Chargebacks are something that no shop owner wants to deal with.
Your business relies on big-ticket sales, and chargebacks on those sales can squeeze your margins.
When a guest goes through their bank or credit card company to get a refund, whether it’s because they were unhappy with the repair or not, it can leave shop owners in a bind where they might have to eat the cost of the labor, parts, and profit.
There are some cases where business owners can make a case against the chargeback, but it can be a lengthy process and most banks and credit card companies will side with the cardholder who’s making the complaint.
Protecting your business from chargebacks doesn’t start when the payment is processed, nor does it end with being reimbursed for a single chargeback. The best way to protect your business from chargebacks is to establish clear, open communication with your guests and adhere to a consistent and secure payment process.
Always Get Your Guests’ Consent Before Doing Work
When your service advisors take guests through the repair order, they should listen carefully to what the client wants; service advisors can never be too careful.
If that means spending some extra time to review the repair order with the guest, it’s time well spent.
A little more time spent on the front-end can save you a lot more time on the back-end. Once the RO is thoroughly reviewed, you can get either written or verbal consent for the work and the cost. It’s worth keeping in mind that it’s easier to document written consent.
Shop Tip: Use the Courtesy Inspection to Guide the Approval Process.
Using a shop management system like Tekmetric where the guest can see the courtesy inspection and click through and select the work they want and the work they want to put on hold can set clearer guidelines for both the guest and the service advisor.
Establish a Transparent Relationship with Your Guests
Providing excellent customer service is good practice for any auto repair shop, but it also goes a long way toward preventing chargebacks.
Let your guests know that you’re committed and dedicated to fixing their problem, even if that means taking their vehicle back into the shop if the guest is not 100% satisfied.
If you make it clear to your guests that they can come back to you about any concerns, they are far less likely to go to their bank or credit card company first. And it’s better to do a little extra work to ease the mind of your guest than it is to give away an entire repair order for free or go through legal hassles.
Shop Tip: Set a Clear and Easy Return Policy.
If your shop doesn’t already have one, consider establishing a clear and easy return policy and make it visible to guests via signage or with messaging on repair orders.
Simple policies such as “If you’re not satisfied, call us, and we’ll make it right” can go a long way in terms of letting guests know they should go straight to you if there’s something wrong.
Use an Address Verification System (AVS)
Sometimes, chargebacks happen because a guest used someone else's card or because of a clerical error. Times like these are when safe-checks built into your payment process come in handy.
If you’re processing payments over the phone, be sure to use an address verification system. An AVS ensures that the cardholder on the other end is who they say they are. Address verifications are crucial to dispute claims with a bank or credit card company when you’re unable to acquire an in-person signature.
Tekmetric’s payment processing platform, Tekmerchant, supports AVS, and we recommend using it to secure all over-the-phone payments.
Keep a Record of All Transactions
In order to protect yourself from any unreasonable chargebacks, keep a record of all approved work, signatures, and work completed, with images if possible.
Shop Tip: Use a Software Management Tool that Automatically Tracks Transactions.
Tekmetric makes record keeping and retrieval easy because it stores all repair orders and completed jobs within the system and allows for easy search of completed work. Technicians and service advisors can even upload images of repair work to track all completed repairs.
Other Best Practices When Processing Payments
Along with AVS, there are several other useful practices that can help your shop avoid chargebacks due to minor payment processing errors:
If you call for authorization, record the authorization code, date, time, credit representative’s name, and transaction dollar amount authorized.
Always enter the exact agreed-upon amount. Do not round up or down. Leave no discrepancies whatsoever on price between you and your guests. If the price must change due to parts, labor, or additional work that was not found during the inspection process, always get documented consent from the guest before adding more work and changing the price.
If a transaction is entered incorrectly, make sure that it is completely voided prior to reprocessing. This will help to avoid duplicate transactions.
When submitting sales receipts to your bank, only submit one copy. Don’t send a copy to two different banks. Multiple copies of sales receipts can result in duplicate billing and chargebacks.
For card-not-present transactions, collect the CVV or CV2 card verification numbers (the three to four-digit security code on the back or front of your guest’s card).
Avoiding Chargebacks Takes a Holistic Approach
Mistakes happen, even at the best shops. Building a relationship with guests is key to avoiding chargebacks.
If your guests trust that you care and something does go sideways, they'll talk to you about it, and you will have an opportunity to work it out.
Auto repair shops also benefit from having solid shop management and payment processing system that make it easy to prevent chargebacks long before the sale.
