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.

"Visiting the website" is the method. It's nonsense to say that visiting from a different location is a different method. I don't care if you won those disputes, you did a bad thing and screwed over your customers.

> Visiting the website" is the method. It's nonsense to say that visiting from a different location is a different method.

This is a naive view of the internet that does not stand the test of legislative reality. It's perfectly reasonable (and in our case was only path to compliance) to limit access to certain geographic locations.

> I don't care if you won those disputes, you did a bad thing and screwed over your customers.

In our case, our customers were trying to commit friendly fraud by requesting a chargeback because they didn't like a geoblock, which is also what the GP was suggesting.

Using chargebacks this way is nearly unique to the US and thankfully EU banks will deny such frivolous claims.

The ancestor post was about being unable to get support for a product, so I thought you were talking about the same situation. Refusal to support is a legitimate grievance.

Are you saying they tried a chargeback just because they were annoyed at being unable to reach your website? Something doesn't add up here, or am I giving those customers too much credit?

Were you selling them an ongoing website-based service? Then the fair thing would usually be a prorated refund when they change country. A chargeback is bad but keeping all their money while only doing half your job is also bad.

If you read back in the thread, we're talking about the claim that adding geoblocking will result in chargebacks, which outside the US, it won't.

> Are you saying they tried a chargeback just because they were annoyed at being unable to reach your website?

In our case it was friendly fraud when users tried to use a service which we could not provide in the US (and many other countries due to compliance reasons) and had signed up in the EU, possibly via VPN.

> If you read back in the thread, we're talking about the claim that adding geoblocking will result in chargebacks, which outside the US, it won't.

As a response to someone talking about customers traveling and needing support. But yeah geoblocks can occur in different situations with different appropriate resolutions.

> In our case it was friendly fraud when users tried to use a service which we could not provide in the US (and many other countries due to compliance reasons) and had signed up in the EU, possibly via VPN.

If you provided zero service at all, they should get their money back. And calling a chargeback in that situation "friendly fraud" is ridiculous.

If they weren't even asking for a refund and using a chargeback out of spite, that's bad, but that's a different problem from fraud.

For someone that did sign up via VPN, would they be able to access the cancellation page via VPN?

> If you provided zero service at all, they should get their money back. And calling a chargeback in that situation "friendly fraud" is ridiculous.

No, if a company upholds their side of a contract, the customer must too, within the bounds of the law.

A chargeback in that situation is the _definition_ of "friendly fraud" and is actual criminal fraud.

> If they weren't even asking for a refund and using a chargeback out of spite, that's bad, but that's a different problem from fraud.

That's also criminal fraud.

US consumer are often shocked that "customer is always right" customer service doesn't extend beyond their borders and that they can't chargeback their way out of contracts they've signed.

> For someone that did sign up via VPN, would they be able to access the cancellation page via VPN?

It doesn't matter. If our terms prohibited VPN use to avoid geoblocking (which they did), it's irrelevant whether your VPN can or cannot access the cancellation page on a given day. You can email or write to us. All perfectly legal, lawful, and backed by merchant account providers.