Last month, I decided to try a new service and booked an appointment via its mobile app. I received a confirmation of the amount I would be charged, and entered my Bank of America credit card to authorize the charge. Everything was so clear that I didn’t bother to take a screen-grab of the payment page.
Surprise on Credit Card Statement
Imagine my surprise when I was looking through my credit card statement and saw a $90 charge for the service instead of a $15 charge.
I called up the merchant’s customer service department to resolve the billing error. The representative took down my details and said she will need to send it to another department for research. She promised someone would get back to me within 24 hours. I didn’t get a call back.
I wrote in the following week and got a callback that they received my email. You guessed it: Someone will get back to me with an update within 24 hours.
I don’t know why I’m so trusting and I kept falling for that line. (I didn’t hear back, either).
Opening a credit card dispute
When there is a charge dispute, the recommended method is to resolve it with the merchant first. Since I hadn’t gotten far with mine, I decided that I’ll just open my first ever credit card charge dispute with Bank of America.
During the online dispute workflow, it asked for the reason for the dispute. I indicated that it was an authorized charge, but for the wrong amount. It asked if I had a receipt. I didn’t. I thought it was strange that the dispute form never asked me for the amount I authorized, but I submitted the dispute request anyway.
Fast Result
The next day, I got a couple of messages from Bank of America. One message was an acknowledgement of my dispute request. And then a surprise, another message indicating that they have closed my dispute.
They had already issued me an adjustment of $75 to my account. Maybe the refund process was already in the works with the merchant (otherwise, they wouldn’t know how much to adjust?) I can’t be sure. Either way, I was just surprised by how quickly this credit card charge dispute got resolved.
Have you had a credit card dispute that got resolved quickly, or one that dragged on longer than expected?
If it’s low enough and you haven’t done many disputes, they’ll just approve it. It’s not worth the hassle of going through everything.
It costs them a lot less to take your word for it on a charge of that amount than to spend time trying to gather the validating evidence. However, if I read this correctly, the tricky part is that our honorable blogger didn’t tell them the amount being disputed. So either someone in the original service sucked at closing communications loops with customers or someone from BoA was very sharp and put 2+2 together.
Always glad to read a successful CC dispute. So many people abuse the privilege that I’m always concerned the CC issuers will make the dispute process much more onerous. Settling a dispute with the hardware store in your town is one thing, but disputes with far-flung entities are far more complex. And often the customer is ignored, necessitating some help from the credit card.