What Happens When Someone Files a Dispute on Substack

A reminder that creators get hit when the system fails.

Something happened this week that I want to talk about because it affects every small creator on here, not only me.

On December 1, someone bought a yearly subscription to my Substack. I got the usual notification, and their name appeared on my list. Everything looked normal.

Three days later, at about five in the morning, I woke up to an email from Stripe saying the same person filed a “fraudulent charge” claim with their bank.

I had nothing to do with that.
And it hit a nerve.

When someone subscribes on Substack, here’s the system.
The person enters their own payment info.
Substack processes it through Stripe.
Stripe pays the writer.
The writer never touches the charge. We only receive the payout.

So when someone goes to their bank and calls it “fraud,” it makes it look like I did something wrong. I didn’t.

Here’s the part most people don’t know.

If someone makes a mistake or changes their mind, Substack already gives them a clean way to cancel. You go into your Substack account, open your subscriptions, select the publication, and click “cancel.” Substack issues the refund. There are no penalties. No fees. No drama. It is simple.

This person didn’t do that.

Instead, they opened a fraud claim through their bank.
That forced a dispute through Stripe.
Stripe charges me a fee for that.
Stripe also puts a mark on my account for something I had zero control over.

I spent hours on the phone with Stripe trying to fix it. Only then did they tell me there is a way to respond immediately to a dispute before the fee hits. They activated that feature for me after the damage was done. It should have been there from day one.

I accepted the dispute right away because I never want to take money from someone who doesn’t want a subscription. I don’t know their situation. Maybe they clicked the wrong button. Maybe someone else used their card. Maybe they panicked. I have no idea. If they had canceled or messaged me, I would have refunded it myself without hesitation. I always do.

It is the way they handled it that created the problem.

A person can subscribe at 5:59 in the morning, wait three days, then go to their bank and claim fraud instead of canceling through Substack. That triggers penalties for the writer. If enough people did this, it would punish small creators constantly.

Stripe has now set up tools so I can respond faster, but again, they only gave me access after the fee hit. That is the part that frustrates me the most.

If the person who filed the dispute reads this, I want to be clear.
I’m not attacking you.
I don’t know what happened on your end.
But this was not fraud on mine. Someone entered the card info and submitted it. If the problem came from your side, check who has access to your card. These mistakes hit small creators hard.

I’m sharing this because most people don’t know how this works. Large platforms like Substack and Stripe have no problem penalizing small writers when something goes wrong, even if we didn’t do anything. Meanwhile, there is already a clean system built in for canceling and refunding without hurting anyone.

If you ever make a mistake with a subscription, cancel through Substack or message me directly. I will always refund it. I don’t want money from someone who didn’t want the subscription.

Honesty matters to me.
That’s all this is about.

Please share this so people understand how cancellations and disputes work, and so more creators know about the Stripe fail-safe they don’t mention until after a problem happens.