[decremental]

Someone obtains your CC info and makes a series of purchases that clear online. After the fact, your CC company contacts you and asks was this fraud? You say yes. CC is canceled. The business that accepted the charges does an audit of orders and identifies weird charges. Probably fraud. Refunds the orders. This maybe takes place in just a few days from start to finish. That's what you're describing.

In the last 6 months a new system was put in place that checks before issuing refunds to see if it's even possible to issue the refund. All merchants have been notified of this change.

The only thing I'm thinking of is how this sucks for merchants who are doing a better job at detecting fraud than the processors. You cannot issue a refund. You may only eat the chargeback fees and (of course) loss of the original funds.

The credit card system is so fucked from the ground up. It must be replaced.