Almost 1,000 shop owners, service advisors, and technicians gathered in Houston for Tektonic 2026, Tekmetric's first industry conference. Over two days at the Marriott Marquis, attendees packed breakout rooms, traded hard-earned lessons, and heard from operators, coaches, and industry leaders who have built and scaled shops of their own.
The Question That Started It All
Tekmetric CEO and Founder Sunil Patel opened Tektonic 2026 with a question he has been asking since he was writing service tickets and mopping floors at his former Houston shop, Motorwerks of Houston: "Why does it have to be so hard? Why does it have to feel like we're fighting a war on 12 fronts?"
That question, he told the room, is the reason Tekmetric exists.
Standing in front of shop owners, service advisors, and technicians who understand that question on a cellular level, Patel walked through how much harder running a repair shop has become. Vehicles are packed with software, sensors, and calibration systems that require entirely new toolsets. Customer expectations have been shaped by on-demand everything. Technician shortages continue to press on shops across the country. And OEM data restrictions are making it harder for independent shops to do the work they were built to do.
But Patel didn't stop at the challenge. He laid out four pillars he believes the industry needs to move forward: stop celebrating burnout as a badge of honor, build genuine trust with customers and teams, invest in an ecosystem of great partners and vendors, and embrace technology that serves shops rather than extracts from them.
He closed with a simple ask for everyone in the room: be curious, be open, be generous with what you know, and be present.
"I want you to take something away from here," he said. "Something that will get you to be 1% better than you were."
That set the tone for everything that followed.
Top Takeaways
Process Consistency Wins on the Hard Days
Busy days don't create problems. They expose them. The best shops build their standard operating process before the chaos starts.
Call the day before. A preappointment call to review service history and flag overdue maintenance turns intake from reactive to planned and primes customers to say yes before they walk in the door.
Speed is your biggest sales tool. Every hour between drop-off and delivering an estimate costs roughly 10% in approval rates. Get findings to customers fast.
Set the next promise, not the finish line. Never promise a completion time you can't guarantee. Promise the next specific update and deliver it on time, every time.
The in-store customer is the highest-priority repair order in the building. Every other car can wait. The person sitting in your lobby cannot.
Improve one thing at a time. Pick one process to fix, measure it, and build accountability before moving to the next. Trying to fix everything at once fixes nothing.
Speed Closes More Jobs Than Salesmanship
Closing rates drop sharply with every hour that passes between drop-off and the customer call. A customer who has been waiting since 8 a.m. has had time to read every one-star review and talk themselves out of approving the work.
Get inspection results to customers within 30 minutes of dispatch. That's the speed zone. Everything else in the shop is secondary until that call is made.
In-store customers get findings in 15 minutes or less. The customer is sitting right there. Use it.
Relative priority is your daily compass. At any moment, the most important thing is moving the car that's furthest behind in the process. Not the loudest customer. Not the most expensive ticket. The earliest step.
Two daily goals. Full stop. Every technician runs at least eight billable hours. The shop hits its gross profit target. Nail both and everything else follows.
You Don't Have a Technician Shortage. You Have a Culture Problem.
The technician pipeline isn't as broken as it seems. What's broken is how many shops make it hard to stay.
Rethink flat rate. Hybrid pay models that combine a solid base with performance incentives align your team's goals with the shop's goals and they're far more attractive to the next generation coming into the trade.
Answer two questions before you do anything else. Why would a technician work here? Why would a customer come back? If you hesitate on either, start there.
Recognition is the highest-ROI leadership move you have. Research cited at the conference found that team members become disengaged because they don't feel seen. Fix that before you invest in anything else.
AI won't replace hospitality. Technology can handle administrative weight, but the trust a service advisor builds with a customer at the counter is irreplaceable. Invest in that skill set.
P.J. Leslie, Tekmetric's head of mid-market and enterprise sales, moderates a panel during Tektonic 2026 in which multishop owners break down the real strategies behind expansion: buying shops, building shops, systemizing operations, integrating teams, protecting culture, and planning for eventual exit or partnership.
Growing to Multiple Locations Takes More Than Money
Every multishop operator on the stage agreed: you're never fully ready, and that's fine. What matters is being profitable, having the right people, and expecting the unexpected.
Profitable and cash-positive before you move. When you make a mistake at location two—and you will—you need a healthy location to cover it.
You're ready when your shop doesn't need you. Build your bench before you open the next door. The manager for location two should already be in your building today.
