Is AI Making “Friendly Fraud” Easier?
Table of Contents
AI may be making “friendly fraud” easier by helping consumers understand policies, organize information, and navigate complicated dispute processes. However, AI isn’t the only issue businesses should watch. Some chargebacks begin with legitimate customer complaints that become harder to resolve than the dispute itself. For brands, preventing unnecessary escalation means identifying potential fraud while also making customer service easier, faster, and more effective.
“Friendly fraud” sounds almost harmless. It isn’t.
In the travel industry, a customer can complete a trip, stay at the hotel, use the amenities, and then dispute thousands of dollars in charges they originally authorized.
Sometimes that’s intentional. A customer may be looking for a way to get part—or all—of the trip for free.
But sometimes a chargeback starts somewhere very different: with a legitimate customer who can’t get a problem resolved.
Travel industry professional Matt Brightman joined Brooke Sellas to explore what friendly fraud looks like, how AI could be changing it, and what businesses can do before a customer problem becomes something much bigger.
What Is Friendly Fraud?
Friendly fraud happens when a customer disputes a charge for a product or service they received. Matt distinguishes that from a legitimate chargeback.
If a hotel or travel provider fails to deliver what a customer paid for, disputing the charge may be warranted. Credit cards provide consumer protections for situations like these.
Friendly fraud is different. It can involve someone who goes into a transaction already looking for an opportunity to get a refund or free trip. The customer receives the service but later disputes the charge.
For travel brands, that can mean losing thousands of dollars from a single transaction.
The challenge is determining whether a customer is intentionally gaming the system or has a legitimate problem that needs to be resolved.
How Could AI Make Friendly Fraud Easier?
AI can make complicated processes easier to understand and navigate.
Matt has used AI himself to organize information around insurance claims, understand policies, and manage correspondence. Those capabilities can be incredibly useful for consumers trying to solve legitimate problems.
But the same tools are available to someone trying to exploit a system.
That doesn’t mean AI is causing fraud. Matt is careful about that distinction. The fraud statistics he cites don’t prove that AI caused the increase.
What AI does change is how easily people can access information, organize their case, and navigate complicated processes.
That makes it another factor businesses need to watch.
Why Do Customer Complaints Turn Into Chargebacks?
Some chargebacks begin with legitimate complaints that customers struggle to resolve.
A customer contacts support. They’re sent to a portal, transferred to another department, asked to explain the problem again, or told it needs to be escalated.
Days pass without a resolution.
Matt describes all of this as part of the “daily admin tax of life.” Customers are already managing work, family, appointments, bills, email, and countless other responsibilities.
Eventually, continuing to chase a company for an answer may not feel worth the effort.
As Matt explains, if calling the credit card company becomes the “path of least resistance,” some customers are going to take it.
That doesn’t make every chargeback legitimate. But it gives businesses an important question to ask:
Did our customer experience contribute to the escalation?
Why Does Social Media Matter?
Social media can turn one customer complaint into a public customer experience.
A customer can tag the company, post a complaint, leave a review, or share their experience publicly. That means brands need to respond quickly—but speed is only part of the equation.
As Brooke says, “Social media is a spectator sport.”
A brand may respond to a complaint with “Send us a DM” and resolve the issue privately. But everyone who saw the original complaint is still watching.
They don’t know whether the company fixed the problem, ignored it, or made the customer jump through even more hoops.
Those spectators may use that interaction to decide whether they want to become customers themselves.
The resolution matters to the person complaining. How the brand handles it matters to everyone watching.
How Can Brands Spot Potential Friendly Fraud?
Customer history, transaction records, and chargeback data can help businesses identify patterns that may indicate potential friendly fraud.
Has this customer purchased repeatedly? Have they filed multiple disputes? Is this an isolated complaint or recurring behavior?
Brands can also investigate the complaint itself.
Does it match a known problem? Did other customers report something similar? Was the issue raised when it happened? Is there evidence supporting the claim?
AI may help businesses identify and organize some of those signals. But teams still need to determine what happened and decide how to respond.
How Can Customer Service Reduce Unnecessary Escalation?
Better customer service won’t stop intentional fraud. But it can make it easier to resolve legitimate complaints before customers feel they need to escalate them.
For all the discussion about AI, Matt repeatedly comes back to something much less technical: businesses still need people who can help customers solve problems.
That means giving frontline teams enough information—and sometimes enough authority—to make reasonable decisions.
Policies, budgets, and terms and conditions still matter. Not every customer should receive an exception.
But when an exception is warranted, employees need a way to move the problem toward resolution. That might mean a partial refund, future credit, another solution, or quickly escalating the issue to someone authorized to make the decision.
AI can support that process too. For example, it can condense a long email thread or customer history so an employee or manager can understand the situation faster.
The goal isn’t to replace the human part of customer service. It’s to help people resolve legitimate problems before frustration becomes something more expensive.
The Window Before a Complaint Becomes Something Bigger
Intentional friendly fraud is a real problem. Better customer service won’t stop someone who deliberately sets out to game the system.
