I believe that Appfolio is costing owners thousands of dollars

[Kevin Wood]

I am an appfolio user and have been for 5 years. We are based in Texas so generally a very friendly landlord state. We currently manage about a thousand doors and pay Appfolio many $1000s per month in fees. I don't know if it's due to Covid, but I've gotten larger number of chargebacks (about 1 every 2 months) in the last two years. I have 1000 doors under management so this doesn't seem like a lot, but it's a hassle because often the disputes take months to resolve. Going to an owner and explaining to them that a tenant they were paid out on for months or even on a property they sold has won a charge back isn't a conversation any property manager wants to have. In many cases the tenant is no longer in the unit and issues a charge back once they've moved into another property. I lost one dispute in 2020 and so with an attorney/research we made sure we had everything we needed to win any dispute in Texas:

- We make sure the individual paying is on the lease. If not we don't accept that payment.

-We run a credit check and keep it on file to verify the ability of that tenant to pay.

- We take a photo of the individuals driver license to ensure they are the ones renting/making a payment

- We confirm through text message from a validated number of that tenant that they in fact did make a payment on credit card if its done

Our lease language notes that rent is non-refundable. We even had an attorney review our lease language and what we collect to ensure we couldn't lose a charge back dispute. There is nothing else to my knowledge we could do to provide additional id verification or confirm the individual paying is the one signing the lease. They even come pick up their keys in person with their drivers license.

Last month we got a chargeback notification saying we had lost a charge back. Our team called Appfolio. I was in the office. We were on hold over 2 hours. No one could dismiss us with the "sorry we did everything we could line, because we built our business so it couldn't happen." We then finally got connected and talked to someone who stated they would look into it. We never heard back from them. Finally someone emailed someone on our team and said "they did everything in their power to fight it and lost." Again not going to take that for an answer.

I asked them to disclose the communication. After all they are not the payment processor, but they do hold the end user (ie. my company) responsible for the charge back. They have to show us what steps they took. Imagine going to a landlord that sold his property 6 months ago and asking for a $1000 check. It's bad for business. That is what Appfolio is forcing property managers to do. We asked for confirmation that the documents listed above were provided and never heard back. We still have not been called on this open ticket and it was shut due to "inactivity". I responded back by email to re-open it and never heard back.

Today 2 months later I get another charge back. I explain the situation of not hearing back on the last one and again for this tenant provide all of the above. I even attach it to the payments email so the payment help desk can see it himself. It was for a property that was sold in May. The charge back was well outside of the 90 day window and not even valid. I asked Appfolio to please again provide the communication with the previous tenants bacnk so I could show the owner. In this case the owner sold this property in June and it was for $1000. Me just emailing them a stock form isn't how I want to treat customers. We need to document just for the fact we may need to file a civil judgement on this tenant. Instead of answering the question or responding to the documentation I provided they threatened to turn off my payments for my entire company. I spoke to some other owners and they have been seeing similar patterns. They have documentation and Appfolio says it was a failed dispute. 

I worked in payments for 12 years including when I got started in real estate (and was on the bp podcast). If Appfolio is actually not disputing these charges with appropriate documentation and telling property managers they are doing so it's costing owners 1000s of dollars. 

Is anyone else doing the above and losing disputes?

What payment solutions are actually doing what they say? Myself and a large number of social media followers are looking.