For bands · from a fan

Protecting the band, and the person who bought the shirt.

Selling directly means nobody else absorbs a problem for you. Almost every problem is ordinary, and the things that prevent them are unglamorous and cheap. Here is what actually happens and what to do about it.

The thing that will happen: a chargeback

A buyer tells their bank they didn’t get it, or didn’t recognise the charge. The bank takes the money back from you immediately and asks questions later. You get a week or two to answer, and a fee whether you win or lose.

The uncomfortable number: a merchant answering alone wins about 20% of these. With the right evidence attached it goes to 40 to 70%. The difference is not skill or argument. It’s whether the records existed before the dispute arrived.

Tracking: The single strongest thing you can have. “It never arrived” is very hard to answer without proof of delivery, and nearly unarguable with it. Put a tracking number on everything, even a $12 tape. Pirate Ship is free and prints labels at commercial rates.
A name they’ll recognise: Set your statement descriptor in Stripe to your band’s name. A charge from a name a fan doesn’t recognise is a dispute waiting to happen, and it’s the most common cause of the “I didn’t make this purchase” claim.
Terms they saw: Shipping times and your refund policy, shown at checkout, not buried. A bank asks whether the buyer was told. If your store shows it and records that it did, you can prove it.
Repeat buyers: Visa’s Compelling Evidence rule lets two earlier undisputed orders from the same person overturn a fraud claim outright, if they share details like the address or the network. Your store has to have recorded those details at the time. Most don’t.
A way to reach you: The best dispute is the one that never happens. Most chargebacks aren’t fraud, they’re a person who forgot, or moved, or couldn’t find you. An order-lookup page and a reply-to address prevent more of them than any fraud tool.

The store on this site does all of that by itself: it records the evidence when the order is placed, gives buyers their own order page with tracking, and when a dispute arrives it lays out every field the bank’s form asks for, already filled in.

Turn on the free fraud screening

Stripe screens every payment with Radar at no extra cost, and blocks the riskiest. Two things worth doing in the dashboard:

Under Radar → Rules, add Request 3D Secure if :risk_level: != 'normal'. When a buyer authenticates that way, liability for a fraudulent chargeback moves from you to their bank. Don’t apply it to everything: the extra step costs you some real sales.
Under Settings → Payments, set the statement descriptor to your band’s name.
Under Settings → Emails, turn on receipts for successful payments. A receipt is a record and a reminder.

When it’s the buyer who’s at risk

A person sending money to a band they found on the internet is taking a small leap. Earn it:

Never hold card details: You shouldn’t have them and you don’t need them. Card numbers go from the fan to Stripe and never touch your store, so there is nothing to leak.
Say when it ships: Before they pay, not after. A pre-order with a real date is a promise; one without a date is a complaint forming.
Refund fast when you’re wrong: A refund costs you the card fee. A lost dispute costs the money, a fee, and counts against you with the card networks. If someone is unhappy and might be right, refund it and move on.
Answer: Within a couple of days, from a real address. Most people go to their bank because nobody replied.
Keep their data thin: An address to post to and an email to write to. Nothing else, no tracking scripts, no data sold on. What you don’t hold can’t be taken from you.

If someone is actually malicious

Rare, but it happens, and it cuts both ways.

Against the band: a stolen card used on your store, or a buyer who receives the parcel and disputes anyway. Radar catches most of the first. For the second, tracking plus a delivery confirmation is your answer, and the evidence pack is why you can produce it in ten minutes rather than losing by default.

Against the buyer: someone impersonating your band and taking money for merch that never existed. Link your store from your own site and socials so fans can verify it’s yours, and claim your page here so a fan checking has something to check against. If you find a fake store, report it to the host and tell your fans plainly.

One rule worth keeping. If you can’t tell whether someone is confused or lying, act as if they’re confused. It costs you a shirt occasionally. The other way costs you the person, and everyone they tell.

The store Start one

Written by a fan, not a lawyer or a payments company.Dispute figures and card-network rules read 26 Sep 2026 from Stripe’s documentation and published industry data; the rules change, so check before you rely on one.