REVENUE PROTECTION 3 September 2026 3 min read

How to stop an aggregator forcing a refund

You will not win on tone. You win by answering the first claim with a record, and the second one faster.

Every group that has reduced forced refunds meaningfully did the same unglamorous thing: they made answering a claim a routine task that takes minutes, rather than an investigation that takes days. Nothing else in this article matters more than that sentence.

Short on time

Start with the actual claim

Classify the reason the app gave before looking for evidence.

Match the order number

Connect the claim to the sale and preparation record for that order.

Check what is visible

A packing view may show the bag contents; it cannot prove what happened after handover.

Test retrieval

Evidence is less useful if the team cannot retrieve it in time to dispute the claim.

Start from the claim, not from the camera

The instinct is to add cameras. The better first move is to take last month’s claims and try to answer five of them with what you already have. That exercise tells you precisely where the process breaks, and it is almost never the camera.

In most branches the footage exists. What is missing is the link between an order number and a moment in time, and a way for somebody who is not standing in the branch to retrieve it.

The four things an answer needs

A COMPLETE REPLY

The orderNamed by the channel’s own order reference, not your internal ticket number.

The timeThe moment the order was packed, to the second, from the same clock every time.

The contentsThe items going into the bag, visible, in one continuous view.

The handoverThe sealed bag leaving your side of the counter.

If a reply contains those four things it settles most item-level claims without further correspondence. If it is missing any of them it becomes a discussion about process, and process discussions go to whoever has more documentation.

Make the packing station the control point

Almost all disputed delivery claims concern what went into the bag. That makes the packing station the only place worth instrumenting first. One clear overhead view of a defined packing area, with the POS order visible alongside it, answers more claims than cameras anywhere else in the branch combined.

Instrument the one metre where the dispute actually happens.

Then make retrieval boring

Evidence that takes an hour to find will be found for the first week and then quietly abandoned. The test is whether someone in head office, who has never visited that branch, can produce a complete reply from an order number in under two minutes. If they cannot, the process will not survive contact with a busy month.

A sequence that works

Pick the worst branch and channel pair

One branch, one channel, for two weeks. Resist doing this across the estate at once.

Answer every single claim

Including the ones you expect to lose. The volume of claims in week two is the signal you are looking for.

Record how long each reply took

This is the number that decides whether the approach scales past one branch.

Only then decide about hardware

By this point you know which camera angles you were missing, and why.

Groups that run this sequence usually find the claim volume at that branch falls before they have bought anything. That fall is the whole thesis, tested at low cost.

PUT YOUR OWN NUMBERS IN