Tabatt Kallenbach
New Member
Hey everyone. This is something I never see talked about openly here and I think people are embarrassed to bring it up - but disputes and refunds almost made me quit dropshipping entirely in my first year. I want to share what caused most of them and what I actually did to fix it, because once I figured this out my dispute rate dropped from around 4.2% down to 0.6% over about 5 months.
Where most disputes actually come from
I always assumed disputes were about delivery times. Turned out that was only part of it. When I went through my cases one by one I found three main causes:
The product looked different from the photos. This was the biggest one. AliExpress supplier photos are often way better than the actual product. I was importing those polished photos without checking them against real customer photos in the reviews. Big mistake. Now before I list anything I scroll through buyer review photos on AliExpress - the ones real customers upload are unfiltered and show exactly what arrives. If the buyer photos look nothing like the seller photos I don't list the product.
No size or measurement info. I sell some home goods and people had very different ideas of how big something was. Now every product listing has a measurement in inches AND a real-life comparison - "about the size of a paperback book" or "fits in the palm of your hand." Sounds basic but it cut a whole category of disputes immediately.
Slow shipping with no proactive communication. When something was delayed I used to wait for the customer to message me first. Now I have a simple rule - if tracking hasn't updated in 10 days I send a quick message first. Customers who hear from you before they get frustrated almost never open disputes. Customers who have to chase you almost always do.
The Sellvia switch that helped most
The single biggest change for my US customers was moving my bestsellers over to Sellvia. When your products ship from a US warehouse in 1-3 days you basically eliminate the whole category of "where is my order" disputes. I still get the occasional wrong expectations issue but the shipping disputes are nearly gone for those products. For a store doing $2,000-4,000 a month the reduction in dispute stress alone is worth it.
What to do when a dispute actually opens
Don't fight it. This sounds wrong but hear me out. If you fight a PayPal or Stripe dispute and lose - which happens a lot even when you're right - you get a strike on your account. Enough strikes and you lose the payment processor entirely. For orders under $30 I just refund immediately with a short apology. The goodwill is worth more than the product cost. For larger orders I respond with tracking evidence and a polite offer to resend or refund - about 60% of those resolve without a chargeback.
One more thing - if you're getting a lot of disputes in the same product category that's a signal to either fix the listing or drop the product. I had one product that kept generating disputes no matter what I did - turns out the supplier had quietly changed the item quality. Dropped it and the disputes in that category stopped.
What's your dispute rate looking like and what's been causing most of them? Would love to hear if anyone has other fixes that worked.
Where most disputes actually come from
I always assumed disputes were about delivery times. Turned out that was only part of it. When I went through my cases one by one I found three main causes:
The product looked different from the photos. This was the biggest one. AliExpress supplier photos are often way better than the actual product. I was importing those polished photos without checking them against real customer photos in the reviews. Big mistake. Now before I list anything I scroll through buyer review photos on AliExpress - the ones real customers upload are unfiltered and show exactly what arrives. If the buyer photos look nothing like the seller photos I don't list the product.
No size or measurement info. I sell some home goods and people had very different ideas of how big something was. Now every product listing has a measurement in inches AND a real-life comparison - "about the size of a paperback book" or "fits in the palm of your hand." Sounds basic but it cut a whole category of disputes immediately.
Slow shipping with no proactive communication. When something was delayed I used to wait for the customer to message me first. Now I have a simple rule - if tracking hasn't updated in 10 days I send a quick message first. Customers who hear from you before they get frustrated almost never open disputes. Customers who have to chase you almost always do.
The Sellvia switch that helped most
The single biggest change for my US customers was moving my bestsellers over to Sellvia. When your products ship from a US warehouse in 1-3 days you basically eliminate the whole category of "where is my order" disputes. I still get the occasional wrong expectations issue but the shipping disputes are nearly gone for those products. For a store doing $2,000-4,000 a month the reduction in dispute stress alone is worth it.
What to do when a dispute actually opens
Don't fight it. This sounds wrong but hear me out. If you fight a PayPal or Stripe dispute and lose - which happens a lot even when you're right - you get a strike on your account. Enough strikes and you lose the payment processor entirely. For orders under $30 I just refund immediately with a short apology. The goodwill is worth more than the product cost. For larger orders I respond with tracking evidence and a polite offer to resend or refund - about 60% of those resolve without a chargeback.
One more thing - if you're getting a lot of disputes in the same product category that's a signal to either fix the listing or drop the product. I had one product that kept generating disputes no matter what I did - turns out the supplier had quietly changed the item quality. Dropped it and the disputes in that category stopped.
What's your dispute rate looking like and what's been causing most of them? Would love to hear if anyone has other fixes that worked.