Set up in the year 1974, the Fair Credit Billing Act was enacted to provide security to consumers and to protect them from unfair credit card practices. Ever since then, this act has helped to solve a number of credit card disputes and have helped consumers get a fair verdict to reclaim their hard-earned money. Here is a brief introduction to the various procedures of settling disputes under the Fair Credit Billing Act.
- Time frame of dispute: As a consumer, you have a time frame of about 60 days to dispute a certain charge. This charge can be against the card issuer. The 60-day time frame begins from the day you get your credit card bill. To take up a certain charge with the Fair Credit Billing Act, you need to ensure that it is over $50 to be eligible for a dispute.
- Eligibility criteria: The eligibility criteria for you to raise a dispute should be one of the following reasons: an unauthorized transaction, the display is of an incorrect amount or an incorrect date, calculation errors, or there was a bad customer service experience.
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- Filing of complaint: The complaint needs to be sent to the issuer in writing or in the mail. To get the correct format of a complaint, a sample letter is available on the official website of the Federal Trade Commission.
- Investigations: The procedure after filing the complaint is of 30 days when the card issuer will acknowledge the receipt of a particular complaint. After this, they get two billing cycles to complete the investigation, if it needs to be carried out. During this time, the issuer cannot collect payment or even charge interest on it. In the meanwhile, they can report it to credit bureaus as a late payment. However, it is important to remember that these limitations pertain only to a particular transaction and not the other charges that have accumulated over time wherein the interest can be levied.
- Post-investigation: After the card issuer’s investigation of the dispute and the proof of the invalidity, the issuer must rectify it while returning any interest rates that may have been charged to the customer. Upon investigation, if it is found that there was no error and the payment made is correct, then the issuer needs to give an explanation for this conclusion and also upon request, produce documents proving the same.
- Request for reinvestigation: In the meanwhile, if the consumer is still not satisfied with the investigation, then he can challenge the results within ten days of receiving the results. After this, the issuer needs to add a note of the charge. During this reinvestigation, the issuer can still try to collect the payments.
- Additional feature: An additional feature of this act is that if a card is lost or stolen, then the request for canceling or blocking the card can be made by phone instead of writing. If an unauthorized purchase is made, the issuer is liable to pay up to $50. If an authorized person makes an unauthorized payment, then the issuer is not responsible for this. The latter charges do not come under the Fair Credit Billing Act.
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