Proof of delivery for Shopify chargebacks: what UK stores need to save

A £84 order went out on a Tuesday. The carrier scanned it as delivered on Thursday. Five weeks later your balance drops by £94 and a notice says the customer's bank has opened a "product not received" dispute, with a due date usually 7 to 21 days away. What you saved on that Thursday decides the next five minutes and the next five weeks. It is your proof of delivery.

Proof of delivery is the record that shows the right parcel reached the right address on a known date, and for a Shopify chargeback it is the strongest evidence you can send. A bare "delivered" status helps, but a saved scan history, an address match, a signature or photo where you have one, and a clear cover note help far more.

This guide is for you if:

• You ship physical orders from a UK Shopify store and have had, or fear, an "item not received" dispute.
• Your tracking says delivered but you are not sure that counts as proof of delivery in front of a card issuer.
• You want a routine that captures proof of delivery on every order without adding an hour to your day.

Last updated: 19 October 2026. Written by the ChargeFix team. Reviewed against sources on 19 October 2026.

The 30-second answer (TL;DR)

• Proof of delivery means records that tie one parcel to one order, one address and one delivery date. A tracking number alone does not.
• On Shopify Payments you usually have 7 to 21 days to respond, the card company can take up to 75 days after you submit, and the UK fee is £10, returned if you win.
• A created label is not proof of delivery. A delivered scan helps, but it may not show who received it or what was inside.
• Save the proof when the parcel lands, as screenshots, not links. Links go stale.
• If you have no proof of delivery, the problem is the shipping decision, not the dispute. Fix it for the next order.

Do this today (10 minutes):

1. Open your last five fulfilled orders and check each one has a tracking number that shows a delivered scan.
2. Take a screenshot of each delivered scan and save it in a folder named by order number.
3. Note which orders have no usable delivery proof. Those are your exposure.

Five orders checked now is cheaper than one dispute lost later.

From dispute to decision

Stage	What happens	Your move
Order	The customer pays and you promise a delivery date	Keep the promised date, do not overwrite it
Dispatch	You create a label and hand over the parcel	Save the label receipt and handover proof
Delivery	The carrier scans the parcel as delivered	Capture proof of delivery the same day
Dispute	The customer's bank says the item was not received	Read the due date and the reason
Response	You send the file by the due date	Lead with proof of delivery, then the context

What counts as proof of delivery for a Shopify chargeback?

Proof of delivery is any record that shows the parcel arrived, and the useful ones link that arrival to the disputed order. The best proof of delivery names the address, the date and the parcel. The weakest says only "delivered" with nothing attached.

When the reason is "product not received", Shopify's help centre lists the evidence it wants: the fulfilment details, billing information, tracking information and, for digital goods, the activity log. Shopify also uploads a PDF of the fulfilment events for you. That gets you started, but it is the floor, not the ceiling.

Think of proof of delivery as a chain with four links:

1. The order: what was bought, by whom, and the delivery date you promised.
2. The dispatch: the date you handed the parcel to the carrier and the tracking number you got.
3. The journey: the scan history from collection to the doorstep.
4. The arrival: the carrier's delivered scan, plus anything that shows where and to whom.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. A strong delivered scan with no link back to the order is weak. A well-kept order record with a tracking number that stops at "in transit" is weak too. Your job is to make the chain unbroken and easy for a stranger to read in a minute.

Two honest limits. First, a delivered status may not identify the recipient or prove the contents, so do not oversell it. Second, I could not verify what each UK carrier gives you as formal proof of delivery, how long they keep it, or how the card networks weigh one format against another. Check your own carrier account for what you can download, and keep it for as long as disputes can arrive.

How does proof of delivery fit into the Shopify chargeback process?

It is your main exhibit in a "product not received" dispute. The process is simple: the bank opens the dispute, Shopify takes the amount and the fee, you respond with evidence, and the card issuer decides. Your delivery proof is what you send in the middle.

Shopify's help centre says the response window is usually 7 to 21 days and that the card company's review can take up to 75 days after you submit. When a chargeback opens, the disputed amount and the fee are withdrawn straight away. If you win, both come back. If you lose, both stay gone. In the UK the Shopify Payments fee is £10.

