Fraudulent and abusive dispute claims eroding marketplace margins

For the marketplace, unnecessary refunds and forgiven chargebacks on B2B accounts can easily consume 10–20% of dispute-related payouts in the managed-seller segment; on $200M managed-seller GMV with a 1% dispute rate, avoidable losses can reach $2M–$4M annually when factoring in direct refunds, foregone commissions, reserve buffers, and elevated risk costs. • Given larger ticket sizes in B2B, even a small volume of abusive disputes (e.g., 0.2–0.5% of B2B GMV) can erode $200,000–$500,000 annually on a $100M B2B book through unwarranted refunds, lost inventory value, and fees, plus hidden cost from concessions (discounted re-shipments, credits) granted to avoid escalation. • Lost product/service value, marketplace commissions, and tax/processing fees on fraudulent claims (e.g., $20–$80 per abusive dispute) plus staff time for manual investigation (e.g., $10–$30 per case). At scale, hundreds to thousands of such cases per month can quietly erode margins by tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Category Manager manually pulls dispute and chargeback exports from the marketplace/payment gateway, cross-checks them against order, logistics, and seller chat history data in spreadsheets, and chases brand contacts and internal ops via email and chat threads to piece together evidence to contest abusive claims. • Manually reconstructing transaction, tax, and fee histories across multiple back-office systems and payment gateways, then compiling ad hoc evidence packs for each disputed case. • Seller Success Managers maintain private spreadsheets and notes to track dispute-prone buyers and SKUs, manually tag risky orders, and coordinate via email and messaging apps with fraud, finance, and account managers to decide when to pre-emptively refund, fight, or block buyers.