When a shopper disputes a payment

Sometimes a shopper goes to their bank instead of coming to you. They say the order never arrived, or wasn’t what they paid for, or that they didn’t make the payment at all. The bank reverses the payment while it looks into it. That’s a chargeback.

It is not the same as an issue raised on Luma. An issue is a conversation you and the shopper have with us alongside. A chargeback is the card network’s own process, run to its own deadlines, and Luma cannot overrule it.

What happens to the money

Three things happen at once, and they all happen before anyone has looked at the merits.

The order amount comes off your balance. It goes back if the card issuer decides in your favour.

Our payment provider charges a dispute fee, and that comes off your balance too. The amount is on your order page. Unlike the order amount, the provider never returns this one, whoever wins.

Your order page says so. You’ll get an email when the chargeback opens, and the page carries the amounts, the deadline and the state of the fee until it’s settled.

When we pay the fee back

Two ways, and either one is enough.

You win. The card issuer decides in your favour and we pay the fee back, whatever the order record says.

You did your part. You posted by the date you promised, with a carrier and a tracking number, and our record shows the order reached your shopper: the shopper confirmed delivery, or there’s proof of delivery on the dispute. Then we pay the fee back whatever the outcome, including on a chargeback you lose or decide not to fight.

If neither applies, the fee stays with you.

We settle it when the dispute ends, not when it opens, so the money is out of your balance until the card issuer decides. Your order page says which of the three states it’s in the whole time.

The second route rests on what you entered when you posted it. We have no way to check a tracking number against a carrier’s own records, so we don’t claim to. A number you can’t stand behind helps nobody, least of all with a card issuer reading it as evidence.

Answering the card issuer

Your order page shows the card issuer’s claim and their deadline, and you answer from there. While a card issuer holds one, the Chargebacks filter on your orders page lists every order it applies to.

To contest it, write what happened and add any photos that help. What helps depends on what they’re claiming. A carrier screenshot showing delivery. A proof-of-posting receipt. A photo of the finished piece where they say it wasn’t as described.

When you send it, we attach the order’s own records (what was sold, the tracking, the terms the shopper accepted and your messages with them) and pass it to the card issuer through the payment provider, as you wrote it. It can be sent once, and your order page then shows exactly what went while the card issuer decides. They may share it with the shopper.

Sending an answer carries a further fee from the payment provider. It’s the same amount as the opening fee, it comes off your balance when you send it, and the payment provider returns it if the card issuer decides in your favour. It isn’t part of what we cover, because the decision to spend it is yours.

If you’d rather not contest, you can accept the chargeback from the same place.

If you don’t answer

Nothing on Luma pushes you into a fight you don’t want. Where you lost the parcel, or the shopper is plainly right, letting it go is a reasonable answer and it costs you no more than fighting and losing.

If you don’t answer, the payment provider’s Smart Disputes may answer for you just before the deadline. It builds the case from the payment’s own records, and when you mark an order as posted we pass the carrier and tracking number to the payment provider so it has them for a claim that the order never arrived. There’s no answering fee. Instead, if the card issuer decides in your favour, the payment provider charges 30% of the disputed amount, and if they don’t, it charges nothing. It only answers disputes it has enough records for. We don’t answer on your behalf.

If the chargeback is lost

The reversed amount stays off your balance, and we refund our commission on that order, the same as we would on a refund.

If your balance doesn’t cover the deduction it goes below zero, and the payment provider recovers the difference from your later sales first, then by direct debit from your bank account. That’s set out in full in our terms.

Getting help

The contact form reaches us, and Payments & payouts is the right category. We can’t answer the card issuer for you, but we can explain what the claim says and what’s already on the dispute.