Ban me at the IP level if you don't like me

We solved a lot of our problems by blocking all Chinese ASNs. Admittedly, not the friendliest solution, but there were so many issues originating from Chinese clients that it was easier to just ban the entire country.

It's not like we can capitalize on commerce in China anyway, so I think it's a fairly pragmatic approach.

Why stop there? Just block all non-US IPs!

If it works for my health insurance company, essentially all streaming services (including not even being able to cancel service from abroad), and many banks, it’ll work for you as well.

Surely bad actors wouldn’t use VPNs or botnets, and your customers never travel abroad?

And across the water, my wife has banned US IP addresses from her online shop once or twice. She runs a small business making products that don't travel well, and would cost a lot to ship to the US. It's a huge country with many people. Answering pointless queries, saying "No, I can't do that" in 50 different ways and eventually dealing with negative reviews from people you've never sold to and possibly even never talked to... Much easier to mass block. I call it network segmentation. She's also blocked all of Asia, Africa, Australia and half of Europe.

The blocks don't stay in place forever, just a few months.

As long as your customer base never travels and needs support, sure, I guess.

The only way of communicating with such companies are chargebacks through my bank (which always at least has a phone number reachable from abroad), so I’d make sure to account for these.

Chargebacks aren't the panacea you're used to outside the US, so that's a non-issue.

Only if your bank isn't competent in using them.

Visa/Mastercard chargeback rules largely apply worldwide (with some regional exceptions, but much less than many banks would make you believe).

No, outside the US, both Visa and Mastercard regularly side with the retailer/supplier. If you process a chargeback simply because a UK company blocks your IP, you will be denied.

One of requirements of Visa/Mastercard is for the customer to be able to contact merchant post-purchase.

Only via the original method of commerce. An online retailer who geoblocks users does not have to open the geoblock for users who move into the geoblocked regions.

I have first-hand experience, as I ran a company that geoblocked US users for legal reasons and successfully defended chargebacks by users who made transactions in the EU and disputed them from the US.

Chargebacks outside the US are a true arbitration process, not the rubberstamped refunds they are there.

> Chargebacks outside the US are a true arbitration process, not the rubberstamped refunds they are there.

What's true is that in the US, the cardholder can often just say "I've never heard of that merchant", since 3DS is not really a thing, and generally merchants are relatively unlikely to have compelling evidence to the contrary.

But for all non-fraud disputes, they follow the same process.

As commented elsewhere, you're just wrong. It's a significant burden of proof for a cardholder to win a dispute for non-compliance with card network rules and it very rarely happens (outside of actual merchant fraud, which is much rarer in the EU).

Again, you're not aware of the reality outside the US.

> It's a significant burden of proof for a cardholder to win a dispute for non-compliance with card network rules

That's true, but "fraud" and "compliance" aren't the only dispute categories, not by far.

In this case, using Mastercard as an example (as their dispute rules are public [1]), the dispute category would be "Refund not processed".

The corresponding section explicitly lists this as a valid reason: "The merchant has not responded to the return or the cancellation of goods or services."

> Again, you're not aware of the reality outside the US.

Repeating your incorrect assumption doesn't make it true.

[1] https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/n...

Okay, so you're grasping at straws here, because:

a) a Refund Not Processed chargeback is for non-compliance with card network rules,

and b), When the merchant informed the cardholder of its refund policy at the time of purchase, the cardholder must abide by that policy.

We won these every time, because we had a lawful and compliant refund policy and we stuck to it. These are a complete non-issue for vendors outside the US, unless they are genuinely fraudulent.

Honestly, I think you have no experience with card processors outside the US (or maybe at all) and you just can't admit you're wrong, but anyone with experience would tell you how wrong you are in a heartbeat. The idea you can "defeat" geoblocks with chargebacks is much more likely to result in you losing access to credit than a refund.