February 2,2009
-
News: Haggling for Dollars.
Most people don't find fun in haggling for things but, when it comes to their hard-fought financial resources being sapped away by bad credit card charges, they're willing to give it a go. The biggest problem here is that, most of us don't know how to go about it. So, it could be very helpful for credit card consumers to learn some of the rules and ropes in disputing credit card charges.
We do have some protections from the government but, when it comes to credit cards, those protection seem to fall short of giving of guarantees. Sure, we have the right to dispute credit card charges but, we have no given expectation of cut and dry results. Investigations must take place but, what ever becomes of them?
Take a case where a man was out $130,000 for a deal gone bad. Although the product was paid in full with a credit card, it was never delivered. Working with the lending bank (big bank) the investigation began. Shortly after that (already unacceptably late), some of the product was delivered. Following the council of the lending bank and, because the man had already shopped else in the meantime, the partial shipment was turned down. The charges were reduced down to only $46,000 but the man still had no goods to show for it.
Months passed by until the credit card association (MasterCard) got involved. To the man's dismay, the card association decided in favor of the merchant. As it turned out, because the merchant finally did deliver the goods (albeit so late that the man had already shopped elsewhere) and the man had rejected the shipment, the consumer lost out.
Doesn't seem fair, does it? The man is responsible for $46,000 in credit card charges but has no product to show for it (which he couldn't use, even if he did). How much would it have been worth to this man if he could have known some of the safeguards and procedures up front and avoided the countless hours of frustration (and the $46,000 charge on his credit card)? The parallel series called: "CC Disputes" will address some of these issues.