Let's imagine for a moment that you've just received your credit card
bill in the mail, and you think the only purchase you made with it the
previous month was at the gas station. What do you do then, when you
find three purchases at Old Navy, and a bunch of other purchases you
know you didn't make?
Do you know what rights you have regarding fraudulent purchases on a
credit card in your name? How about your rights if you purchased an
item with a credit card, but never received the products you ordered?
If these problems have not happened to you yet, you are lucky. These
are common situations credit card users face every day, and it can
help you to know before something like this happens to you what your
rights are, and what your responsibilities are in the matter.
When You Are Not Satisfied With Purchase
One of the benefits of using a credit card to make purchases is the
additional protection they provide if you make a purchase that you are
unsatisfied with. For example, maybe you used a credit card to pay
the contractors who were hired to repair your shower leak, but there
is still water on the bathroom floor. Obviously, you are not
satisfied with the work they completed, and you don't want to pay for
it. The problem is, you charged it on a credit card and now the bill
has come!
Your first step is to contact the contractor, or the merchant you made
your purchase from. Most of the time, the merchant is more than happy
to replace a broken item, perform the service again or refund the
purchase back to your credit card. If you make a phone call, document
it and follow up with a letter to cover your tracks in the event the
merchant doesn't follow through.
If for some reason the merchant decides they are not going to do
anything to correct the situation, you should immediately contact your
credit card company and report the information. Don't wait to report
the problem on a later date- most credit card companies require you to
report a problem as soon as you see it on the statement in order to
benefit from any of the protection they provide.
Charges You Didn't Make
Did you know that federal law is involved in helping limit credit
cardholder's responsibilities for charges on credit cards that they
did not make themselves? The Fair Credit Billing Act actually limits
your responsibility to just $50 for any charges you did not authorize.
If you open your credit card bill and find charges not made by you,
there is a process you should follow to get it resolved as quickly and
painlessly as possible.
Firstly, call the credit card company and explain the charges that
were not made by you. They will give you instructions as to what to
do next.
Then, you should take the time to find and review all of your recent
credit card statements in case there were other charges that you may
have missed.
The credit card company will most likely ask you to sign a form to
confirm that you were not the one who made the charges in dispute.
Don't use the card while you are disputing charges.
Once you finally get a resolution and get the charges removed, be sure
to order your credit report from all of the major credit bureaus in
order to make sure that the record has been updated there- because
chances are the time it takes to resolve fraudulent charges will have
caused late payments on that credit card that may have been reported.
You can get more information about credit card disputes from the Fair
Trade Commission, http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/fcb.pdf.
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