But brands can make sure their own processes aren’t pushing legitimate customers toward unnecessary escalation.
Brooke describes what sounds like a fraud or security issue as something that can also become a “conversational problem.”
There is a window between the frustrated customer and the chargeback.
On social media, there is a similar window between one unhappy customer and a public conversation that begins influencing how other people see the brand.
Businesses can use that window.
Respond. Investigate. Give frontline employees the tools to help. Make it easier for legitimate customers to reach someone who can actually resolve the problem.
AI may be changing the friendly fraud landscape. But what happens before a customer decides to escalate is still something businesses can influence.
Read the Transcript
[00:00:00] What friendly fraud looks like in travel
Matt Brightman: Social media accounts for a lot of fraud. 30% of people who reported losing money in 2025, to that 16 billion that I mentioned earlier, said it started somehow on social media.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yep.
Matt Brightman: That is eight times the 2020 amount. Eight times.
Hey Welcome back to the Social Media CX Podcast. I’m your host, Brooke Sellas, CEO of B Squared Media, author of Conversations That Connect, and today we’re talking about a term that gets thrown around a lot in hospitality and travel, and that phrase is friendly fraud. Except the guest I brought in to talk about friendly fraud thinks that name might be part of the problem. Let’s dive in.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: My guest today is Matt Brightman, who is the regional sales manager for the Hyatt Inclusive Collection. Quick note before we dive in, Matt’s joining me in a personal and professional capacity today, speaking from his own experience in the travel industry, not on behalf of his employer or any specific brand.
Matt and I were actually together a few weeks ago in Cancun and started this conversation over dinner at an industry event where I was training on AI, and it’s been just eating me up ever since we had the conversation. So I’m thrilled to finally get this on the record with Matt today. Matt, welcome to the show.
Matt Brightman: Well, thank you so much, Brooke. I’m excited to be here today. Much like you, I’ve been thinking about this and thinking about it in a personal, like how does this affect me personally? How is it involved in the business that I’m in?
And so I’m excited to, to talk a little bit about it and just kinda go back and forth. We’ll see where the conversation goes.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yes, y’all. Rabbit holes, we’ll do like the rabbit hole warning from the beginning because this can lead anywhere, ’cause it’s a really interesting, fascinating, deep, nuanced conversation. But let’s start with the term itself.
Friendly fraud usually gets described as a guest disputing a charge that they initially authorized, essentially gaming the system for a refund or a freebie, but you pushed back a little bit on the dinner.
So let’s talk about that. In your experience, what is friendly fraud? How would you define it?
Matt Brightman: Yeah, so when I’m thinking about friendly fraud, especially in relation to the business that I’m in with hotels specifically, it’s clients that know that they’re going into it looking for the free trip, right?
So that’s different than something didn’t work out, or maybe the services that they signed up for weren’t delivered, and then they have to do a chargeback with their credit card. But they kinda know going into it, they’re looking for something, or they will find something, but their plan is to get a free stay at said hotel.
And I have this love-hate relationship with credit cards, I’m sure that we all do. But one of the nice things is they do protect you when things do go wrong, when you do need to do a chargeback, when there is real legitimate fraud.
So when I’m talk about travel, I always say you should be putting any charge on a credit card, and probably the same credit card, for your entire vacation. And later on in the pod when we’re just talking, I can tell you a situation I recently had in England where, hey, it paid off that I did that.
I used one credit card and I needed it. But some people take advantage of that situation, and they know that they can go to their credit card and they can say, “Hey, this is what happened,” whether it’s legitimate or not, “I need to do this charge back,” in some cases for thousands of dollars. And who’s out that money? It could be the hotel, it could be the travel supplier, or both.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: Somebody has to pay for that.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Right. In your experience, and you might have stats on this, I’m not sure, how often are these chargebacks actually, you know, real? Let’s call it, versus somebody trying to game the system and, and, and do a friendly fraud?
Matt Brightman: I don’t have specific stats on that. It’s a different segment of the business than I’m in. But when it got brought up in our dinner the other night, it was kind of like you, I was like, “Oh yeah,” I mean, that does happen, and I’ve certainly had instances where there have been chargebacks on some of the services, and stays that our hotels provide. again, sometimes they’re legitimate and I can see the claim.
I’m getting the complaint from the, the end customer or sometimes going through a third party of what they say happened and why they’re not happy. Most of the time I think hotels are willing to work with clients, and of course this isn’t just for hotels, that just happens to be the industry that I’m in.
It can be any kind of consumer product really. But they want to work with the client. The last resort really for the client or for the provider of said services would be a chargeback, right? They don’t want that to happen, so they wanna nip it in the bud before it gets to that situation.
So some have been certainly legitimate, and then other ones I’m like, I see them come in and I’m like, “No, these people are crazy.” Like what are they talking about? And yet they go back and they do the chargeback, and most of the time the credit card company will side with them, which is their client, and of course it depends on what their debt is, how long the relationship is with said credit card, so on and so forth.
So things that we’re not necessarily privy to, I just see what those complaints are. Again, of course some are legitimate and others are way off base. But do they get the free vacation? I don’t know.