Three more rules matter for proof of delivery:

• Shopify Payments submits a response on the due date even if you have added nothing. If your proof of delivery is not in by then, whatever is on file goes.
• Winning does not remove the dispute from your chargeback rate. The rate counts disputes filed, not outcomes.
• Shopify expects customers to contact the merchant first. If yours did not, say so and include the evidence, because it shows the customer skipped the simple fix.

Stripe, which publishes how disputes work, says card disputes typically arrive within 120 days, that you respond in roughly 7 to 21 days, and that issuers take around 60 to 75 days. If you use Stripe directly rather than Shopify Payments, its UK fees are £20 when a dispute is received and another £20 when you counter. Use the Shopify figure if you are on Shopify Payments.

So your proof of delivery has to be ready fast, and it has to survive a reader who has never heard of your shop.

What should a proof of delivery show, element by element?

A good proof of delivery answers five questions: which parcel, which address, which date, which person and which contents. Not every parcel can answer all five, so know which ones yours can answer and say so plainly.

Element	What it proves	Its limit
Tracking number linked to the order	This parcel belongs to this order	Says nothing about arrival
Delivered scan with date and time	The carrier says it was delivered	May not show who or what
Delivery address on the scan	It went to the address on the order	Carrier pages sometimes show only a postcode area
Signed receipt	A person accepted it	The name may be unreadable or not the buyer
Photo at the door	The parcel was left at a place	Cannot show who picked it up
Delivery estimate you showed at checkout	You set an honest expectation	Not proof it arrived
Customer messages	The customer acknowledged receipt or a delay	Only helps if they actually said it

Read the right-hand column twice. Every element has a limit, and a reviewer sees those limits instantly. The fix is not to hide them. State what each record shows and what it does not, then let the combination do the work. A delivered scan plus an address match plus a customer reply saying "thanks, it's lovely" is far stronger proof of delivery than any one of them.

One more point from a trade source I read for this batch: payment authentication is not a substitute for fulfilment evidence. A customer who passed 3D Secure can still say the parcel never came, and the liability shift for fraud disputes does not cover "not received" claims. So do not lean on the checkout security to carry a delivery dispute. Your proof of delivery has to do it.

How strong is each type of proof of delivery?

Shopify ranks evidence in four tiers: direct evidence such as signed delivery and refund records, customer acknowledgment, policy documents, and context such as order records and verification results. It also says to label each piece. Use that order for your proof of delivery.

Strength	Type	Example
Strongest	Signed or photographed delivery tied to the order	Signed receipt or door photo with the address
Strong	Customer acknowledgment	Email or chat saying it arrived, or asking about use
Good	Full scan history to a delivered scan at the right address	Collected, in transit, out for delivery, delivered
Context	Order record, billing match, delivery policy	Your terms and the checkout page
Weak	Label created, or tracking stuck mid-journey	"Pre-transit" or "in transit" only

A few readings of this table. A tracking history with only a "label created" line and a "delivered" line, nothing in between, looks thin. One trade guide I read calls intermediate scans the difference between real tracking and near-none, and I agree with the logic: the more points on the journey, the harder it is to argue the parcel vanished.

Where you can, pair a delivery record with the customer's own words. A message saying "arrived, thanks" or "can I exchange the size?" is an acknowledgment, and it is very useful. If your support inbox has anything like it for this order, pull it out and label it.

Policy documents sit lower, but they still matter. Your delivery policy shows what you promised and the customer agreed to. It cannot replace proof of delivery, but it frames it.

What does a reviewer see in the first minute, with and without a good file?

Take one parcel and two ways of presenting it. The order is £84, delivered on a Thursday to a safe place, and the customer says it never came. This is a made-up case, but the contrast is real: both files describe the same delivered parcel, and only one of them proves it.

What the reviewer asks	File A: a link and one line	File B: labelled proof of delivery
Was it dispatched?	"Shipped, see tracking"	Dispatch date and tracking number from the order record (Exhibit 2)
Did it reach the address?	A link to a carrier page that now shows an error	Screenshot of the full history with the delivered scan, taken on the day (Exhibit 3)
Is it the right address?	Not stated	Address line on the scan shown beside the shipping address on the order
Was the promise kept?	Not stated	Date promised at checkout and date delivered, one day inside the window
Did the customer say anything?	Not stated	The reply to the dispatch email, saved and labelled (Exhibit 4)
What are the limits?	Silent	"Left in a safe place, no signature. The customer chose that option at checkout."

