itself has to exist already. A dispute landing six weeks after checkout cannot be answered by going back to photograph anything, which is why the documentation habit rather than the dispute skill decides the outcome. The formal reply is called representment, and it is a single coherent submission rather than a conversation.

Three habits remove most of the exposure on stays you process yourself. Put a damage clause and an explicit charge authorisation in the terms the guest accepts. Ask in writing for agreement to a specific amount before charging anything extra. And keep dated before-and-after records for every channel, not only the one that asks for them.

Repeat disputes also matter beyond the individual loss, because processors watch dispute ratios. A host with a documented process and clear terms rarely reaches that point. The platform-side version of the same problem is covered in Airbnb chargeback: what to do when a guest disputes the charge.