[00:05:54] When a customer complaint becomes a chargeback
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: What does that frustrated guest version, that story, what does that look like before it turns into a formal dispute? Like do you have any anecdotes there or things that have happened?
Matt Brightman: So of course I have some, some experiences and things that I won’t get into to all of those, but every situation is different. Every situation is unique, of course, and some situations the client will address right there at the hotel. And when that is done, it’s usually resolved before it ever gets back to any kind of situation where you have to go to the credit card company and do a chargeback or whatnot.
Other times they don’t bring up any complaints until they’re home from their stay or vacation or whatever it may be, and then it gets a little harder to go through the process. If you bring it up on property, the hotel themselves are usually, like I said, happy to upgrade your room or fix the situation or maybe provide a small comp for whatever the inconvenience may be, and then you move forward.
But once you’re home, the hotel can’t provide those, we’ll say soft dollar fixes.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yes.
Matt Brightman: They have to provide either a, a hard dollar fix, which might be some type of refund, which they might see as warranted or not warranted. Sometimes they might be able to do a free return stay, and there’s breakage on that, so I will say, I don’t, soft dollars maybe, “Oh, come back, give us another opportunity. We’ll be happy to prove to you that we’re better than this,”
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: And then it’s on, the consumer to work that stay out. Sometimes they might not be able to take the hotel up on that offer or they will take them up on the offer but then they, they run out of time. They’re never able to use that free return stay.
So mainly it is when, you get back to that they’ve already traveled, they’re home and the hotel’s like, “Well, we can’t provide a refund. That’s not happening. You came to the hotel, you slept in our beds, you ate our foods, you did all of these things that obviously have a hard dollar cost. We’re not going to refund you a full amount.”
Maybe there’s amount.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: These clients, they do have big expectations and they do spend big money. So when you’re, anytime you’re spending big money on anything, house related, new car, whatever it may be, new air conditioning, new refrigerator, something doesn’t go right, you take it personally.
So, I understand you want that situation resolved, but it’s not always as simple as, “Sure, here’s all your money.”
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: It’s a total refund.
Matt Brightman: Right, you stayed at the hotel for one week and again used all the services. So that’s where then if a client goes to their credit card company and their credit card company’s like, “Yep, we’ll side with you. We’ll charge back the full seven-night stay,” and now the hotel is out all that.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: Or a third party just depending on the booking was.
[00:08:48] Is AI contributing to fraud?
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah, Yeah. Okay, so now to the big thing, and which is kind of how it came up at dinner, and the part that I find fascinating is AI, artificial intelligence, may be contributing to friendly fraud.
Matt Brightman: So I think AI, I have, again, I have this love-hate relationship with AI.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Same.
Matt Brightman: For the most part, I love it.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Same. I’m like 90% onboard.
Same.
Matt Brightman: We kinda had this conversation over dinner. But I think AI is contributing to fraud in general, right? So.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Tell me about it
Matt Brightman: I do have some numbers on it.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Okay.
Matt Brightman: And we can get into that. But AI is great because it can help you stay organized, it can help you with… I recently had an insurance claim where I had siding redone on my house, and all this back and forth between the contractor, insurance, whatever it may be. It’s hard to keep track of that. What is my policy?
What am I entitled to? AI is great with laying all that out. But I think it also helps with fraud because the fraudsters are also using AI.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Mm-hmm.
Matt Brightman: So let me give you this stat. So this is just fraud in general. It’s not necessarily related to my industry or friendly fraud. But fraud in general last year, so 2025, saw $16 billion lost.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Wow.
Matt Brightman: A big number.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: That’s staggering, yeah.
Matt Brightman: And that is up 25% versus the prior year of 2024.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Oof.
Matt Brightman: So AI, what… 2021, 2022, people are slowly getting better and better at it. But I think that in, and of itself is almost proof, maybe not 100% ’cause it, I don’t have the stats on AI.
But when you see it going up by such a big amount, when we know that these fraudsters have AI in their back pocket, and they can figure out how to game the system, whether it’s sometimes it might be more legitimate than other times. But they’re using AI to keep track of what works, fake emails, fake websites, fake policies, the case may be. So fraud in general I think is going up, because of AI.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: I have other fraud stats, and we can get into that.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: Again, love-hate relationship with AI, but I still think it helps people more than it hurts.
[00:11:15] The growing role of social media in fraud
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah, I mean, we’re seeing it in social all the time. Like Meta and their instances of being hacked now with AI have tr- I don’t know, again, the exact stats, but they have, like, grown exponentially.
And one of the most recent hacks that’s happening with Meta is with, your verification, your 2FA. So the AI has figured out how to basically mask phone numbers through VPNs and all.
It’s a longer story and a whole nother episode. But long story short is you should not be using SMS as part, like text, as a part of your 2FA for Meta because there’s known AI fraud hacks happening with that, and a lot of people are losing access to their Meta accounts. So much fun.