File A makes the reviewer do the work, and a tired reviewer does not. File B answers every question before it is asked, admits the one thing it cannot show and lets the dates carry the argument. Nobody publishes a win rate I could verify for B over A, so I will not invent one. What I can say is that Shopify's own guidance points the same way: label each piece and send screenshots, not links.

What does tracking prove, and what does it not?

A tracking history proves the carrier recorded events against a number. It does not, by itself, prove the right person received the right parcel. That is why the most careful reading of tracking is also the most useful: say exactly what it shows.

Here is a plain-English guide to common tracking states, as they might appear in your proof of delivery file:

• Label created: you printed a label. Nothing has moved. This is not proof of delivery and not even proof of dispatch.
• Collected / accepted: the carrier has the parcel. This proves dispatch.
• In transit: the parcel is moving. Useful for the journey, silent on arrival.
• Out for delivery: it is on the van. Close, but not there.
• Delivered: the carrier says it arrived. This is the core of your proof of delivery.
• Delivered to a neighbour or safe place: the carrier left it somewhere other than the customer's hands. Valid, but explain it.
• Failed attempt / returned to sender: the opposite of proof of delivery. If this is on file, do not fight; refund and learn.

Notice the middle band. "Delivered to a safe place" is where most disputes live, because the customer genuinely may not have found it. A reviewer sees "delivered" next to a customer saying they never got it, and has to decide whom to believe. Your edge is the detail: the date, the time, the address line, and any photo.

A created label is a common trap. It is easy to mistake a label receipt for dispatch. Before you submit, read your own proof of delivery as if you were the bank. Does the timeline show a handover, movement and arrival? If any step is missing, name it in your cover note instead of hoping nobody notices.

When is a signed receipt worth having as proof of delivery?

A signature is the strongest single piece of proof of delivery, but it costs money and adds friction, so use it where the order value justifies it. For low-value parcels, a good scan history plus an address match is usually the sensible balance.

Here is a made-up example to show the thinking. Suppose you sell £120 orders and a signed service adds £2 per parcel. Out of 200 orders a month that is £400 extra. If unsigned parcels lead to two lost disputes a month at £120 plus the £10 fee, you lose £260. Signing would cost more than it saves unless it flips most of those losses. Now change the order value to £600 and the maths flips. Your own numbers will be different. Run them.

Order value	Signed receipt extra	Sensible approach
Under £40	Often not worth it	Tracked, delivered scan, save it
£40 to £150	Judgement call	Tracked, consider signed delivery for repeat problem areas
Over £150	Usually worth it	Signed delivery, save the signed receipt image

Two cautions. A signature is not magic: it can be a scrawl, a neighbour's, or missing from the carrier's export. And a "no-signature" delivery option you offer at checkout is a choice you made. If you offer a safe-place option, say in your terms that you do, and keep the customer's selection in your order record, so your proof of delivery explains why there is no signed receipt.

I could not verify exact signature or photo options for each UK carrier, so check what your account actually provides before promising it to customers.

How do you capture proof of delivery on every order?

Capture it the day the carrier marks the parcel delivered. Carrier pages change, expire and sometimes lose old tracking, and a link that works today may not work in six weeks. A screenshot is permanent, a link is not.

Shopify's own guidance on evidence says to submit screenshots of tracking and communications rather than links to external sites. Follow that. Here is a routine that takes about two minutes per order if you do it in a batch.

PROOF OF DELIVERY CHECKLIST (per order)

[ ] Order number and customer name noted
[ ] Promised delivery date saved (from checkout or confirmation email)
[ ] Tracking number saved against the order
[ ] Screenshot of full tracking history showing the delivered status
[ ] Signed receipt or photo downloaded, if the service gave one
[ ] Delivery address on the scan matches the shipping address
[ ] Any customer message about arrival saved
[ ] Files named: order-number_proof-of-delivery_date

Do it for orders above whatever value you pick as your line, and do it for every order in a category that gets disputes, such as high-value items or first-time customers from a new country. If you ship low-value goods in bulk, a daily batch of five minutes keeps it manageable.

