If you have paid for a service or an item but never received one, or it arrives in poor condition, you might be frustrated. Justifiably you want your money back, and you may also try to dispute the shopping with your credit card issued via the chargeback process.
Beware that chargebacks are not the same as a refund. However, both result in receiving credit for your order or because of fraudulent and suspicious activity on your account.
Let’s see what chargebacks are and how it differs from the refund. Also, let’s see how to ask one if something goes wrong or you notice a red flag on our credit card statement.
What is a chargeback?
Chargebacks stand for a consumer protection tool. It allows consumers to get their money back for fraudulent charges or purchases that went wrong. The whole province goes via the chargeback companies and your card issuer.
Once you have noticed a transaction that doesn’t look familiar or doesn’t comply with the amount of your recent order, you may be in a position to request the dispute of a transaction. In principle, there are two options for transaction dispute. These are refund and chargeback. The difference is that the refund comes directly from the merchant, and the chargeback comes from your credit card issuer.
The first reflex in your dispute is to go directly to the merchant or service seller and request a refund. This process may require bringing the item directly to the store or returning it via the mail, all with a copy of your receipt. Sometimes you may be able to get a refund online.
For example, if you have purchased an item from Amazon and it didn’t live up to standard, you can begin a dispute directly via the Amazon customer service through chat or email, and you can explain what the issue is. It could be a matter of minutes to receive the refund for your purchase. But, unfortunately, that may not always be the case. There could be a situation where amazon doesn’t refund the purchase, and that’s the moment when you have to turn to the chargeback companies.
The next thing you can do is to start the chargeback process. You initiate a chargeback directly with the credit card issuer or chargeback company hoping that the transaction will be reversed.
Prerequisites for initiating the chargeback
Here are some prerequisites for initiating the process of chargeback:
- Fraud and unauthorized charges on your credit cards
- Itimes that were never delivered
- Damaged items
- Service that doesn’t live up to standards
- Incorrect charges
How to request a chargeback
You may be able to dispute the transaction with the credit card issuer or to ask for help from the chargeback companies. The latter is more convenient since these companies are specialized and now know specifically how to handle this kind of dispute and the whole process. To submit a chargeback, you need to submit all the necessary documentation related to receipts, invoices, contracts and all the communication you had with the particular merchant. These disputes can last up to 90 days.
