Chargebacks are never voluntary between both parties. The merchant gets a huge chargeback fee and then are at risk of losing their merchant account for it.
Yes, but a good merchant doesn't let it get to the chargeback stage - they communicate with their customers and solve their problems. Any good business has already calculated the cost of problems happening and is ready to deal with it.
I had a buyer in Brazil who reported an "item not received" (I know this is Paypal/Ebay not CC payment but this is an example), they reported it 2 days after the item shipped without contacting me beforehand. There is no possible way it could have arrived in that amount of time, but still Paypal froze the funds in my account. Now I had tracking so Paypal said as soon as the item shows in tracking as arrived they would release the funds...one problem Brazil never shows item as arrived...ever. I tried communicating with the customer and he was unwilling and said if the item arrived he would remove his dispute. Luckily for me he actually did...but then he bought another of the same item from my store...I talked with ebay/paypal about my options and ended up contacting the customer and explaining that due to our previous transaction and the inability to protect myself (even with a customs tracking form and tracking) I had to refuse to sell the item to him.
That problem would never have existed if I had been using Bitcoin.
People are scammers, in a perfect world you could communicate and solve disputes but this is not a perfect world. There are people who do these thing specifically to cause problems.
Also, exactly how much of a loss is "any good business" supposed to be able to cover. If your business sells high value items you could very easily lose a large portion of your total revenue in one chargeback...and if you are a small business trying to gain a foothold it could destroy your entire business over one scammer.
In internet sales there has to be a mutual trust...chargebacks have their place but it has become increasingly more common for scammers to use them as a tool. I would love to believe the customer is always right but after having dealt with people telling me items that are new in package "were used" and items in the hands of USPS "never arrived" I have become fearful of the risk.
I preferred ebay when it was "buyer beware"...now its "seller beware".
I have a new method of dealing with Craigslist scammers too...when they message you with the standard scam message tell them "fine as long as they pay in BTC".