Name the files in a consistent way, because a folder of "Screenshot 2026-10-12 at 14.05.png" is a mess you will not read under pressure. A naming rule like the one in the checklist lets you find an order's proof of delivery in ten seconds when the notice arrives.

Fulfilment apps and tracking tools can save some of this automatically. If you use one, check what it really stores, and do not assume it keeps the full history. I could not verify the retention of any particular tool.

How good is your proof of delivery? A ten-point self-check

Run this on your last five fulfilled orders. One point for each yes.

#	Check	Point
1	The order record shows the delivery date you promised	1
2	The tracking number is saved against the order	1
3	The handover to the carrier is recorded with a date	1
4	The history shows more than a label and a delivered status	1
5	A screenshot of the delivered status was saved on the day	1
6	The address on the scan matches the shipping address	1
7	A signed receipt or photo is saved, where the service gives one	1
8	Any customer message about arrival is saved	1
9	Files are named by order number and can be found in ten seconds	1
10	The limits of the proof (no signature, safe place) are written down	1

Nine or ten: strong. Six to eight: patchy, and the gaps will cost you on a close call. Five or fewer: exposed, so fix the routine before the next dispute rather than after. Most stores find that points 5, 8 and 10 are the ones they miss, and all three take minutes to fix.

What if the order used split shipments?

Treat each parcel as its own proof of delivery. One delivered parcel does not prove the whole order arrived. With split shipments, a reviewer reading "delivered" on parcel one while the customer says an item is missing will take the customer's side unless you show parcel two as well.

For split shipments, build a small table in your cover note:

Item	Parcel / tracking	Dispatched	Delivered	Proof saved
Jacket	Parcel 1	Mon 12 Oct	Wed 14 Oct	Delivered, screenshot
Belt	Parcel 2	Tue 13 Oct	Fri 16 Oct	Delivered status, screenshot

This also helps when the customer's complaint is really about the second parcel being late. If your promised date covered both, and the first arrived on time while the second was a day behind, the table shows that the order was fulfilled and the delay was small. Keep the original promised date in your file and do not replace it with a later estimate, because the timeline is judged against what you originally told the customer.

Split shipments and partial deliveries are the most common cause of honest confusion. A customer sees one box and assumes the order is done. A short email at dispatch ("your order ships in two parcels, here are both tracking numbers") prevents the confusion and doubles as an acknowledgment that they were told.

What counts as proof of delivery for digital goods?

For digital goods there is no parcel, so your proof of delivery is the activity log: when access was granted, whether the customer opened or downloaded it, and from where. Shopify lists the activity log among the evidence for "product not received" on digital items.

Keep three things: the delivery email or access link as sent, a log showing the download or login with date and time, and the customer's account details matching the buyer. Granting access does not by itself prove it worked, so a log of actual use is what makes the case. If the product is a licence key or a download, record the first use.

If you sell a mix of physical and digital goods, keep the two kinds of proof separate. A parcel scan cannot prove a download, and an activity log cannot prove a parcel. State this in your note so the reviewer does not wonder.

What if you have no proof of delivery at all?

Then the dispute is mostly lost and the real lesson is upstream. If there is no usable delivery proof, the problem was the shipping decision: an untracked service, a missing scan, or an address you never checked. Fixing that is worth more than polishing a weak response.

Be realistic before you fight. Without proof of delivery you are asking a bank to take your word over the customer's, and a bank will not. Consider these options:

• Accept and learn. If the parcel is genuinely missing, the customer is right to be refunded, and a fight wastes a fee and time.
• Look harder. Check the carrier's support pages and your email for anything: a delivery notification, a photo, an enquiry log. Sometimes proof of delivery exists but sits in a place you did not look.
• Contact the customer kindly, if the dispute is still an inquiry. An inquiry takes no money, and a polite message sometimes ends it.
• Change the process. Move higher-value orders to tracked, signed or both.

Here is a made-up sum. An order is £60 and the fee is £10. If you fight with no proof of delivery and lose, you are out £70 plus the time. If you refund, you are out £60. Fighting only makes sense if your chance of winning is high enough, and with no proof of delivery it usually is not. For a £60 order with about £10 of your time, the break-even chance of winning is around 29 percent. Without delivery proof, be honest about whether you are above it.

This is the same logic a trade source gives: expected benefit is your win probability times the amount you can recover, minus the extra cost of responding. Below the break-even, you lose money in expectation.

