Golden Quarter could leave retailers facing a New Year chargeback hangover, warns Chargebacks911
Retailers preparing for an earlier Golden Quarter risk overlooking a wave of refunds, disputes and chargebacks that could continue long after peak-season sales have been booked, Chargebacks911, a global leader in dispute resolution and chargeback management has warned.
New 2026 Consumer Pulse research from Attentive found that 71% of shoppers plan to start buying for the holidays before Black Friday this year, up 12 percentage points year over year, with 46% planning to begin before November. Meanwhile, Stripe’s analysis of the 2025 holiday shopping period found fraud activity began trending upward on November 8 and remained elevated throughout December.
Chargebacks911 warns that the financial impact of this extended peak season will not necessarily end when the shopping does.
Its 2026 Chargeback Field Report found that more than 61% of merchants say chargebacks have become more frequent over the past three years. Refund abuse is adding further pressure, with merchants estimating that abusive requests now account for 27.1% of all returns and 62% describing the issue as a moderate or significant concern.
“Retailers will spend the Golden Quarter measuring transactions, conversion and sales, but none of those numbers tells them what peak season ultimately made them,” said Monica Eaton, founder and CEO of Chargebacks911. “A sale can look successful in December and become a refund, dispute or chargeback weeks later. The sale happens at Christmas but the loss can arrive in February.”
The warning comes as the traditional holiday shopping period continues to expand beyond Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Earlier promotions give retailers a longer opportunity to capture consumer spending, but Chargebacks911 says businesses need to consider the corresponding extension of their risk window.
Unlike conventional third-party fraud, some forms of abuse can be particularly difficult to identify when a purchase is made. Refund abuse and friendly fraud can begin with a legitimate customer, genuine payment credentials and a transaction that appears entirely normal at checkout. The loss only becomes visible later when merchandise is returned under false pretences, a refund process is exploited or a legitimate transaction is subsequently disputed.
That creates a challenge for retailers preparing fraud strategies primarily around the moment of purchase.
“Peak-season readiness cannot stop at checkout,” Eaton said. “Retailers rightly invest enormous effort in keeping payments flowing and stopping criminal fraud during their busiest trading period. But they also need to know what happens to those transactions afterwards. If you only measure what you approved or declined in December, you are missing part of the economics of peak season.”
Stripe’s analysis of the 2025 holiday period found that fraud risk was not confined to Black Friday weekend. Fraud activity began increasing weeks earlier and continued to spike through the end of the year, while first-party fraud, including refund and promotional abuse, was identified as an increasing peak-season challenge.
Chargebacks911 says the risk can extend still further because disputes do not necessarily materialize immediately after purchase. Returns, refund requests and chargebacks arising from peak-season transactions can continue into the new year, meaning retailers may not have a complete view of Golden Quarter performance when December sales figures are reported.
The problem is compounded by pressure on retailers to maintain customer-friendly returns and refund experiences during their busiest period. Chargebacks911’s Field Report found that merchants estimate more than one in four returns are now abusive, creating a tension between making legitimate returns straightforward and preventing those policies from being exploited.
Eaton argues the answer is not to make the customer experience more restrictive, but to give merchants better visibility into the patterns emerging across transactions, refunds and disputes. That requires AI and machine learning applied across the full dispute lifecycle, connecting peak-season transaction data with the dispute and return outcomes that follow, which is precisely what Chargebacks911’s Unified Dispute Management System (UDMS) and ResolveLab are built to provide.
“Retailers should not respond to abuse by making every genuine customer jump through more hoops,” Eaton added. “They need to get better at distinguishing a good customer with a genuine problem from someone repeatedly exploiting the system. The Golden Quarter does not end when the last Christmas order ships. Merchants need to be prepared for what comes back.
The complete 2026 Chargeback Field Report is available from Chargebacks911.