Visa, Mastercard & Amex Chargeback

What does chargeback cover and how much can I claim for?

You can use chargeback for any of the following circumstances:

Company goes into administration – the company you purchased from has gone bust.
Quality of item – the goods were not as described or were defective.
Non-delivery – the goods you’ve paid for were not received as promised and the company refuses to refund you.
Technical issue – expired authorisation or a processing error by the bank.
Clerical error – being charged multiple times or being billed for the incorrect amount.
Fraud – you have been the victim of fraud and did not authorise the purchase.

How much can I claim for?

As a rule, it doesn’t matter how much – or how little – you spend on a card or what you spend it on; if you run into a dispute that chargeback can help with, the sum will be covered. There is a £10 minimum spend if you’ve bought goods with a Mastercard card but no such terms exist with Visa or American Express.

Crucially, this means it also covers you for smaller value purchases on a credit card worth less than £100 – something Section 75 doesn’t do. These rules are much more generous than the sums allowed with Section 75, which only protects you if you spend between £100 and £30,000.

If your purchase is between £100 and £30,000 and you’ve paid on credit card, you’d be better off using Section 75 to claim money back.

I managed to claim £1,510 back from NatWest when Lowcostholidays went into liquidation. I had paid for the holiday with two different debit cards, and used your debit card chargeback template letter to claim my money back. In the end, it took around five weeks to get my money back. Thank you MoneySavingExpert.

What is the chargeback process?

If you’ve run into a dead end with the firm you purchased from, such as a refusal to refund a double payment or you can’t get a reply, then you can start the chargeback process.

You can only start a chargeback claim when you’ve exhausted all other avenues with the retailer.

How long do you have to file a chargeback claim?

The rules set by Visa, Mastercard and American Express only usually give you 120 days to get a claim in – and the clock usually starts ticking from the date of the payment, though it does depend on the type of situation. Here are some examples:

Broken goodsYou buy a bicycle and take it for a first spin two weeks later only to discover its brakes are faulty – and the retailer won’t help sort it. The deadline starts from the date you bought it.
Failed deliveryA delivery date for your ordered goods isn’t met, the item never arrives and complaint calls to the firm go unanswered. The deadline starts with the date of the original missed delivery.
Collapsed companyYou book a flight or trip with a firm that then goes bust before you take it. The deadline starts from the date the flight was due to take off or the holiday to start.

To start a claim, call your bank card provider and ask to dispute the transaction. It can then start the procedure of claiming the money back from the supplier’s bank.

Some claims CAN be made after 120 days, but the longest cut-off period is 540 days from the date of the initial transaction.

Thanks to your advice we got £890 back from Santander/Visa for repairs to two valuable clocks which were lost when the shop went into liquidation. The 120 days limit had long passed but I read your article saying that the time limit could be extended to 540 days. I tried again and was turned down. I took it to the Financial Ombudsman and they got me the money back.

It’s worth noting most bank staff don’t really know about this procedure, so you may need to explain it to them. There’s no upper limit to the payouts though Mastercard has a minimum spend of £10.

If you’re told to put your request in writing here’s a template letter to help:

FREE template letter! We’ve put together a chargeback refund template letterto help you complain (problem opening the letter?).

After being informed a tile company to whom we’d given a huge deposit had gone into liquidation, we have been successful in receiving nearly £2,000 back through our bank using the chargeback scheme. The whole amount was credited to our account within 48 hours.

How long does it take to get a refund?

Unfortunately, there’s no specific timeframe when it comes to getting your money back. Once you’ve applied for chargeback, it’s up to your card provider to contact the supplier’s bank to process the refund, which could take time.

However, it should not be an open-ended request. If the whole process takes longer than eight weeks, take your case to the Financial Ombudsman. Even though the claim itself should be completed in eight weeks, it may take longer to receive the money in your account.

Warning. Money refunded via chargeback can be ‘clawed back’

Chargeback can be a very effective way of getting a refund from your bank for a service you haven’t received. Yet it is important to understand that, in practice, you are disputing a payment.

And that means the firm which you are depriving of your payment has an opportunity to dispute what you’re doing. If not, people could do a chargeback even after receiving perfectly good items. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. During the coronavirus crisis, we’ve seen an increase of clawback cases over travel refunds. Here’s how it works:

Chargeback can be clawed back from your account as long as it’s within 45 days (sometimes it’s a shorter deadline) – so be careful before spending it. If the firm successfully disputes your claim (for example, if the firm submits compelling evidence in its favour), the money can be taken back out of your account or off your card.

