Hi Chris,
We are a payment gateway and as such have no involvement in the charge back process. In fact we do not even know when something is charged back unless the merchant contacts us. We are in fact if anything strongly on the merchants side for improved processes that get the CB information back to the merchant quicker so they can head off potential charge backs.
For example Deutsch Bank/Paygo send it out electronically same day. This allowed for us to tell the merchant via an email a charge back request had been made within a couple of hours of it being made. In many cases this allowed for goods to not be sent and our the consumer contacted to try and work something out. Many times a chargeback was due to things like wife not recognising a charge to her card made by her husband. Because the CB is only in the request phase it can be recalled saving time and money.
All we ask is for a fair hearing that we dispatched the goods in good faith and can prove say delivery of the goods to the address that you checked was ok. Or did you check?
As stated above in this post and previous is the key failing of the UK system is the time it takes for the chargeback to get to the merchant. The initial time alloted to contest has elapsed. As such the only option available to you guys is to send in an appeal to the acquirers letter which I believe is a 21 day window, might be 14 days. By this time they have taken the funds off of you.
The reason there is such a delay is some very legacy systems and business procedures at acquirer level. This is not the merchants fault and yet they are punished for it financially. It was not the intention of the previous post to say its okay for the merchants to suffer because the banks can not get the information out quicker.
The post was meant to illustrate a primary reason why the chargeback system is there in the first place that had not so far been raised in the discussion. And that is intentially fraudulent merchants and merchants who have a chargeback problem that can be resolved through improvements to their business processes.
why for instance can i not ring up visa and check out a suspicious purchase attempt and they contact the rightfull customer and check its validity
You can. The process is the following.
1. Get the date, time, amount, authcode, first 6 or last four of the card from your PSP managment system.
2. Phone you acquirer and go through their security checks.
3. Give the details to call center person and ask for an "Issuer Authorisation Check".
4. Do not send anything until your Acquirer gets back to you.
5. Make your decision to send or not to send.
As far as acquiring banks ranking in vast sums of money from the chargeback system I would question that actually. Most acquirers will get rid of merchants who consistently have high charge back rates.
For example at Deutsch/Paygo they would write off any charge back under 35 EUR. They charged 15 EUR for the chargeback so the charge back amount where it was unfeasible to contest was 50 EUR. This meant regardless the merchant was not out of pocket as the acquirer covered it regardless.
UK banks ALWAYS ask what a merchants chargeback rate is. If banks were out to make money off of charge backs they should be looking for merchants with higher charge backs rates and this is 100% not the case.
Thats not to say if they could make money they wouldn't. Having worked on both the acquiring side and processing side I would say card companies hate chargebacks just as much as merchants.
Can acquiring companies do more? - Absolutly.
Should they? - Absolutly
Ar they going to? - I would imagine so. But I can not see an industry wide change. One acquirer will figure out this is a massive issue and put out a solution. the rest will follow in who knows how many years.
What do I do until then? - Good T&C's, contracts, business policies. If you get a chargeback then learn from it.
Or we could set up a vigilante group to personally track them down...I'll be quiet before this thread is removed....I am joking by the way moderators 