What should you say to the customer before it becomes a dispute?

Reply fast, kindly and with facts. Shopify expects customers to contact the merchant first, and a customer who gets a clear, helpful answer within the hour often never calls the bank. If a customer writes "my parcel has not arrived" and your tracking says delivered, this is the moment your proof of delivery does its first job.

An inquiry is the early warning. Shopify says no money is taken for an inquiry, though it can escalate to a chargeback if it is not resolved, and Stripe says an unanswered inquiry can escalate. So answer it.

Situation	A sensible reply
Delivered to a safe place, customer says no	Share the date, time and address line, ask them to check porches, bins and neighbours, offer to help raise it with the carrier
Delivered to a neighbour	Say where the scan says it went, ask them to knock next door
Failed attempt or returned	Apologise, offer to reship or refund straight away
No scan after the promised date	Own the delay, offer a replacement or refund, do not argue

Hi [name],

Sorry your order #[number] hasn't turned up. Here is what our records show:
it was handed to [carrier] on [date], tracking number [number], and the
carrier marked it delivered on [date] at [time] to [address line]
[left in a safe place / left with a neighbour].

Could you check around the property and with neighbours? If it still can't
be found by [date], tell me and I will [reship / refund] it, and I'll raise
it with the carrier myself.

[Your name]

Save the whole exchange. If the customer later disputes anyway, this thread shows you offered help, and a customer who said "found it, thanks" has handed you the best exhibit you will ever get. One warning: Stripe says you cannot refund outside the dispute process while a dispute is open, and Shopify's help page does not say how a refund interacts with an open dispute, so once a notice has landed, check before you refund.

How do you present proof of delivery in your response?

Lead with it, label it and keep the cover note short. The reviewer should see the proof of delivery within the first few lines, with each exhibit named, and the rest of the story underneath. Shopify says to label each piece of evidence, so a reader never has to guess what a screenshot is.

Use this template and swap in your real details. Only use facts you can show. Never invent a detail to fill a gap, because a made-up sentence undermines every true one.

Re: Order #[number], £[amount], reason: product not received

Summary: This order was dispatched on [date] and delivered on [date] to the
address on the order. Proof of delivery is attached as Exhibits 1 to 4.

Exhibit 1: Order record showing items, billing details and the shipping
address, and the delivery date promised at checkout ([date]).
Exhibit 2: Dispatch record and tracking number [number], handed to the
carrier on [date].
Exhibit 3: Full tracking history, screenshot taken [date], showing the
delivered status on [date] at [time].
Exhibit 4: [Signed receipt / photo / customer message dated [date]], where available.

What this shows: the parcel left on [date], moved through [n] scans and was
delivered to [address line] on [date], within the promised window.

What this does not show: [for example, the name of the person who accepted
the parcel]. We have included the address match and the dates above.

The customer did not contact us before disputing. [Or: our reply to their
message of [date] is attached as Exhibit 5.]

Notice the "What this does not show" line. It reads as honesty, and a reviewer reads honesty as credibility. If your tracking has a gap, explain it in one sentence rather than leaving it to be discovered.

Keep the whole response to a page or so, with exhibits as PDFs or clear screenshots. Shopify's own help page does not state file limits, so I cannot give you a size to aim for; check the upload screen when you build the file.

How much does proof of delivery cost, compared with what it saves?

Good proof of delivery costs very little per parcel, and the maths usually favours it once you have even a few disputes a year. Here is a made-up example to show how to run your own numbers.

Assume you ship 400 orders a month at an average of £60, and a tracked service that gives scan history costs £1.20 more per parcel than an untracked one. That is £480 extra a month. Now assume that without good proof of delivery you would see about four "not received" disputes a month and lose three of them. With good proof of delivery you see the same four and lose one.

Scenario	Disputes lost per month	Cost of losses (£60 + £10 fee each)	Extra shipping cost	Total
Untracked, little proof	3	£210	£0	£210
Tracked, proof saved	1	£70	£480	£550

On those numbers tracked shipping costs more than it saves, which is a useful result: it tells you that blanket tracking on cheap parcels is not the answer. Now change the assumptions. If most of your volume is under £30, it matters less. If your average order is £150 and the losses are 3 a month, the first row becomes £480 and the picture changes. The point is to run the sum with your real order value, your real dispute count and your real shipping quotes, not mine.

