The Game Store Owner Who Blogged About Being Screwed By Square Got His Money Back

Alex Shvartsman, a science fiction writer and the owner of a small New York City game store, wrote a lengthy blog post accusing mobile payments startup Square of essentially screwing his small business out of thousands of dollars.

Late last night, he posted a follow-up revealing that Square ended up reimbursing him $2,280.78, the total amount that he had originally thought that he had lost due to several "chargeback disputes."

A chargeback dispute occurs when a consumer sees a fraudulent transaction on their credit card and then the credit card processor-in this case Square-has to determine whether the merchant who handled the transaction with the consumer's card-in this case Shvartsman-deserves to keep the money or not.

In his original blog post, Shvartsman wasn't only concerned with the money he lost due to the chargebacks. He was also troubled by Square's poor communication throughout the process and the fact that the company had, without warning, deactivated his online Square account. Although he got his money back, his online account will remain deactivated.

According to Shvartsman's blog, he still has some mixed feelings about how the whole dispute played out:

There are lots of fascinating ethics problems here. As a self-interested individual, I'm obviously thrilled to have my money back. But is this resolution fair? Should I have expected far less, given how often merchants lose chargeback cases, out there in the real world? Should I have expected more, given the additional loss of business and the fact that our account is still cancelled, not because we did something wrong but due to the cold equations of risk management? And if Square covered the loss, is this fair to them? Or have I leveraged the power of social media to extort a favorable resolution?