"With EchoSign, My Chargebacks Dropped to Zero"

A best practices question we get with some frequency is -- "Do I even need a contract?".  It's a good question.  Certainly, recurring relationships with known and trusted third parties can work well in many cases with a handshake, or the 21st century equivalent, an email.

But there's a reason in this age of web services that the amount of revenue under contract is going up - not down.  With more people doing more business with more companies across the globe, the odds increase that the relationship between buyer and seller is a purely electronic one.  Chargebacks are a particularly vexing issue here.  You may never had tried this yourself, but credit card charges without a signed agreement can be almost instantly "reversed" simply by calling your credit card company. 

One answer we like to getting a signature without slowing down commerce:  EchoSign.

This narrative from WebTraffic2Night about using EchoSign to reduce chargebacks ... to zero ... is a particularly good one.  (Note: we cannot guarantee 0% chargebacks -- but we do promise to do everything possible to help you achieve similar results):

"I used to have issues with chargebacks and disputes in Paypal alot. I sell advertising, so it is very hard to keep everyone happy. Therefore, I have a good amount of disputes and chargebacks. This being said, if the refund is warranted I will give them it, no questions asked. The problem comes when I have people that order items which are high priced. They would have the services rendered and then a month down the road would do a chargeback. This always bugged me, but I thought it was just the price of doing business online. The problem came when I had a guy order $3,000 worth of services from me, received them, and then 2 months down the road did a chargeback. From my experience, I knew that I would lose [sic] 100% through Paypal on chargebacks, no matter how much information about the transaction I would provide.

What I came to find by talking to one of my contacts in the credit card business is that the consumer now wins chargebacks 88% of the time. Five years ago that percentage was 13%. I won't get into why that is, but I had to figure out another way.

My partner and I found a company called EchoSign (EchoSign Electronic Signature Service and Digital E-Signature Solution). What they do is send a document which the customer has to electronically sign. The document usually entails your terms of service, or a simple paragraph about how you do not give refunds, but will work with the customer until they are satisfied (something to that effect. I included my TOS, which includes the above statement. It is easily integratable into your payment processor.

Since I have been using this service I have not lost 1 dispute or chargeback. Even if I don't send the form to the customer, I inform Paypal that I use them, and BAM...money comes right back. PAypal loves electronic sigs it seems. It's great!!!

I hope this helps you or anyone else who wants to protect themselves from unscrupulous buyers. Especially those of us who sell intangible goods."

Comments

[Joe]

Nice post Jason. Isn't PayPal an EchoSign customer?