The cheaper fix is often free: save the screenshots you already get, check addresses before dispatch, and send a delivery email. The cost then is a few minutes a day, not £480 a month.

What should you do from dispute to decision, day by day?

Here is a plan for a "product not received" dispute that arrives with a 14-day window. A notice lands on Tuesday 27 October 2026 with a due date of Tuesday 10 November 2026. Your own dates will be on the notice.

Date	Task	Output
Tue 27 Oct	Read the reason and the due date. Check your balance. Log the dispute.	Dispute on one sheet
Wed 28 Oct	Pull the order, billing and shipping records. Find the tracking number.	Order exhibit saved
Thu 29 Oct	Capture the full tracking history and any signed receipt or photo.	Proof of delivery saved
Fri 30 Oct	Search email and chat for any customer message about arrival or contact.	Customer evidence saved
Mon 2 Nov	Decide: fight, or accept. Use the break-even sum.	Decision logged
Tue 3 Nov	Draft the cover note with exhibits labelled.	Draft v1
Wed 4 Nov	Read it cold, as a stranger would. Fill gaps.	File v2
Thu 5 Nov	Submit, five days early. Save the confirmation.	Submitted
After	Keep the file until the dispute closes.	Record kept

Submit before the due date, not on it. Shopify Payments sends whatever is on file on the due date, so an early finish means a better file goes out and any last-minute problem leaves you room to fix it. The card issuer may then take up to 75 days, so put a reminder in the calendar to check back.

If the decision on Monday is to accept, say because there is no delivery proof, accept and move on. Do not leave the dispute to expire, because an unanswered dispute is a loss with extra steps.

How can you reduce disputes before proof of delivery is ever needed?

Most "not received" disputes can be shrunk by prevention, and Shopify's own guidance on preventing chargebacks is a good list: ship fast, give accurate delivery estimates, use tracking and delivery confirmation, contact the customer if there is a delay, use a recognisable descriptor, and make your contact details and returns policy easy to find.

Three habits help most:

• Be honest about delivery dates. An optimistic estimate at checkout that the carrier then misses is the single most common cause of "not received" claims. One trade guide suggests comparing the estimate you showed at checkout with the actual transit time, and I think that is a good audit. If your actual times regularly beat your estimate, fine. If not, change the estimate.
• Message at each step. An order confirmation, a dispatch email with the tracking link, and a delivered notice give you timestamps and give the customer a nudge to look for a parcel left in a safe place.
• Answer fast. A customer who emails "where is my order?" and gets a reply in an hour rarely calls the bank. The ones who get silence do.

None of this replaces proof of delivery. It lowers the number of times you need it.

Where does 3D Secure fit with proof of delivery?

It does not replace it. In the UK, strong customer authentication has applied since 14 March 2022, and Shopify Payments and Stripe run 3D Secure automatically. That shifts liability for some fraud disputes to the card issuer when the customer passes authentication.

But the liability shift covers fraud-coded disputes, such as Visa 10.4 and Mastercard 4837. It does not cover "merchandise not received" disputes, which are Visa 13.1 and Mastercard 4853, or American Express C08. So an order that passed 3D Secure can still be disputed as not received, and your proof of delivery has to answer it.

I could not verify exactly how each card network treats every authenticated order or exemption case today, and network rules change. Confirm with your acquirer if the detail matters to you.

What is different for UK merchants?

General information, not legal advice.

Fees and process

On Shopify Payments in the UK the chargeback fee is £10, returned if you win, and the response window is usually 7 to 21 days with a card company review of up to 75 days after you submit. If you use Stripe directly, its published UK fees are £20 when a dispute is received and another £20 when you counter, for disputes since 17 June 2025.

Reason codes you will see

For not received, Visa uses 13.1 and Mastercard uses 4853. American Express uses C08. A trade guide warns not to treat 4855 as the universal current Mastercard code, so follow the code and label on your own notice, not a list from the internet.

Time limits

Stripe says card disputes typically arrive within 120 days, and local payment methods such as Klarna and PayPal often allow up to 180 days. The filing window can depend on the date the goods were expected, not only on the payment date, which is why you keep the original promised date. For the legal side of chargebacks and Section 75 in the UK, ChargeFix has a separate guide linked below.

