The alarming rise in the incident rate of inappropriate chargebacks ("my fries were cold") really pisses me off as a sane user of contemporary credit card infrastructure. That is, I think of chargebacks as an absolute last resort; essentially a bulwark/ombudsman to protect me from bad actors. It should be used incredibly conservatively, and it should have significant reprocussions if it is used inappropriately; sort of like steep fines for hitting the emergency strip on a subway because someone wont move their backpack.
If chargebacks go away and aren't replaced by something at least as effective, that means that we're losing one of the most significant advantages intrinsic to the payment mechanism: peace of mind.
Chargebacks are in many cases the outsourcing of proper consumer-protection regulation and everyday customer service.
When the merchant fails to deliver or underdelivers -- "my fries were cold" -- appropriate customer service should be meeting the customer at that point and addressing it directly.
Modern systems of unempowered on-the-ground employees and endless loop self-service support stand in the way of that. Consumers naturally respond by pulling the levers that remain, which is invoking the wrath of American Express.
Reasonable people can disagree. What is a customer to do if they think a merchant is not a bad actor, but mistakenly refuses to refund their purchase? A chargeback seems like the fastest and cheapest option to resolve the dispute.
If chargebacks go away and aren't replaced by something at least as effective, that means that we're losing one of the most significant advantages intrinsic to the payment mechanism: peace of mind.