Refund - Stripe side

[Milenkov]

Hi everyone!

Today We start using a Stripe Gateway.

After several tests, everything looks OK.

But when We try to refund from the Stripe website, nothing changes in WHMCS. Invoice still in PAID status, and no negative transaction recorded.

I cannot find any record for webhook or some other thing...

Even I don't know if there will be a status update on "dispute" or another event.

Is it normal?

[steven99]

Do you have webhook end points setup in Stripe to send that event to WHMCS?

[yggdrasil]

11 hours ago, Milenkov said:

Hi everyone!

Today We start using a Stripe Gateway.

After several tests, everything looks OK.

But when We try to refund from the Stripe website, nothing changes in WHMCS. Invoice still in PAID status, and no negative transaction recorded.

I cannot find any record for webhook or some other thing...

Even I don't know if there will be a status update on "dispute" or another event.

Is it normal?

The web hooks are described in the documentation:

Stripe - WHMCS Documentation

You are supposed to do the refunds from WHMCS, not from Stripe. WHMCS will mark the invoice as refunded and do the proper refund using the API on Stripe.

[Milenkov]

Have no webhooks.

What if some one ask for refund directly in Stripe, not in our billing?

 

[yggdrasil]

3 hours ago, Milenkov said:

Have no webhooks.

What if some one ask for refund directly in Stripe, not in our billing?

 

Why would Stripe do that? It's your customer, not theirs. This is why your contact information appears on the users statement and not Stripe's. They don't offer customer service to your customer as far as I'm aware. Its like if you buy something from Amazon and then instead of contacting them try to contact their bank for a refund. All Stripe would do is direct the person to your contact information. I would be shocked and disgusted if Stripe just refunds someone bypassing you first as they have no idea what is going between your customer and your business. They don't have a direct relationship with your users, it's your job to process refunds, not Stripe's.

[Milenkov]

 

1 hour ago, yggdrasil said:

Why would Stripe do that? It's your customer, not theirs. This is why your contact information appears on the users statement and not Stripe's. They don't offer customer service to your customer as far as I'm aware. Its like if you buy something from Amazon and then instead of contacting them try to contact their bank for a refund. All Stripe would do is direct the person to your contact information. I would be shocked and disgusted if Stripe just refunds someone bypassing you first as they have no idea what is going between your customer and your business. They don't have a direct relationship with your users, it's your job to process refunds, not Stripe's.

My experience is from PayPal.

There is a lot of cases. Double payment e.t.c.

That is the reason to post my question.

My colleagues makes screenshots and other proofs to PayPal and that is annoying. Stripe must works better I hope.

[yggdrasil]

5 minutes ago, Milenkov said:

 

My experience is from PayPal.

There is a lot of cases. Double payment e.t.c.

That is the reason to post my question.

My colleagues makes screenshots and other proofs to PayPal and that is annoying. Stripe must works better I hope.

PayPal is a different service, they are an escrow service between PayPal users that pay and PayPal users that receive money. With PayPal, the person that paid you has a PayPal account and as such is a PayPal customer directly as well. While they can open a dispute from their PayPal accounts, the first thing PayPal does is tell them to contact the merchant. Most companies will actually mark the order as fraud if someone does that because they are supposed to contact you first.

But this is not how Stripe works. Your customer never registers an account with Stripe, they might not even know you are using Stripe at all because all they do is enter their credit card details and in their billing statement they see your company name, not Stripe.

Unless you are advertising Stripe as the payment option, the person might not even be aware you are using Stripe. Stripe just process their credit card details for you. They are not a direct Stripe customer or user, and Stripe will never contact them or email them either (unless you set those emails in your Stripe account but they can also be branded).

Stripe does not even want to do this because people might think the charge in their bank is wrong if they see Stripe and don't know what that is instead of your brand name. People that buy from your site will know the charge by your name, not Stripe. Stripe is a merchant account, this is not similar to something like PayPal. Your customers should never ever contact Stripe directly. And Stripe should never contact your customers directly either, there is no business deal between them as with PayPal.

[Milenkov]

7 minutes ago, yggdrasil said:

PayPal is a different service, they are an escrow service between PayPal users that pay and PayPal users that receive money. With PayPal, the person that paid you has a PayPal account and as such is a PayPal customer directly as well. While they can open a dispute from their PayPal accounts, the first thing PayPal does is tell them to contact the merchant. Most companies will actually mark the order as fraud if someone does that because they are supposed to contact you first.

But this is not how Stripe works. Your customer never registers an account with Stripe, they might not even know you are using Stripe at all because all they do is enter their credit card details and in their billing statement they see your company name, not Stripe.

Unless you are advertising Stripe as the payment option, the person might not even be aware you are using Stripe. Stripe just process their credit card details for you. They are not a direct Stripe customer or user, and Stripe will never contact them or email them either (unless you set those emails in your Stripe account but they can also be branded).

Stripe does not even want to do this because people might think the charge in their bank is wrong if they see Stripe and don't know what that is instead of your brand name. People that buy from your site will know the charge by your name, not Stripe. Stripe is a merchant account, this is not similar to something like PayPal. Your customers should never ever contact Stripe directly. And Stripe should never contact your customers directly either, there is no business deal between them as with PayPal.

Thank you so much, your explanation is VERY useful. I appreciate it very high.

[yggdrasil]

36 minutes ago, Milenkov said:

Thank you so much, your explanation is VERY useful. I appreciate it very high.

Sure, no problem. Just issue refunds from the WHMCS side, that also applies to PayPal. WHMCS will then also refund the amount on those services automatically.

[Milenkov]

But... 
If the client create a dispute in his bank?

[yggdrasil]

5 hours ago, Milenkov said:

But... 
If the client create a dispute in his bank?

That is not a refund. The card was either stolen or the customer is claiming you charged him without authorization. Usually that is fraud and you cancel the account. WHMCS has no way to deal with disputes, neither with PayPal, Stripe or any vendor. A refund is a completely different thing, you are sending the money back to the card, hence WHMCS marks the payment as refunded and the transaction is reverted.

A legal dispute is taking money by force from your account and its actually money lost in accounting math. A normal person will contact you for a refund first, a dispute is done when they don't even recognize your company in their billing statement and deny ever having purchased something from your services, which means its fraud as the card as used without authorization or was stolen.

[steven99]

4 hours ago, yggdrasil said:

That is not a refund. The card was either stolen or the customer is claiming you charged him without authorization. Usually that is fraud and you cancel the account. WHMCS has no way to deal with disputes

WHMCS just didn't code that callback in for the webhook that Stripe can send for such an event.  If that was really needed, a custom callback file could be used and inputted at Stripe to use for just that webhook.