The auto-submit default loses cases the merchant could have won.
The dispute screen in your processor's dashboard is a piece of software designed by your processor. That sounds obvious until you ask whose interests the design is optimized for. The button that completes a dispute response in 2 clicks, the default that pulls stored shipping records and submits them without expert review, the absence of any way to draft a custom letter inline: each makes the dispute easier to dispose of and harder to actually win. The design optimizes for case-disposal throughput on the processor's side and undercuts the merchant's win rate as a side effect.
The default fails worst on the cases where evidence quality matters most. Take a 13.1 dispute, where the customer claims merchandise was not received. To win, you need address verification, post-purchase login, and prior-order history. The auto-letter sends only the carrier tracking number, which the issuer has already seen and discounted. The same template gets applied to 10.4 fraud cases and 11.3 authorisation disputes, where the evidence required is different, with the same mediocre results.
None of this means abandoning the default. Set a rule that diverts cases above a price threshold or under specific reason codes to expert review before submission. Most processors expose this in their dispute settings. The configuration takes 15 minutes, and the win rate moves within a quarter.