Credit Card Chargeback: Step By Step

What is a chargeback?

It’s a credit card dispute. You can apply to your credit card company and dispute a transaction.

More specifically, a credit card chargeback is a feature of VISA and Mastercard credit cards that enable your bank to deal directly with the supplier’s bank to attempt to obtain a refund for the transaction in question. In a chargeback, your bank does not deal with the supplier (the person or merchant that you bought from). Rather, your bank deals directly with the supplier’s bank, which makes it possible to get a refund even if the supplier in question has gone bankrupt or refuses to give you a refund.

The Chargeback Process

As easy as a chargeback might sound, the process is far from being easy. Multiple parties are involved in the chargeback process, which might further delay the decision-making process. To make things easier for you, we use a step-by-step approach to illustrate the chargeback process in simple terms.

Step 1 – Initiating a chargeback request

The first step of the chargeback process is to initiate a chargeback request with the issuer of your VISA card – most probably your bank. By now, you might have already contacted the relevant supplier to inform him of the dispute and the supplier might well have turned a blind eye to your claims or in a worst-case scenario, the supplier might have filed for a Chapter 11 and is no longer in operation. In any case, the first step is to call or contact your bank by any other means to provide the necessary details to your bank and initiate a chargeback to win back your money. 

Step 2 – Issuer reviews the chargeback request

As we discussed earlier, a chargeback request is handled by your card issuing institution and the supplier’s bank. As such, the issuing bank of your card will thoroughly investigate the matter from their side before taking any further actions. As you might have realized, there is nothing you can do to speed up this process as the investigation process will be entirely carried out by your bank. The good thing is that the card-issuing bank will, at most times, take the side of the consumer at this stage.

Step 3 – Issuer decides how to proceed

In the unlikely event that the card issuer has found the fault to be on your side, which we highlight as unlikely since the card issuer has very limited data at this stage, the issuer will decline your request. However, most of the time, the card issuer will do the exact opposite by granting you a conditional refund. Thereafter, the card issuer will contact the acquirer or the bank that is associated with the merchant’s account, to provide them with the chargeback data to investigate the matter further.

Step 4 – The supplier’s bank takes further action

The supplier’s bank notifies the supplier and then proceeds to approve the chargeback request on their own if clear signs of a dispute are present. However, the merchant has the option to challenge the chargeback request initiated by a cardholder on the premise the merchant has done everything right about delivering the product or service paid for by the consumer.

Step 5 – Merchant provides supporting documents

If the merchant believes that the chargeback request is illegal, or doesn’t apply to this specific transaction, the merchant will provide any proof that he has to his bank to block the chargeback request. At this stage, the acquirer, or the merchant’s bank, will send all the relevant documents and information to the issuer of your card to arrive at a final decision regarding the chargeback request. 

Step 6 – Issuer bank takes the final decision

It’s judgment day, and the issuer of your card will take into account all relevant information, including the documents submitted by the merchant, and decide whether your chargeback request is deemed fair. In case the issuer determines that your chargeback request was based on fairgrounds, you get to keep the conditional refund received earlier in the process. However, in the unfortunate event that the issuer bank determines the merchant has a fair and clear case, the case would be closed in favor of the merchant and the conditional refund issued to you earlier would then be reverted.  If new information emerges indicating a fraudulent activity by the merchant or information pointing that the merchant has not kept his side of the bargain in the transaction, the issuing bank of your card has the option to initiate a second chargeback request as well.

Warning to the wise

It is NOT an easy process for the unfamiliar. As straight forward as it might sound, chargeback requests take time to process and it’s vital to provide accurate information to your bank and to reply to the claims of the disputing company in order for you to win the chargeback. Specifically if you are dealing with a company that is well versed in the chargeback business and even more so if they are practicing dishonestly or unethically. In cases like these it will be close to impossible for a novice to succesfully win a chargeback.

Time to Call The Pro’s

That’s why there are professionals that offer there services with chargebacks Moneybackhero.com is the trusted name in chargeback services and fund recovery and you can get a free consultation by by filling out this form. One of our in-house experts will reach out to you to discuss your chargeback request, and as a personal advisor, your rep will guide you through the entire process by helping you find supporting documents, advising you on which documents to submit to your bank, and what and when to reply and ultimately get your money back into your bank account.

