The Symptom: You cannot find a dispute you were expecting, the Disputes page is empty, no one received a dispute email, a dispute you wanted to fight can no longer be actioned, or your evidence submission was rejected with the message “We couldn’t submit your evidence. Nothing was sent — please check it and try again.”
The Root Cause: Nearly all of these come down to one of four things: the staff member does not hold the admin/finance role, the dispute falls outside the 12 months of history the page carries, nobody is set up to receive dispute notifications, or the response deadline has already passed and the dispute is closed. Evidence submissions are rejected when a field the card network requires is missing or does not match — most often a payment ID that does not exist.
The Fix
Work through these in order — each rules out one cause:
- Confirm the staff member can reach Payments Hub at all. Disputes uses the existing admin/finance role — there is no separate Disputes permission. If Payments Hub does not appear in the left-hand rail for them, the role is the problem, not the feature.
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Check the whole list, not the first page. The Disputes page shows 20 per page with numbered page controls, newest first, and it already spans every gateway on the account — you do not need to switch gateways. Page through before concluding a dispute is missing.
[INSERT SCREENSHOT: The numbered page controls at the bottom of the Disputes list] - Check the date. The page carries 12 months of dispute history. A dispute older than that will not appear, and a genuinely empty list means no disputes in that window — not that the page is broken.
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If no email arrived, check that someone is set to receive them. Dispute emails go to the address in Credit Card Account/Dispute Notifications Email and to everyone subscribed to the GZ Pay Dispute notification type. If neither is set, no email is sent to anyone. Set both: see Configure Gateway Notifications for Disputes/Charge Failures and Subscribe to Automated Staff Notifications.
[INSERT SCREENSHOT: The GZ Pay Dispute notification type in My Notifications] - If the dispute cannot be actioned, check its status and deadline. Once the response deadline passes, the dispute closes and the action buttons are gone. A dispute already showing Under review, Won, or Lost has no further action either.
- If your evidence was rejected, re-check the identifiers you typed. Nothing was sent, so your one submission is still available. The most common cause is a payment ID entered on the details step that does not exist — copy it directly from the payment record rather than typing it. Then confirm your uploads total 4.5 MB or less and re-submit.
- If a lost dispute has not been recorded in your books, create a refund using the Refund Already Issued by Processor option so the debit reconciles. See Understanding the Refund Process.
Other common questions
- Can I save a draft and finish my evidence later? No. Evidence submission is one-shot and nothing is retained if you close the wizard. Gather everything first, then start.
- Can I add more evidence after I submit? No. The submission is final, which is why you must confirm the acknowledgment before the submit button is enabled.
- Why is there no Accept option on this one? It is an inquiry rather than a formal dispute. Inquiries require evidence — there is nothing to concede yet.
- Why does the deadline email show a different time than I expect? The deadline email shows the due date and time in UTC, in both the subject and the body. Convert to your local time.
- Can I filter or search the Disputes list? Not yet. The list is paginated and sorted newest-first; filtering, date ranges, and search are not part of this release.
- Can another organization see our disputes? No. Every dispute is verified against your account before it is shown, and the check is enforced on the server, not in the browser.
- Do we pay extra for this? No. Disputes is included in your existing Payments Hub subscription and needs no activation.
Verification: How to know it worked Open Payments Hub and click Disputes. The staff member sees the list, the deadline banner reflects the soonest due date across every open dispute, and the dispute you were looking for appears on one of the numbered pages. For notifications, confirm the staff member now appears as a subscriber to the GZ Pay Dispute type — the next dispute-created email will reach them. For a re-submitted response, the dispute status changes to Under review.