It's a process

So, it's been almost two weeks since we closed our business. Shutting it down has been complicated since we had contracts with our clients, some of which rightfully deserve partial refunds (some have already been issued and we are working on the rest). There are some other clients, however, that are outside of the terms of their contract and do not have a refund rightfully coming but still think they are owed money.

I have tried to stop and think about what if it were ME on the other side of this? How rational would I be about MY money? My empathy for people would definitely run me directly into personal bankruptcy so I've had to approach this strictly from a legal standpoint. Unfortunately I cannot reimburse them for future time they would have had coming to them if we had been able to remain open, so only if contractually we owe them a partial refund will they be getting one.

In the past few days, there have been two clients so far who have processed a chargeback to their credit card for what they THINK is owed to them. Amazingly enough, the credit card companies will just take a consumers word for it and charge money back to a merchant, and then send the merchant a notice asking for an explanation to determine if the money is owed back or not. This puts us in a situation where we are without the money in our account that is actually owed to someone else, which is unfair.

I have really tried to remain calm throughout this whole process but sometimes it is hard. Doing the right thing doesn't always mean things will go smoothly...but it does mean that at least, for the most part, I can sleep soundly at night.