February 2,2009
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Credit Card Disputes (101), Pt.3
– The right strategy does it all.From almost the get-go, limitations begin to set in. A speeding ticked over a stop sign can be thrown out. So it is with credit card disputes. If you file a credit card dispute over one area and the fault turns out to be in another category instead, you may lose your case. Right now, there are well over a dozen credit card dispute categories and, deciding on which one to use can be inundating, at best. Some of the categories are things like:
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"Charged merchandise was not received"
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"Charged merchandise was received damaged"
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"Wrong merchandise was received"
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"Recurring credit card transaction won't go away, even after cancelled"
Who's to say rather a recurring transaction was cancelled by the rules; whose rules; at what moment should the cancellation go into effect, and on and on...
To avoid all this junk (which can be tied up for several months) the safest thing to do is go for the biggest ‘blanket' you can get. That would be "unauthorized transactions". Who would be the ‘authority'? The consumer, of course. Only the consumer can authorize transactions on a credit card.
That's not all...the card association also provides protections for this category that don't apply to most of the others. A ‘canceled' transaction doesn't hold near as much sway as an ‘unauthorized' transaction. To boot, federal, state and major card associations (like VISA and MasterCard) have created mandates limiting the liability of a credit card holder to only $50 for ‘unauthorized charges (hence the earlier $50 minimum).
In addition to these protections, many banks don't even come after the $50. There is also an escape from the 60-day rule for filing the dispute in writing, when unauthorized credit card charges can be proven. The convenient method of a phone call will usually suffice. Even the 60-day notification can be waived in some cases.
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