I run a small Shopify store in Vancouver selling handmade slime with my girlfriend. We work hard to create products that bring joy to our customers, but sales are low and the store doesn’t bring much profit. In fact, after paying ourselves each a salary of $1500, there’s not much left. But we keep going because many people still love our handmade products.

However, these malicious chargebacks are really draining our passion, especially when we received a chargeback from someone rumored to be a congressman. When we received the order, the platform flagged it as a potential risk for a fraudulent chargeback. We reached out to the customer to confirm the order, which they did, so we decided to ship the product. But the inevitable happened.

The thing is, people like this—those in positions of power—already have far higher than average incomes, incomes that come from the government and our tax dollars. And yet, they exploit the messy chargeback system to steal from our labor. Banks never side with the merchant. Even when we have full evidence that the product was ordered and delivered to the customer, we lose more than 90% of our chargeback disputes. For the bank, it’s profitable to punish merchants because they get an extra $15 chargeback fee. Why would they bother reading the evidence? It’s not their money.

This system was built by the powerful. The banks benefit, and so do the big people in power. Why would they change it? How could they change it? The small business owner’s interest? Who cares, we’re just ordinary people. The public’s interest? Who cares, there’s plenty of them.