Matt Brightman: Yeah, I haven’t lost access, but I was hacked recently and, or I created a dupe profile and somebody sent me that like, “Is this you?” And I’m like, “Clearly it’s not.”
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: Then I couldn’t find the dupe, like, so somebody had to send it in on my behalf.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Reported on your behalf. Yeah.
Matt Brightman: Think everybody deals with that, do have that. The top three social media fraud companies, well, they’re Facebook, which is Meta, Whatsapp.
and Instagram. Those are the top 3.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Meta. That’s all Meta. Which none of us who work in social are surprised. Meta, we love you, but we also hate you.
Matt Brightman: So you brought that up and I was like, “Oh, let me scroll through my notes.”
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah
Matt Brightman: “I know I have that.” So yeah, those are the top three.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Not surprised.
Matt Brightman: I do have some other.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yes.
Matt Brightman: Social media. I mean, social media accounts for a lot of fraud. 30% of people who reported losing money in 2025, to that 16 billion that I mentioned earlier, said it started somehow on social media.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yep.
Matt Brightman: That is eight times the 2020 amount. Eight times. So again, when we talk about AI coming out in, again, 2021, give or take, that’s a big increase.
[00:13:22] Why businesses still need real people
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: the answer, and I don’t expect you to have the answer, but, like, what do we do? What do we do ab- like, what is the recourse? What can businesses, whether they’re in, you know, the travel industry or otherwise, what can businesses do to protect themselves against friendly fraud?
Matt Brightman: It is a big question, and I don’t know that I have 100% the answer right. But a couple things. One, I mean, they should be using AI, and I think you’re seeing a lot of the big companies are certainly investing in AI and that’ll help. Two, I think it comes back to good old-fashioned customer service, right?
I think that is the best thing that they can do is have a front line. They need people, and not just AI. So yes, AI, they need to use it, but they still need real people, and I think when you get back to a lot of chargebacks and things like that, that maybe they are warranted.
It comes out of a place of frustration where they have gone to people, or they’ve tried to get their complaint out there, but they get wrapped up in the loophole that is the customer service portal or endless loop of calling somebody that lives in a different time zone, a different country, being escalated to a manager that doesn’t really exist, then having to transfer to another department, and then you gotta start all over.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Terrible.
Matt Brightman: You’re just like, “I can’t keep up with this.” So, I mentioned to you before– Well, I mentioned to you at dinner and also before we started recording that I also have a podcast. And it’s personal, completely separate from work. It’s NFNP Pod, so if anybody wants to go look it up.
But after our conversation, I also was hooked on, not necessarily friendly fraud, but it’s basically the scam economy.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Oh, what a great phrase. Uh-huh.
Matt Brightman: Yes, the scam economy and the daily admin tax of life. So that is the episode. If anybody wants to go back and check it out, it’s nfnpod.com. But the idea is, and not just respect to businesses, but also from the consumer, it’s so hard to keep track of all the stuff that you’re doing in your daily life.
You have insurance. You have kids. You have daycare. You have extracurriculars. You have your job. You have medical bills coming in. And you have all of the stuff that’s coming in through the emails, and now it’s even more because of AI.
And then you’re trying to use AI to keep track of it all, and it ends up being so much that you can’t keep track of it.
So what do you do? I’ll just go to the credit card company and do the chargeback. That’s the easiest solution on my end to where I don’t have to do this constant back and forth and keep track of records over said charge. And again, the bigger the charge, the more, more focused you are on getting it resolved.
And if the easiest path is to call the credit card company, whether that was the intention from the get-go or not, that’s the path of least resistance a lot of times. So for businesses, I’m thinking they need salespeople. They need customer service, and it comes down to relationships.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yes.
Matt Brightman: Any business, if you’ve got a relationship with your clients, that goes a long way.
And I’ve had, we all have, right? We’ve had relationships with businesses that end poorly, and we’ve had other ones that are like, “You know, they did me right, I’m gonna make sure that I use them next.”
[00:16:53] When customers threaten a bad review
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah, yeah. Well, other, I have so many questions, so I’m just gonna fire away. But we talked about, and I believe this was at dinner. It might have been earlier. Anyways, regardless, you mentioned that sometimes guests will say that they’re gonna leave a bad review unless something is done. Like that was something that I heard you say.
Matt Brightman: Absolutely.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Let’s start there. How can we get better at handling that? Like, what do you, how do you handle that threat? Like, what is your advice there? I guess we’ll start there.
Matt Brightman: That’s a really tough one for businesses. I think it happens probably all the time, and some businesses are probably like, “Go ahead, do your worst,” right? And it depends on a lot of things. It depends on what their current ratings are on different review sites. If they’re already a five-star reviewed company, 4.8, one bad review might not end the world. And again, it depends on how many reviews you
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: have.
Yes.
Matt Brightman: right? But if you’re a hotel on TripAdvisor and you’re teetering between that four and three-nine and four-two or something like that, reviews are huge.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: Yeah, it’s absolutely huge. It’s huge on how much you can charge for, the daily rate at your property.
