A chargeback is you asking your bank or card issuer to reverse a payment — going around the seller and the marketplace entirely.
It is a real right and it exists for a reason. It is also almost always the wrong first move on Metzee, and this page is about why.
What happens instead if you raise it here
The money is still held. Your payment does not go straight to the seller; it sits until the item reaches you. So there is something to give back without anybody's bank being involved.
A dispute is answered within 48 hours, and decided on the evidence.
A refund goes back to your original payment method — the same card, the same account.
So the thing a chargeback is for, getting your money back, is already available and faster. How refunds work
Why a chargeback is slower here, not faster
Weeks rather than days. Card networks work on their own timetable.
It does not pause anything. The order carries on while the bank thinks.
Your evidence has to be assembled by you. On Metzee the order, the messages and the tracking are already attached to the case.
What it costs the seller
This is the part worth knowing even if you do not care about the seller: a chargeback takes the money back out of a small store's balance, often weeks after they posted the item. They carry both the loss and the item.
For a store selling a few things a month that is not an inconvenience, it is a bad month. Where a return would have cost them postage, a chargeback costs them everything.
When it is genuinely the right tool
A payment you did not make at all. Card fraud is exactly what the mechanism is for — tell your bank immediately, and tell Metzee too.
A marketplace that will not answer you. If the process has failed, the bank is a real backstop. That is what it is there for.
Short of those, use the order. How to raise an issue
The order to do things in
- Message the store. Most things end here.
- Open a return or a dispute from the order, if it does not.
- Escalate, if the answer is wrong. If you are not happy with our answer
- Your bank, if all of that has failed.
Doing step 4 first does not skip the queue — it starts a slower one.
More: how refunds work, how buyer protection works, how to pay for a win.