What to Do When a Customer Withdraws the Dispute

In this article, we'll cover what to do when a cardholder withdraws their payment dispute.

The most effective dispute strategy for your business is to reduce the number of disputes it receives in the first place. If you do receive a dispute, the most effective way to proceed is to work directly with your customer to resolve the issue.

What is a Withdrawn Dispute?

A withdrawn dispute is one that your customer has asked their card issuer to cancel. It isn’t necessarily a won dispute, as the dispute might still be resolved as a loss if you haven’t submitted evidence.

• It doesn’t resolve as a win or loss more quickly than other disputes.
• It doesn’t show up differently from any other dispute in the Dashboard or API.
• It still counts against your dispute rate with the network.

Cardholders can only withdraw fully financial disputes—that is, a chargeback, where your account balance has been debited. They can’t withdraw an Early Fraud Warning or an inquiry, which don’t have a financial impact. The cardholder might decline to escalate these, but can’t undo them.

Assessing the Value of Pursuing a Dispute Withdrawal

Although a dispute withdrawal is a good way to turn a dispute into a win and resolve a negative experience for your customer, it also requires some effort to initiate and complete an interaction with your customer. It might not be the most cost-efficient approach for every dispute, and you’ll have to weigh the increased operational burden against the lift it gives your dispute win rate.

Talk to Your Customer

Reach out to your customer to better understand their complaint, and try to work through the problem with them. If you’re able to satisfy the customer, ask them to reach out to their card issuer and withdraw the dispute. The process for this varies by issuer, but in general, the customer should use whatever normal support channels they use to get help from their issuer.

If your customer does agree to withdraw the dispute, consider asking them whether they would provide confirmation of the withdrawal, such as a withdrawal confirmation email from their bank or a screenshot of their mobile banking statement showing they were re-billed for the charge.

Warning: If part of the resolution with your customer involves an agreement that you will issue a refund to them, be aware that it might be weeks or even months before you’re able to issue one.

Submit Evidence

Regardless of what happens between you and your customer, you still need to submit evidence if you want to win the dispute.

Warning: Always provide evidence for every dispute you hope to have resolved in your favor, even if your customer told you they’re withdrawing the dispute.

Wait for the Dispute Resolution

After your customer withdraws a dispute, and you submit evidence, you can expect that the dispute will still follow the normal dispute timeline to come back with a win or loss from the network.

Late Withdrawal of Dispute

It’s technically possible on every card network for a cardholder to withdraw a dispute after the response deadline, and even long after a dispute itself is lost. However, some card issuers within that network might not support the late withdrawal of a dispute in every case. As with any other dispute, the cardholder needs to reach out to their issuer to request a late withdrawal and find out whether or not they allow it.

Keep in mind that late withdrawals often happen outside the networks’ dispute systems. Unlike with the regular dispute lifecycle, they aren’t governed by any network rules or regulations.

Consequently, when a customer withdraws an old, lost dispute, it’s hard to set a realistic expectation for how soon you can expect to see it reflected in your Stripe/Pabau account. It’s possible it could take the cardholder’s issuer weeks or months to process this type of adjustment.