It’s how you get business in the long term. People go and they, if they have time, they’re on TripAdvisor, and they’re looking for their stay six months, one year in advance. The clients that are looking for a stay tomorrow, they’re not necessarily hopping on TripAdvisor. So rely on that business coming in advance, that makes their forecasting a lot easier to do.
So, social media reviews, TripAdvisor reviews, things like that play, play a big impact. So, to answer your questions, I mean, there’s a couple of things. You do wanna try and nip it in the bud, so again, before it comes to that. So the more times you’re able to resolve situations on property and make sure the guest is happy, the better.
But you also need, again, that frontline, good customer service department that says, “Hey, okay, I understand that social media is out there.” And that is a tool that consumers did not have years… I mean, when we were growing up, that wasn’t.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: No.
Matt Brightman: A thing.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Thank God.
Matt Brightman: word of mouth or whatever the case may be. And what’s what’s the old adage? Like, there’s nine, for every nine bad reviews that get posted online, there’s one good review.
[00:19:27] Why social media is a spectator sport
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Basically, people are more willing to share negative than positive. Right.
Matt Brightman: Sure. And that tends to get more traction on social.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Oh yes, the algorithms are built for hate. Yes.
Matt Brightman: Sure. So sometimes that does happen, and then you gotta, you gotta have a social team. You have to have people that are watching out for these things. And I think from a large brand standpoint, and again, this could be anything out there.
Southwest Airlines, Best Buy, they all have their social media teams. And what I like to see when something pops up on my X feed or whatever and somebody’s complaining, and I’ll just use Best Buy as an example, but whatever, like, “Oh, Best Buy did wrong, and I’m so mad,” blah, blah, blah, and Best Buy responds, “Sorry you’ve had a bad experience. We sympathize with you. Send us a DM.”
Well, does that work? Does it not work? Me, as a third party, I have no rooting interest in this situation other than maybe I saw it on social media, and I wanna know how did Best Buy resolve.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yes.
Matt Brightman: What did…? So sometimes I think like, they could go that extra step and turn what might be a bad situation on social media into a good situation.
But if they just say, “DM us,” well, now I have no way of seeing like, okay, how did Best Buy make it right for this client? That’s what I’m really interested in.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Well, when you’re looking for your next job, you’re hired because that is literal- literally it. I mean, that’s what we teach our clients and how we do our stuff, but it’s, social’s a spectator sport just by nature.
So when somebody has that complaint, speed and visibility are so important. Speed, obviously you wanna get there quickly and show that you wanna resolve it. But that visibility part that you just mentioned, I think a lot of brands automatically think speed, and let’s get it off channel.
But then you’re leaving out that spectator who’s also going, “How’s Best Buy gonna handle this? Let me see if I’m actually gonna buy my next thing from Best Buy based on how they handle this situation.”
Matt Brightman: Speed certainly plays a big part in it, because you’re right, if you can action it quickly, then it doesn’t get as much traction, and then it might not hit the algorithm as, much, and not as many people will see it. And if you’re slow, more people pile on, it hits the algorithm.
Before you know it, 100,000 people have seen this one complaint.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Fire, yeah.
Matt Brightman: A full-blown fire.
Then you gotta get the PR company involved and all kinds of things. But I think, again, to your point, but speed and visibility, right? I think you can action a lot and turn that bad situation into a, a good situation. But if you can not get it posted on social media by providing good customer service first, that’s always the best way to go. And the way to keep a client happy so that they come back to you in the business, in the future for business.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Do you think there’s a realistic, I say realistic because, like this is totally made up, but, like, is there a realistic way if I’m a brand, are there telltale signs where I can figure out the difference between a real guest complaint and somebody who’s like, engaging in friendly fraud? Is that real?
Am I making this up? Is there a way to do that?
Matt Brightman: I mean, there, there’s probably a couple of ways, right? So if any business that has backend data, so whether it’s a rewards program or a credit card or something like that, if you have that data, you can see how many times have they shopped with us, how many times have they done a chargeback.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: Ends up being more times than that, it might be a customer that you wanna fire, right?
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Oh, that does that happen? Can you be like, “Brooke, this is your third chargeback in 18 months. You are no longer welcome at our property.” Does that happen?
Matt Brightman: I would think.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Mean, probably, right? Like…
Matt Brightman: and I’m not necessarily, again, not speaking of employer.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: I don’t know how we necessarily do that in the larger sense, ’cause the bigger the business, the harder it is.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: All right.
Matt Brightman: To keep track that one little client. So I think that is a way. If you have back-end data, you can start tracking that.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Smart, yeah.
Matt Brightman: You’ll have AI start tracking that.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: As well. And you might just cancel that credit card or cancel the rewards program or whatever it might be. So I think that’s probably option one. Option two, what was the question again? Lead me back.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Is there a real way, I don’t know, right? Is there a way to tell a difference between a real complaint
and what’s potentially friendly fraud?
Matt Brightman: The second way is really looking at legitimacy of the claim itself. Now, you can’t really do that until after the fact, so you’re not getting in front of it. But again, when I see things come in, I can kind of tell right off the bat.
