Twitch is making changes to refunds in effort to combat ‘chargeback’ spree

Twitch announced they’re making changes to the subscription refunds process in an attempt to stop viewers from making illegitimate ‘chargeback’ refunds after 24 hours to troll streamers.

For a long time now, a small portion of Twitch viewers have been exploiting the existing subscriptions refund process by doing what is known as a ‘chargeback.’

Essentially, they would subscribe to a streamer only to get a reaction from them and perhaps leave a text-to-speech comment, only to then request a refund within 24 hours and receive it without consequence.

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book.

However, it hurts streamers as much as it hurts the platform. So, to stamp it out once and for all, Twitch has decided to change their subscription refunds process to make it harder for people to do it.

In Twitch’s revamped subscription refund policies page, which can be found here, they state that users can still cancel subscriptions within 24 hours.

However, they’ve added a new refund review process to look at how often a user has requested refunds throughout their account’s history. And if they’re found guilty of trying to exploit the system, they could hand them a temporary or permanent ban.

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“Submitting excessive refund requests or attempting to abuse our refund processes is against Twitch’s policies and could result in limited access to products or services and/or suspension or termination of your account,” they said.

Many believe it’s a step in the right direction. However, there’s still much anger directed at Twitch for not prioritizing taking action against the influx of hate raids and follow bots on the platform.

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The consensus is that while the ‘chargeback’ issue was worth addressing, it pales compared to the severity of all the hate raids – which should be paramount. At the very least, it might be the next thing on their list.