Why Chargebacks Hurt Your Favorite Substack Newsletter: How to End Your Paid Subscription
Today, instead of talking about retired hot girl ish, I want to have a conversation about chargebacks (when you contact your credit card company and tell them the newsletter you willing subscribed to somehow used your card to make a fraudulent charge because you couldn’t figure out how to cancel your subscription), and how this behavior negatively impacts us as a small business (because at the end of the day, this is a business). But before I go there, I want to take a moment and thank you for being a loyal subscriber to my newsletter. I’m probably talking in the wind since you are reading this and are still a part of my retired hot girl tribe. Your support is truly appreciated.
Deep Sigh…
I’ve had to deal with several paid subscribers calling their bank/credit card company and disputing their subscription charge to my Substack newsletter - Secrets of Six Figure Speakers. Some were yearly subscriptions, while others were only for a one month charge. And yes, the majority of these individuals had opened their emails and clicked the links to learn about speaking opportunities, so there was nothing fraudulent taking place on my end.
Well this morning I woke up to a charge back of $160 from a founding member of The Misadventures of a Retired Hot Girl (the newsletter you are currently reading). The reason for the chargeback: they told American Express they had requested a refund and I didn’t credit their account (clutches pearls). Well…I went into my Substack newsletter dashboard, in addition to checking my emails and noticed that the subscriber NEVER requested a refund. Instead, she went into her dashboard and disabled her emails from The Misadventures of a Retired Hot Girl and changed her subscription from paid to free (I would also like to add that she has opened every email since becoming a paid subscriber one year ago).
Disabling your emails from this newsletter and changing your subscription from paid to free AFTER your card has been charged is not how you request a refund. This change only impacts your subscription moving forward (just like it would impact your Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, accounts).
So I reached out to her and her response was, “The only reason I filed a dispute is because Substack said my subscription wouldn’t be canceled until 2026.” Again, not once did she reach out to me.
How Chargebacks Hurt Substack Writers
When a paid subscriber files a dispute with their financial institution, not only do we have to provide supporting evidence that you in fact willingly subscribed to our publication and we didn’t have access to your credit card, but the funds are removed from our bank account immediately until the dispute is settled, on top of a $15 fine that we have to assume regardless of the outcome of your dispute. Additionally, our Stripe accounts are sometimes flagged if we start to receive too many disputes.
Many people file disputes against the Substack newsletters in which they are paid subscribers because they don’t know how to cancel their subscription. And then there is a select group who have taken it upon themselves to sabotage specific newsletters to silence them because those charge back fees start to add up.
How To Cancel Your Paid Subscription
If, for whatever reason you are unhappy with your subscription to ANY Substack newsletter, here's how you can cancel your subscription vs disputing the subscription fee with your credit card company/bank.
Log into your Substack account via your computer or the app. Use the email address that you are receiving the publication.
Click on your profile picture
Select Settings
Your will see a list of all of the publications you are subscribed to
Click on the paid publication you want to cancel your subscription to.
Scroll to the Account actions section of the subscription and click on the link next to “To Cancel Your Paid Subscription, Click Here”.
Next, select “Cancel Subscription”
Now, if you decide to move forward with a dispute, please note that it still doesn’t cancel your subscription. Instead, once I receive the dispute claim, I will go into my Substack newsletter dashboard and remove you completely (you are not going to be a free subscriber either because why would I want you to be a part of my community after you intentionally tried to hurt me and my newsletter)..
Again, if you are no longer happy with any Substack publication or you can no longer afford your paid subscription, please use the steps listed above NOW and cancel your subscription so your card will not receive any future charges and you don’t intentionally hurt a small business.
Warm Regards,
Dr. Carey Yazeed
I wrote about this topic yesterday but what I realized is that there is a group out there deliberately filing fraud charges to hurt writers. I’ve come across this group lately - they make up fake profiles.
There are of course the people that don’t know how to unsubscribe and do this too, but there is also a new gang in town aiming to silence some of us.
After communicating with an understanding Substack representative, neither of us could understand how my credit card information, used to subscribe to one Substack's feed, was accessed by another Substack publisher. Albeit an improper charge was promptly refunded, that my credit card account was even reached without my consent continues to be disturbing. Bottom line for now: When using Substack, use a credit card issuer that provides customer with so-called "virtual" credit card numbers, use that number for only one-time charges on Substack, and, after the charge has properlly posted, deactivate the "virtual" credit card number.