What’s Covered in a chargeback?

Among the things covered under chargebacks are the bankruptcy of a supplier or merchant, defective goods, non-delivery of paid for goods and services, clerical errors involving duplicate charges, and fraudulent transactions authorized on your card.

The good thing about a credit card chargeback is that it addresses any of your transactions completed from your VISA or Mastercard credit cards, regardless of what the item purchased was.

We warn you against being over-excited about this cool feature that you just learned.

A lot of individuals call us after they’ve already tried to raise a chargeback and have failed, at that point we can no longer help them. Visa and Mastercard both allow for a chargeback to be raised once. If it fails, your money is gone forever.

It’s not legal case

A Visa chargeback is not the legal procedure to claim your money by any stretch of the imagination, which means that there is no guarantee that your bank would be able to get a refund from your supplier’s bank. This is where it becomes tricky, and probably a reason why you should work with an experienced financial advisor to help you out in the process to get it done right the first time.

When the going gets tough, let MoneyBackHero help you

Red Adair once famously said, “If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait till you hire an amateur”. While he must have been thinking about hiring amateur firefighters, the same theory applies to wealth recovery and scam protection as well. If you still didn’t get the hang of it, the basic idea is simple; hiring an amateur is much more expensive than hiring a professional because a professional will get the job done for you. MoneyBack Hero is an expert in the field of helping you avoid scams and in the unfortunate event you do fall victim to a scam or a fraud, MoneyBack Hero helps you recover your losses.

How much is covered?

Nothing more or nothing less than the transaction amount is covered under chargebacks for VISA cards. 

Time limits

As a cardholder, it’s always a best practice to check your monthly statement without fail. However, many cardholders have fallen victim to not inspecting their card statements in a timely manner, only to find a dispute too late, which inevitably leads to financial losses. Timely inspection of card statements is vital to initiate chargebacks as well since you only have 120 days from the day the transaction is processed to initiate a chargeback with your card issuer bank. Once you initiate a chargeback, the long and lengthy process begins and generally, the merchant is given up to 30 days to challenge the chargeback request if there is reasonable ground to do so.

Even though the merchant has only up to 30 days to challenge the chargeback request, do not expect your money to safely arrive in your bank account right after 30 days have elapsed since you initiated the chargeback request. The issuing bank might take a couple of days or even more to dispute the matter with the supplier’s bank, and on the other hand, the final process of validating the chargeback request might take several months based on the response of the merchant. At the end of the day, justice should prevail and the supplier should be provided with adequate time to respond to and state his objection if he opts to do so. 

Chargebacks on Scams

You might be surprised to know the number of investment scams that occur around the world on a daily basis that involve payments processed from cards. While the chargeback process involving money paid to a reputed merchant like Amazon or any other established company could in some cases turn out to be a relatively straight forward, chargebacks associated with payments processed by investment scammers need a different approach. MoneyBack Hero has already helped hundreds of victims of investment scams, and this experience will be brought to the table when advising you of how to proceed with your chargeback request.

More importantly, MoneyBackHero.com focuses on getting the job done as we hate scammers as much as you do. MoneyBackHero shares a mutual interest with its clients as the reason for MoneyBackHero’s existence is to make life difficult for investment scammers. Without limiting our services to dealing with your bank, MoneyBackHero will communicate with the relevant party involved in the transaction to leverage our expertise in the field of wealth recovery to exert pressure on them to provide you with a refund of your money. 

Why choose us?

What distinguishes MoneyBack Hero from other money recovery services is that we work with transparency and take pride in keeping you up to date of our findings and the progress of the chargeback process. We want to educate you on the process of chargebacks as well. Unlike other wealth recovery companies whose primary objective is to make money, MoneyBackHero was established for the primary purpose of fighting fraud and online trading scams. We do this by contributing the valuable ability to get money back from scams.  We’re also at the forefront of the fight to create a state of society where forex, crypto and all other online trading companies are held accountable and investors and customers are protected. This has become more possible with the introduction of Moneybackhero’s services in helping victims to get their money back.