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By ActivityPay
Your merchant processor sends an email at 4: Friday: "Chargeback received - respond within required timeframe." You're shuttling guests back from a full-day rafting trip. By the time you check emails Monday morning, draft a response, and gather documentation, it's day five. You submit everything feeling confident.
Two weeks later: automatic loss. Not because your case was weak—you had receipts, signed waivers, photographic proof the guest completed the trip. You lost because you missed a deadline you didn't know existed.
Most adventure operators don't realize chargeback disputes operate on credit card network timelines, not business timelines. Miss these windows by even a day, and you forfeit the dispute automatically—regardless of how strong your evidence is. Here's exactly when you need to respond, what happens at each deadline, and how to build a system that catches these before they cost you thousands.
Chargeback response deadlines aren't universal—they cascade through three distinct phases, each with different timelines and requirements.
When a customer disputes a charge with their credit card company, you receive an initial notification. This isn't your formal response deadline yet, but it matters because you need to decide whether to accept or fight the chargeback. Most processors give you 7-10 days to make this decision.
Here's what operators miss: this window is for strategy, not documentation. You're deciding if the chargeback is worth fighting based on:
A $150 zipline tour disputed as "service not provided" when you have signed waivers and photographic evidence? Fight it. A $400 kayak rental disputed as "not as described" with vague documentation and an angry customer who's already left one-star reviews everywhere? Sometimes accepting the loss costs less than the fight.
This is the critical window most operators blow. Once you decide to fight a chargeback, you typically have 20-30 days from the notification date to submit your complete evidence package. Not 20-30 days from when you read the notification—from when it was sent.
If your notification arrives Friday afternoon and you don't see it until Monday, you've already lost three days. If you then spend a week gathering documentation, you're at day ten. If your evidence package needs processing time (some payment systems require 3-5 business days to review submissions before forwarding to card networks), you might already be too late.
The exact deadline varies by card network:
Your payment processor should specify the exact deadline in the notification, but many operators skim these emails and miss the explicit date. Processors aren't required to give you additional reminders—the initial notification is considered sufficient.
If you win the initial dispute and the customer escalates to pre-arbitration, you'll face another response window—typically 30-45 days. This phase is less common because many customers drop disputes after losing the first round, but the timeline works the same way: miss the deadline, lose automatically.
Tour operations create specific vulnerabilities that other businesses don't face:
Seasonal staff turnover: Your office manager who handled chargebacks in June isn't working in October when a late-season dispute arrives. The seasonal replacement doesn't know the process or where documentation is stored.
Field-based operations: You're running back-to-back tours during peak season—the exact time when most chargebacks arrive (disputes typically occur 30-60 days after the transaction). By the time you're back in the office with mental bandwidth to handle admin work, days have passed.
Multi-location confusion: A chargeback notification arrives at your main office email, but the transaction happened at your satellite location two hours away. The documentation is in a different filing system, the guide who ran the trip is off for three days, and nobody has login credentials for that location's booking system.
Email overload: During peak season, you're receiving hundreds of booking confirmations, inquiry responses, and vendor invoices daily. A chargeback notification with a generic subject line gets buried in the flood.
You can't eliminate tight deadlines, but you can build processes that catch them reliably—even during your busiest weeks.
Set up email filters or payment dashboard alerts that flag chargeback notifications differently from regular emails. Many processors allow you to configure SMS alerts for chargebacks specifically.
Designate two people to receive these alerts—never just one. If your office manager is out sick or in the field, the backup person (even if it's you) gets the notification immediately. Three-day delays become same-day awareness.
Don't start from scratch each time a dispute arrives. Create templates for common chargeback scenarios:
When a chargeback arrives, you're filling in blanks rather than creating a response from nothing. This cuts response time from days to hours.
Every waiver, every booking confirmation, every guest communication should be accessible from any location within minutes. This doesn't necessarily mean expensive software—it means consistent systems.
If you use paper waivers, photograph them immediately after trips and upload to a shared folder organized by date and customer name. If you use digital waivers, ensure they're backed up outside your booking system (many software platforms export data slowly or require support tickets for historical records).
When a chargeback arrives for a booking from three months ago at your secondary location, you should be able to pull complete documentation in under ten minutes without calling anyone.
The day you receive a chargeback notification, immediately calendar the response deadline minus five days. If you have a 30-day deadline, set your internal deadline at day 25. This buffer accounts for documentation delays, processor submission requirements, and unexpected complications.
If gathering evidence takes longer than expected, you still have breathing room. If you assemble everything quickly, you've lost nothing by submitting early.
You checked your email three days late. The deadline was yesterday. Is there any recourse?
Sometimes, yes—but it requires immediate action:
Contact your processor within 24 hours: Some processors have internal review processes that allow late submissions if the delay was minimal (1-2 days) and your evidence is exceptionally strong. They're not obligated to help, but processors that specialize in adventure businesses often have more flexibility than generic providers.
Document why the delay occurred: If you were dealing with an emergency (natural disaster affecting operations, medical emergency, system outage), some card networks allow deadline extensions. These are rare and require compelling documentation, but they exist.
Submit anyway: Even if you're past the formal deadline, submit your evidence package with an explanation. Some card networks have secondary review processes where strong evidence submitted late can still influence outcomes, especially if the customer has a pattern of fraudulent disputes.
None of these guarantees success, but they're better than accepting automatic loss without trying.
Losing a chargeback isn't just losing the transaction amount. You're also absorbing:
A $500 rafting trip that you lose on a technicality costs $500 in reversed payment, $50 in chargeback fees, $150 in operational costs, and two hours of staff time compiling documentation that never got reviewed. That's over $700 in losses for a trip you actually delivered.
Missing deadlines systematically—even just one per month—compounds quickly. Six missed chargebacks annually at an average $700 cost is $4,200 in preventable losses. For seasonal businesses operating on thin margins, that's real money.
The best chargeback response is preventing disputes before they happen, but when they do arrive, timing determines everything. Your documentation might be perfect, your case might be airtight, but none of it matters if you're on day -day deadline.
Build systems that assume you'll be in the field, short-staffed, and overwhelmed when notifications arrive—because you will be. Automate what you can, template what you can't automate, and create redundancy for everything critical. The goal isn't handling chargebacks faster during slow seasons; it's maintaining response capability during the chaos of peak operations.
Review your current notification process this week. Who receives chargeback alerts? How quickly do they typically respond? Where is documentation stored, and how long does retrieval actually take? If the answers reveal vulnerabilities, you're not alone—but you also can't afford to wait until the next missed deadline to fix them.
You typically have 20-30 days from when the notification was sent (not when you read it) to submit your complete evidence package. The exact timeline varies by card network: Visa gives 30 days, Mastercard usually 45 days, while American Express and Discover typically allow only 20 days.
You automatically lose the dispute regardless of how strong your evidence is. Missing the deadline forfeits your case entirely, meaning you lose the transaction amount, pay chargeback fees ($25-$100), and absorb all operational costs—potentially $700+ in total losses per incident.
Tour operators face unique challenges including being in the field during peak season when most disputes arrive, seasonal staff turnover affecting institutional knowledge, and email overload burying critical notifications. Multi-location operations also create documentation retrieval delays that consume precious response time.
Contact your processor within 24 hours—some allow late submissions for minimal delays (1-2 days) with strong evidence. If you had a legitimate emergency (natural disaster, system outage), document it as some card networks allow extensions, though these are rare.
Set up immediate notification alerts with at least two designated people receiving SMS or priority email alerts for chargebacks specifically. Then calendar the response deadline minus 5 days as your internal deadline to create a buffer for unexpected delays in gathering documentation.