It is like, okay, does that seem real? Is this a known issue? I know that this happens on occasion. I’ve seen this in the past. I’ve personally experienced it, so I understand where they’re coming from.
Now, again, maybe it’s not worth that they’re taking it, and we should be able to resolve that. Or can I say like, “No, this is ludicrous.” Like you just know from professional experience and first-hand experience, I’ve used the product, I’ve stayed at the hotel, whatever the case may be, that there’s just no way that that happened, or it didn’t happen to the extent that they said it happened.
And of course, then you have to do, you have to do some research. That does take time. So that’s kind of where you go back to a client and you have to say like, “Let us work through the process. I gotta contact the hotel. I have to contact the third party, that we’re working with. We have to do an investigation and figure out, did something go wrong?
Was it reported on property? Was it not reported on property? Are there any other, situations where somebody else had a, over the same dates had the same issue?” And so we can make a correlation there, right? Like, okay, maybe there’s some legitimacy to these claims. But sometimes the clients aren’t willing to wait.
Again, if they’re talking big money, they want the problem resolved right away, not 30 days while we conduct an internal investigation. And sometimes, I’m, this is certainly not the case with my employer, the company that I work for, but for other companies, my thought is going back to that daily admin tax of being alive. Let us look into it, but then you get so wrapped up in other things, it’s gone. You forget about it, and you’re just like, “Ah, forget
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: It’s not worth me following up.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Right.
Matt Brightman: What percentage is it of that, and do some companies that there’s that breakage? They’ll, eventually they’ll just leave us alone.
If we make it so difficult for them or we just don’t reply, or we just give them little breadcrumbs but never resolve the whole issue, will they eventually just give up?
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Ugh, I hate that, but I also do think it creates a buffer with friendly fraud, right? Because if you know what you’re doing is fraud and it’s gonna take 30 days plus, you’re like, “Eh, it’s not worth all the trouble,” right?
Matt Brightman: Right, right.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Ugh.
Matt Brightman: That’s the thing. So do you go back to the credit card company and you just say, “Hey, I tried to resolve it, but I haven’t gotten an answer in two weeks, or they haven’t replied back with anything substantial in two weeks. I’m fed up, just do it?
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: Maybe the company was upfront and said we need give us 30 days. But then they’re two weeks into it, they’re like, “No, that, that’s enough time,” and then they go back to the credit card company.
[00:26:52] How brands should triage complaints
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Okay, I’m gonna give you a scenario. You’re a therapist, you’re a brand therapist, and I’m laying on the couch and I’m a brand. And you’re advising me, you’re counseling me, you’re giving me therapy. What would you tell me I need to do differently, to triage complaints that could lead to friendly fraud?
But like how would I, what would you just say to me, like, “Brooke, you really need to do X, Y, Z when you’re triaging complaints to make you feel better, to be a better brand”?
Matt Brightman: to do it is to really try and get into the consumer’s head space, right? And to use your own experiences, and that could be from a brand standpoint or the person that’s in charge of running that brand. I think all of us have had these situations.
we’ve experienced them in our personal lives, we’ve experienced them in our professional lives. So let’s get in their head space and really relate to them. What are they dealing with? And again, be people. If you’re a good person, right?
Then we sympathize with the people that are coming to us. Now, there’s also and regulations and terms and conditions, and that’s sometimes the hardest thing, and the easiest answer is to say, “Sorry, that’s against policy.”
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Ugh, I hate that answer, but yes.
Matt Brightman: “I can’t help you.”
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: But sometimes it is like, can I? Like what will this really take? Especially with AI, and this is where AI can help you, where I’ve got this whole email draft. Can I take this, condense it down into a couple sentences, and escalate it to my boss who can say, “Yes, let’s make an exception.”
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yes.
Matt Brightman: Can I ask to be empowered make exceptions on 10% of cases or whatever the case may be, right? So there’s never a clean answer to that question because there are always terms, conditions, policies, budgets.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yes.
Matt Brightman: You can’t give everybody the exception. You have to deal with all of that. But if you can really relate to people on a, you know, personal level and figure out like, this is what they’re going through, this is the experience they had, I do wanna help them out.
Maybe I can’t give them a full refund. But before I can get to that, let’s get to them before they go and they charge back the full amount. And let’s see if we can offer a little bit of a refund or a return stay or a discount on a future purchase or something like that. And I wanna go in, I wanna go into my personal story that I referenced earlier, ’cause I think this, think this is where it really hits.
My wife and I, we were in England to start the summer, and had a great vacation, right? We did London, we did the countryside, all of those things. So as we were leaving London go to the countryside, we rented a car. And it was great. I love renting cars on vacations ’cause I like being in charge. Gives me greater flexibility.
We can do things that you couldn’t do otherwise. So we used Birmingham as our home base when we were doing the countryside. It’s about an hour and a half, two hours from London, and we did the Stonehenge.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Fine.
Matt Brightman: All kinds of other cool things, and then we’d go back to Birmingham, which is the second-biggest city in England, and they have great restaurants and pubs and all of those things.