Start your exit plan on day one. Almost no one in the room at one of Tektonic’s breakout sessions had a clear exit strategy. Don't leave money on the table because you never thought through how the story ends—whether that means selling, transitioning, or building for long-term cash flow.
Leadership Is the Ceiling on Everything Else
Your shop will never outperform your leadership. What you tolerate becomes your standard. How you show up on Monday morning sets the emotional temperature for everyone around you.
Know your triggers before they know you. Name what sets you off. Once you can spot it, you can stop it before it damages a relationship.
Pause for three seconds. Before you respond to anything that's gotten under your skin, stop. Three seconds is the difference between a reaction and a response.
Hear less. Listen more. After someone finishes speaking, let the silence sit. People almost always have more to say and the second thing is usually the real thing.
Walk into hard conversations knowing how you want them to end. Start with the outcome in mind, not the grievance.
Tekmetric Chief Product Officer Jared Haleck breaks down Tekmetric's new products at Tektonic 2026. The new products include Tekmetric digital ads, Smart DVI, and Tekmetric phones.
Product Announcements at Tektonic 2026
The closing session belonged to the Tekmetric product team. Drawing on data from more than 15,000 shops on the platform, Tekmetric President and COO Lauren Langston and Chief Product Officer Jared Haleck built the roadmap around key areas where winning shops consistently outperform the rest: car count, average repair order (ARO), driver experience, and cycle time.
Here's a look at what’s coming:
Tekmetric Digital Ads: AI-powered advertising on Google Maps and Search, built for the moment a driver has a problem and is ready to act. It connects directly to Tekmetric so you can see the gross profit behind every dollar of ad spend, not just clicks.
Smart DVI: Technicians walk the vehicle, narrate what they see, and Smart DVI builds the customer-ready inspection report automatically—findings organized, images annotated, and jobs pre-suggested for the estimate. Less time typing. More time turning wrenches.
Tekmetric Phones: Customer details, open repair orders, and communication history surface the moment an inbound call rings. No more looking it up while someone's waiting. A future capability in development will transcribe calls in real time and auto-populate appointment notes.
See You in 2027
Tektonic 2026 was Tekmetric's first industry conference, and it delivered on the promise Sunil Patel made from the stage: a room full of shop owners, service advisors, and technicians who showed up to get better.
The through-line across every session was the same. The shops that win are the ones that build systems, invest in their people, and keep getting 1% better. Not all at once. One thing at a time.
HOUSTON – October 18, 2023 – Tekmetric, the leading automotive repair software company, has announced the appointment of Clare Corriveau as the company's new Vice President of Marketing. With an extensive background in the software industry, Corriveau brings a wealth of experience and strategic vision to the Tekmetric team.
“Clare's depth of experience and strategic acumen in the technology sector will be instrumental in driving our marketing efforts and advancing our position in the market,” said Sunil Patel, CEO of Tekmetric. “With her leadership, we look forward to reaching new milestones in our top-tier customer service and innovative solutions.”
Corriveau's professional journey spans 17 years across a variety of brands and products in B2B technology. Her proven track record in demand generation, marketing strategy, product positioning and brand development underscores her significant role in Tekmetric’s continued growth. In her new position, Clare will be instrumental in guiding Tekmetric’s marketing initiatives and brand development. Her responsibilities encompass enhancing brand visibility, devising and implementing marketing strategies and bolstering the company's foothold in the automotive repair software market.
Before joining Tekmetric, Corriveau was the Senior Director, Growth Marketing at cybersecurity startup Cobalt, where she led the demand generation team to drive revenue growth along every stage of the buyer and customer journeys. Prior to Cobalt, Corriveau served in several director- and manager-level roles with OneTouchPoint, Gotransverse, Blackbaud and more.
“I am thrilled to join Tekmetric, a pioneering force in automotive shop management solutions. Their commitment to revolutionizing the industry and empowering automotive professionals aligns perfectly with my own passion for innovation and customer-centricity,” said Corriveau. “I look forward to contributing to Tekmetric’s journey of empowering auto repair shop owners to increase efficiency in their operations and ultimately grow their business.”
About Tekmetric
Tekmetric, a Houston-based auto repair technology company, offers a cloud-based platform that enables auto repair shop owners to enhance productivity and increase profitability through its streamlined workflow management processes.
Designed by a former shop owner, Tekmetric’s platform drives shop efficiency through real-time data, a customizable user interface and customer-centric communication tools. Since its launch in 2016, Tekmetric has disrupted the industry with its robust fully-integrated system, developed with an emphasis on customer transparency and user collaboration. For more information, visit www.tekmetric.com.
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