DEDUCTIONS
AND CHARGEBACKS.

A retail chargeback is a compliance penalty for breaking routing or labeling rules. A card chargeback is a consumer disputing a payment with their bank. They share nothing except the word, and conflating them wastes an hour in every conversation about money.

Almost all of it is process rather than product. Late delivery, short shipment, wrong carton labels, a missing or incorrect ASN, an unapproved substitution, an early delivery — each with a published fee in the retailer's vendor guide.

Disputing a deduction six months later means reconstructing what happened from memory against a retailer with a system. The PO, the ASN, the packing list and the signed delivery receipt, kept at the time, are the only things that win.

Deductions netted off an invoice disappear into "we got paid less". Recording each one against its order and its reason turns an invisible leak into a number you can take to the retailer — which is the only conversation that changes it.