So it was perfect. On our last day in the countryside before we were gonna return the car and go back to London, we went up to Wales and some other things, and we went to Wrexham. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the football club. I actually, I have a scarf right back here.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yes. I think they’ve become.
Matt Brightman: Football.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: More well known because of, Ryan Reynolds and…
Matt Brightman: Rob McElhenney.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yes.
[00:30:46] Great service builds brand loyalty
Matt Brightman: So they bought this, the soccer team over in Wales back in, I think 2021, and they turned them from what was a terrible team in last place in the lowest division of English soccer to now the championship on the verge of going to the Premier League.
Which is the biggest league in soccer in the entire world, right? So I’ve been following the TV show on Disney and FX and all of that, and following the club pretty much since its inception. I’m a big soccer fan. My other podcast is related to St. Louis City SC. So I do a news commentary comedy podcast, and then my soccer podcast. But so we’re in Wrexham, and we buy all this stuff.
I want the jerseys, I want the scarves, I want pint glasses for my bar in my basement. I get shirts for the kids and bumper stickers, and I drop about $175 worth of gear, and it’s a things are a lot less expensive over there.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: I was gonna say, more than one j-, wait what?
Matt Brightman: Yeah, yeah.
50 bucks.
Like, my City SC jersey probably cost me 180.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Say 175 for a jersey. One jersey, yeah. Okay.
Matt Brightman: There’s a big discrepancy. So I got a bunch of stuff for, it was probably 175 pounds, so it might have been 200 USD.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: Something like that. And we had a great stay, great time in Wrexham. We drive back to Birmingham. We’re leaving in the morning.
I walk outside to start loading up our car, and the car’s gone. It’s missing. I’m like: Are you kidding?
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Oh, no.
Matt Brightman: towed? Well, go through the whole thing. The car was stolen. And so now I gotta deal with that. So again, going back to the daily admin tax of life.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Yeah.
Matt Brightman: how we’re gonna get back to London. So the rental car company, we had some struggles. Like we couldn’t find the car. We weren’t able to get a new rental car. We had to get train tickets, get back to London. All of our souvenirs were in the car.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Bummer. Complete bummer.
Matt Brightman: Right, not, not fun. But all of the Wrexham stuff, plus everything else from from London.
So added it all up on the train ride, about $700 worth of souvenirs. So needless to say, now I’ve got an insurance claim in with my credit card company, ’cause as I mentioned earlier, I put every charge.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: All right.
Matt Brightman: Was on one credit card. And part of the benefits is now it goes through a third party, an insurance company, and they’re currently reviewing all this.
So I’m trying to recoup some of those costs. And AI certainly helping me keep track of all of that and do the back and forth with insurance, ’cause it’s not fun, and it went over my credit card policy and whatnot. But going back to brands, right?
So I wrote Wrexham a nice little email afterwards and told them how great of a time we had visiting, the person, that helped us in the shop. We went, of course, to the pub and had a drink there. And I was like, “We loved it.” I was like, “Unfortunately, our car was stolen.” you know.
And I told them that I was gonna do a podcast episode about it. I told them that I wrote up a blog and it got some good traction. But they were like: “Hey,” like, “this sucks. We get it. Like Birmingham, one bad apple screwed it for you. Like, send us your address, we’ll send you a, little something.” I was like super sweet, and they didn’t need to do that, and maybe I was a little… maybe I thought that that might happen, which is my motivation for emailing them. But what they did went beyond all expectations, and they’ve replaced my entire order.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Wow!
Matt Brightman: I didn’t just get a little koozie, they sent me everything. So they must have, ’cause I didn’t give them my entire order. They must have went in and looked up what my credit card purchase was, everything that I bought. So 175 pounds worth of stuff. Now, I know that’s not their cost.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: But still.
Matt Brightman: That’s how much it costs for a consumer, and then they paid to ship it.
I was gonna say shipping. Yeah, I don’t know how much that cost.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: A fortune, yeah.
Matt Brightman: Yes, a fortune all the way over, replaced my entire order, and now they have a fan for life. So outside of my number team being St. Louis City SC, they are my number two team. I will support them the rest of my life. I did a podcast episode about it, a follow-up. It went… I won’t… it was viral for me. Like, I don’t know what everybody considers viral, but it was about, at the time, 10 times my normal viewership for the podcast.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: For you. Yeah, that’s excellent. Amazing.
Matt Brightman: Yeah. So it was super cool. They got good exposure and they’ve made again a fan for life that I’m sure I will go back and spend more money with them in the future. Now, whether or not I make it back to Wrexham is a whole nother story. But them, it was probably something small, right?
175 bucks plus shipping. But for me, I mean, that turned what was an absolutely terrible, issue on our vacation, and the loss of $700 worth of souvenirs, and the chaos of trying to figure out how we’re gonna move on with our vacation. Thankfully, I’m a savvy traveler. But now into what is an amazing story of brand recognition, brand loyalty and all kinds of different things.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: And the customer experience. They took a terrible experience, and look at you. You’ve, like, I’ve made a podcast, I made a blog. We’re talking about it now. Like, they took what could’ve been a really yucky experience and made it better for you.
