Chargebacks and Your Race

If you’ve hosted a race before, it’s likely you’ve come up against the frustrating concept of Chargebacks: when people who registered for your events (willingly) contest the charge with their credit card company and attempt to force you into a refund (and an additional fee from the credit card network for processing the chargeback).

You’re in luck. RunSignup can handle your Chargebacks for you.

How RunSignup Fights Your Chargebacks

When an attendee files a chargeback, the notification comes to us, not you. From there, we have a few steps that we take, depending on the circumstances of the chargeback and the policies of the event.

Reach Out

A surprising number of people simply forgot what they signed up for or didn’t recognize a donation or purchase. In these cases, they are generally quick to reverse the chargeback or re-pay the fee when we contact them.

Notification

The Race Director (that’s you) receives an automated notification so you can reach out to the purchaser if appropriate, or you can let us know if you have already refunded the purchaser or you prefer to just accept the chargeback as a refund.

Dispute

If it makes sense to dispute the chargeback, we send refund policy documentation to the credit card company to demonstrate that the purchaser agreed to a no-refund policy.

All of this happens on the backend, with no action from you. But you can see what’s happening with your chargebacks by navigating to Financial >> Financial Summary and clicking on Adjustments.

When you click into Adjustments, you can see the status of any chargebacks for your event.

How You can Reduce Chargebacks

While there’s no foolproof way to prevent all chargebacks, we have a few tips that can help you reduce their likelihood.

On Step 6 of the Race Wizard, you can customize the statement description that participants see on their credit card report. This can reduce mistakes by ensuring they recognize the charge correctly.
Add a thorough Refund Policy by navigating to Participants >> Participant Management >> Refunds and Refund Policy, and require that registrants specifically agree to it. This can make chargebacks less likely, and can help fight them if they do happen.