With Visa and Mastercard, the time limit for a chargeback claim to be disputed by a firm is 45 days, while with American Express it is 20 days – so after that, you can be pretty confident the money is yours to keep.
This is most likely to happen in unclear situations. So if you’re doing a chargeback for non-receipt of goods from a firm that’s gone bust, you’re likely to be pretty safe.

However, if you’re doing it off a travel agent which has been arguing it can’t refund you money until it gets it off the airline, then it’s quite possible it may dispute your chargeback and ask for a clawback.

That doesn’t mean you are wrong to do the chargeback – your contract is with the firm you paid, and if you haven’t received goods (or some of the goods), then you are due the money. It’s more just to be aware that there may be a ‘fight’ over it.
If your chargeback is clawed back, you can fight it. There are two main ways to dispute a chargeback clawback. The first is to go to your bank and make a formal complaint about the fact that the money has been taken. Hopefully this will work, but if not and your complaint fails, you have a right to go to the free Financial Ombudsman Service, which will adjudicate.

Alternatively, a lesser-known method is to use American Express, Mastercard or Visa’s own (depending on your card) dispute process and arbitration. If you do that though, as the Financial Ombudsman doesn’t cover those firms, you can’t then appeal to it.

We are currently doing more work on the arbitration processes and will add information here when we have it. In the meantime, we’d suggest you try the more well-known ombudsman route.

Chargeback successes…

The collapse of online travel agency Lowcostholidays and airline Monarch hit hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers, with stories emerging of family trips, honeymoons and destination weddings thrown into chaos. However, many were able to get their money back thanks to chargeback.

Banks have also already started paying chargebacks following Thomas Cook’s collapse.

Here’s a Thomas Cook success story and some previous wins from MoneySavers:

My wife and I recently booked Thomas Cook flight-only tickets for next June, paying with my Barclays Visa debit card. On Monday, just hours after Thomas Cook’s collapse, I received a text from Barclays saying it was aware I’d paid for services from Thomas Cook which were not going to be delivered. Barclays suggested I call the bank on a dedicated number. I phoned and the helpline rep started a dispute case with Visa on our behalf. On Tuesday – the day after – the full cost of the tickets was refunded to my bank account. A great result and praise for Barclays for their efficient service!

I read your info on chargeback and contacted my bank immediately. I filled out their form online and received a full refund of £500 within 5 days for flights I’d purchased with Monarch Airlines via my debit card.

What to do if your claim is rejected

If you’re dissatisfied with how long your bank is taking to deal with your claim or you’re unhappy with the outcome, you can raise a complaint with your provider. It then has eight weeks to handle your complaint.

If your claim is rejected all together, ask for a ‘letter of deadlock’ from your provider. This is essentially a final response, which you can then take to the Financial Ombudsman to make a complaint. This is completely free and well worth doing, there’s a simple claim form on its website and details on how it can help in the Financial Rights guide.

You won’t need a letter of deadlock provided it’s been more than eight weeks since your claim to your provider. In this instance, you can go straight to the Financial Ombudsman without one.

Chargeback vs Section 75 – which should you use?

Although chargeback is a really useful feature, Section 75 is far stronger when it comes to credit card purchases:

The key difference is that when you complain under Section 75, the credit card company itself is legally – and jointly – liable with a retailer for purchases between £100 and £30,000, so by law you don’t even have to try the retailer first.
Section 75 also pays out the full cost even if you’d just put a 1p deposit on your card, and paid the rest in cash. This isn’t the case with chargeback where, if you did the same and had to make a claim, you’d only get back the amount you originally put on the card.
With chargeback it’s just about the Visa/Mastercard/Amex process, and that’s nowhere near as weighty – in effect, it’s a customer service promise to get your money back if things go wrong with the goods supplier.
Also, you’re usually not covered for problems that emerge way after receipt of items. It’s mainly for what you spot instantly. Say a TV goes kaput two years in, you won’t usually be eligible for any help from chargeback.

Despite not having any legal clout, it does have benefits over Section 75:

As well as working on any amount on a debit card, and sub-£100 and £30,000+ purchases on a credit card (where Section 75 doesn’t), it will cover you when buying via an agent, which Section 75 doesn’t always do. This includes third parties like PayPal, but there are rules to making this work.
For Section 75, there must be a direct link between the product paid for and the debt. If there is an intermediary or agent, that link can be broken which invalidates it. For example, if you bought a holiday on your credit card through a travel agent and the holiday firm went bust, you’d likely not be covered. However, if the travel agent went bust, you would be covered.
In general, chargeback can be more effective here as holidaymakers’ successes with the collapsed Lowcostholidays travel agent showed.