Matt Brightman: brands can maybe learn from the Wrexhams of the worlds and the Ryan Reynolds. And you watch that and you think it’s like, “Oh, they’re just cool ’cause they’re on Disney.” But no, they’re actually cool in real life.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: I love that.
Matt Brightman: That, I think that’s the difference with some brands.
Maybe you see what’s happening in social media, but that’s just social media. It’s not real. But then once you see it, whether it’s via social media or another channel, it’s through a friend that had the experience or a celebrity that you trust, I don’t know.
Something, a local celebrity maybe. it can make a big difference. And not only will it cut down on things like chargebacks and friendly fraud, it increases brand loyalty, increases brand awareness. It might seem like the boring part of the job dealing with customer service complaints, but you can make a big difference.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Absolutely can. And it goes also back to visibility that you mentioned earlier, right? Nobody saw that you got your 170 pounds worth of, you know, souvenirs stolen, right? You might tell some people in your circle, but that’s a small circle. Yeah.
Matt Brightman: Right. 25 people in my friends and family group? Right. Now thousands of
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: people.
Because of the customer experience they gave back to you.
Matt Brightman: Yes, exactly.
The
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: ripple effect is much larger.
Matt Brightman: Right. Yeah
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: you for letting me hold you to that dinner promise, coming on the podcast to talk about friendly fraud, and thank you for bringing, you know, nuance and all of the incredible stats that you brought to the topic. ‘Cause, you know, normally this would just get flattened into, “Guests are trying to scam us,” but it is a lot more nuanced than that.
is.
We will include links, so, the podcast episode and the podcast for Matt that he mentioned, we’ll include those links in the show note. But Matt, tell everybody if they wanna connect with you, if they wanna listen to your podcast, where can they find you, where do you hang out, all that stuff.
Matt Brightman: Sure. Well, certainly on a professional level, if you’re into that space, you can find me on LinkedIn, just Matt Brightman, nice and easy. On the personal side of things, it’s NFNPPod.com. That’s where you can find… like I said, I do two podcasts. I do a comedy, a satire news commentary podcast, and then also my soccer podcast, City SC Posse.
Feel free to look me up on there. And then you can find me on all the podcasting sites, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, of the things. So I appreciate the time, Brooke. You know, when you, when you agree to be on a podcast after a couple of drinks in Cancun, you don’t know what it’s gonna turn into, but it’s been so great getting to know you.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Thank you.
Matt Brightman: Your space a little bit, and I do appreciate the time.
More than anything, I just enjoy doing this.
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Oh, good.
Matt Brightman: About the business aspect, but just these conversations whether anybody listens or not, I don’t know what your listenership is, but just the conversations that you and I have, I feel smarter now coming out of this conversation than I did going into it, right?
Brooke Sellas | B Squared Media: Biggest compliment I could ever get. So thank you so much.
y’all.
Here’s what I keep coming back to. The word fraud makes this sound like a security problem, but what Matt is describing is more of a conversational problem. Somewhere between that frustrated comment and the chargeback is a chance to make it right, and a lot of brands are missing that window entirely.
Yes, there is friendly fraud, and people might be using AI to help get stuff for free. But if you know the complaint’s there, if it’s happening in person or on social, and you have the chance to fix it, do that. Because you might end up with a story like Matt’s and Wrexham’s, which is word-of-mouth marketing that literally no other type of campaign can beat.
Something to think about. Until next time at Think Conversation, not Campaign.
Frequently Asked Questions About Friendly Fraud
What is friendly fraud?
Friendly fraud occurs when a customer disputes a charge for a product or service they received. In travel, that could mean disputing charges after completing a hotel stay or trip.
Is AI causing more friendly fraud?
The discussion does not establish that AI is causing an increase in friendly fraud. However, AI can make it easier to understand policies, organize information, and navigate complicated dispute processes. Those capabilities can help legitimate consumers as well as people attempting to exploit a system.
Can better customer service prevent chargebacks?
Better customer service cannot prevent intentional fraud. However, it may prevent legitimate customer complaints from escalating unnecessarily. When customers can reach someone who can investigate and resolve their problem, a chargeback may no longer feel like the easiest option.
Want to hear the full conversation? Listen to the Social Media CX Podcast on YouTube. And if your team is thinking about what responsible social listening in banking or financial services actually looks like at scale, check out the State of Social Care Report 2026.
Finally, as always, Think conversation, not campaign.™
Latest posts by Brooke B. Sellas (See All)
- Is AI Making “Friendly Fraud” Easier? - September 16, 2026
- Your Competitors Can Copy Your Content. They Can’t Copy This. - September 9, 2026
- AI Social Media Management: What Humans Did Better - September 2, 2026
Written by award-winning strategist Brooke Sellas, this weekly 5-minute power-up will help you turn social interactions into loyalty, retention, and revenue.
Written by award-winning strategist Brooke Sellas, this weekly 5-minute power-up will help you turn social interactions into loyalty, retention, and revenue.
Share this article:
