How to Do a Chargeback on a Credit Card: Deadlines, Filing, and Rights

To do a chargeback on a credit card, send your card issuer a written dispute within 60 days of the statement that first shows the charge, identify the transaction, and explain why you believe it is wrong.¹ Federal law then forces the issuer to investigate, and while the case is open you do not have to pay the disputed amount and the issuer cannot report it as delinquent.² The rules come from the Fair Credit Billing Act and Regulation Z.

What You Can Dispute

The Fair Credit Billing Act treats a wide range of problems as “billing errors” you can challenge:

A charge you did not authorize.
A charge for the wrong amount.
A charge for goods or services you never received, or that did not match what you agreed to buy.
A math error on your statement.
A payment or merchant refund that never posted.¹

Quality complaints, like a defective product or substandard service, run under a separate provision (15 U.S.C. § 1666i) that lets you assert against the issuer the same claims you would have against the merchant. That route requires a good-faith attempt to resolve the problem with the merchant first, and by its terms applies to transactions over $50 that took place in your home state or within 100 miles of your mailing address. Broad exceptions to those limits exist for online purchases, affiliated merchants, and issuer-solicited transactions.³⁴

A chargeback is not the same as asking a merchant for a refund. It is a formal legal challenge to the issuer’s right to collect the charge from you, and once you file, the issuer must follow specific procedures.

The 60-Day Deadline

Timing decides most disputes. Your written notice must reach the card issuer within 60 days after the issuer sends (or makes available online) the first billing statement that contains the error.¹ Miss the window and the federal protections described below fall away. The issuer has no obligation to investigate.

The clock runs from the statement date, not the transaction date. If a subscription charge slipped past you for months, you can still challenge whatever falls inside the 60-day window on the most recent qualifying statement, but not the older ones.

How to File the Dispute

Send Written Notice to the Right Address

The statute requires written notice sent to the address your issuer designates for billing inquiries. That address is different from the payment address, and your issuer must disclose it on or with your statement.¹ A note on a payment stub does not count. Certified mail with return receipt gives you clean proof of delivery.

Most issuers also accept disputes through their online portal, mobile app, or phone line, and many cases resolve smoothly through those channels. The statute itself speaks in terms of “written notice” to the designated address, so if things get contentious, only a properly addressed letter guarantees your full statutory protections. A common approach is to file online or by phone for speed, then follow up in writing.

What Your Notice Must Say

Federal law requires three things in the notice:

Your name and account number.
A statement that you believe the bill contains an error, and the dollar amount involved.
The reason you believe it is an error.¹

You do not have to prove the error at this stage. You just have to explain why you believe one exists.

Documentation That Strengthens Your Case

The statute asks for the three elements above, but a fuller file speeds up the investigation and improves your odds. Collect the transaction date and the merchant name exactly as it appears on your statement, along with receipts, order confirmations, shipping records, or screenshots of the product description. If you contacted the merchant first (required for quality complaints under the claims-and-defenses rule), keep a log of calls and copies of emails.

Reason Codes

When the issuer opens your case, it assigns a card network reason code such as “merchandise not received” or “unauthorized transaction.” That code determines what evidence the merchant will be asked to provide. You do not need to know or pick the code yourself. The issuer categorizes the dispute from the details you supply.

Your Rights While the Investigation Runs

Once a proper billing error notice reaches the issuer, a set of protections kicks in under Regulation Z and stays in place until the investigation ends:

You do not have to pay the disputed amount, and the issuer cannot try to collect it or related finance charges.⁵
The issuer cannot report the disputed amount as delinquent to any credit bureau or threaten to do so.⁶
The issuer cannot close or restrict your account solely because you filed the dispute.²
If you pay the rest of your bill minus the disputed amount, you keep your grace period on new purchases and owe no finance charges on the amount in dispute.⁷

The issuer can still reduce your available credit by the disputed amount and can keep the charge on your statement, as long as it notes payment is not required while the dispute is pending.⁵ You still owe the undisputed portion of your balance on time.

How Long the Issuer Has

The issuer must send you a written acknowledgment within 30 days of receiving your dispute, unless it resolves the whole matter in that same window. It then has two complete billing cycles, and no more than 90 days, from receipt of your notice to finish the investigation.⁵ “Two complete billing cycles” means two full cycles that begin after the issuer receives your notice.

Many issuers apply a provisional credit while the case is open, which temporarily removes the disputed amount from your balance. That is common industry practice, not a legal requirement. The regulation says the issuer “may” provide a temporary correction.⁵

Behind the scenes, the card network passes evidence between the merchant’s bank and your issuer. The merchant is given a deadline to submit documentation showing the charge was valid, generally 20 to 45 days depending on the network.

If the issuer finds a billing error occurred, it must correct your account, credit any related finance charges, and send written notice of the correction.² If it concludes the charge was valid, it must explain in writing why, and tell you how much you owe and when payment is due.

If the Issuer Denies Your Dispute

A denial is not the end. You can write back within 10 days (or by the payment due date, whichever is later) stating that you still refuse to pay because you continue to dispute the charge.⁸ The issuer can begin collection at that point, but if it reports the amount to a credit bureau it must also report that you dispute it, and it must tell you which bureaus it contacted.⁶

You have options beyond the dispute process itself:

File a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which supervises card issuers and can step in when one fails to follow the dispute rules.
Use the claims-and-defenses rule to sue the issuer if you could have sued the merchant for the underlying problem, subject to the limits described earlier.⁸
File in small claims court against the merchant directly for amounts within your local limit.

When Not to File

Chargebacks are for real billing errors and legitimate grievances a merchant refuses to fix. Filing one on a purchase you actually made and received, sometimes called friendly fraud or first-party misuse, has consequences. Merchants track customers who file chargebacks, maintain internal blacklists, and are increasingly sharing data across networks to spot patterns.⁹ A pattern of disputes can trigger account reviews, loss of chargeback privileges, or account closure on the issuer’s side. And if a merchant successfully rebuts a weak dispute, the charge returns to your statement along with any finance charges you avoided during the case.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666 – Correction of Billing Errors
2
eCFR. 12 CFR 1026.13 – Billing Error Resolution
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666i – Assertion by Cardholder Against Card Issuer of Claims and Defenses
4
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 12 CFR Part 1026 – Regulation Z – Section 1026.12 Special Credit Card Provisions
5
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 12 CFR Part 1026 – Regulation Z – Section 1026.13 Billing Error Resolution
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666a – Regulation of Credit Reports
7
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Can They Charge Me Interest on a Charge I Told Them I Did Not Make
8
Federal Trade Commission. Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges
9
Mastercard. Sellers Beware – Getting to the Bottom of First-Party Fraud