Strong authentication

Strong customer authentication and 3D Secure apply in the UK, but they protect against fraud claims, not delivery claims, as explained above.

What I could not verify: the exact proof formats and retention periods of UK carriers, the weight card issuers give to any one record, any published win rate for not-received disputes, and how a refund interacts with an open dispute. Stripe says you cannot refund outside the dispute process while one is open, and Shopify says a refund can be issued from admin but you may still lose, so treat that as an open question and check before refunding.

What are the common mistakes with proof of delivery?

Nearly all lost "not received" disputes come from the same handful of habits.

• Treating a created label as proof of delivery.
• Submitting one delivered parcel as proof for an entire split order.
• Sending a link to a tracking page instead of a screenshot, then finding the page has changed.
• Assuming a delivered status proves the right person got the right item.
• Replacing the original promised delivery date with a later estimate.
• Calling every "not received" claim friendly fraud, when carrier delays, wrong addresses and failed attempts are real.
• Assuming that a customer saying they have dropped the complaint closes the dispute with the bank.
• Forgetting to reconcile a refund or replacement, which can leave the customer with a double credit.
• Leaving the response until the due date, when Shopify Payments will send whatever is on file.
• Relying on 3D Secure to carry a delivery dispute.

Fixing any two of these is a bigger gain than polishing the cover note.

Frequently asked questions

What is proof of delivery for a Shopify chargeback?

Proof of delivery is a set of records showing the parcel for a specific order reached the right address on a known date. The best version combines the tracking history, an arrival scan, an address match, a signature or photo where available and any customer message. A tracking number on its own is not enough.

Is a tracking number enough as proof of delivery?

Usually not on its own. A tracking number identifies a shipment, but its status, destination and link to the disputed order decide what it proves. A full scan history ending in an arrival scan at the right address is much stronger, especially with a screenshot saved on the day.

Does a "delivered" status win the dispute?

It helps a lot, but it does not guarantee a win. An arrival scan may not show who received the parcel or what was inside. Reviewers weigh it alongside the address, the date, any signed receipt or photo, and what the customer said. Make the chain of records easy to read.

How long do I have to send proof of delivery?

On Shopify Payments the window is usually 7 to 21 days from the notice, and your notice shows the exact due date. The card company can then take up to 75 days to decide. Shopify Payments submits what is on file on the due date, so finish early.

Should I send a link to the carrier's tracking page?

Send a screenshot instead. Shopify's guidance is to submit screenshots of tracking and communications rather than links to external sites, because links can expire, change or fail to load. Capture the full tracking history showing the arrival scan on the day it appears.

Do I need a signature for proof of delivery?

Not always. A signed receipt is the strongest single record, but it costs more and adds friction. For lower-value orders a full scan history plus an address match is often a sensible balance. For high-value orders, signed delivery is usually worth the extra.

What proof of delivery works for digital products?

For digital goods the activity log is your proof: when access was granted, whether the customer opened or downloaded the product, and from where. Keep the delivery email as sent and the log showing first use. A grant of access alone does not prove it worked.

How do split shipments change the proof I send?

For split shipments, prove each parcel separately. One delivered parcel does not show the whole order arrived. Build a short table listing each item, its tracking number, its dispatch date and its delivered status, and keep the original promised delivery date in the file.

Does 3D Secure protect me from not-received disputes?

No. The liability shift covers fraud-coded disputes such as Visa 10.4 and Mastercard 4837 when the customer passes authentication. Not-received disputes, Visa 13.1, Mastercard 4853 and American Express C08, sit outside it, so you still need your own delivery records, a clear timeline and a short honest cover note that explains any gaps in the story.

What if I have no proof of delivery?

Then the dispute is hard to win and the shipping decision is the real problem. Check for evidence you missed, work out your break-even chance of winning, and accept if you are below it. Then move higher-value orders to a tracked or signed service.

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Sources

• Reasons for a chargeback or inquiry, Shopify Help Center
• Overview of the chargeback and inquiry process, Shopify Help Center
• Preventing chargebacks and inquiries, Shopify Help Center
• How disputes work, Stripe Docs
• Liability shift after SCA enforcement (UK), Stripe Support
• What the 3D Secure liability shift actually covers, Redo
• Item not received chargeback guide, Chargeflow