How to do a chargeback on a card payment

Goods or services not received — the order never arrived, the service was never provided, or the delivery date has passed with no delivery.

Goods or services not as described — materially different from what was advertised or ordered, including counterfeit goods.

The business has ceased trading — this is one of the most valuable uses, because a collapsed business will never refund you but the chargeback still works. Travel and event bookings are the classic cases.

Unauthorised transactions — you did not make or authorise the charge. This includes card fraud, and is separate from the ePayments Code protections that also apply.

Duplicate or incorrect amounts — charged twice, or a different amount from what you agreed.

Recurring payments after cancellation — you cancelled a subscription and it kept charging. Ask the bank to both chargeback the charges and block future ones from that merchant.

It does not apply to buyer's remorse, or to a business that has delivered what it promised and simply will not refund a change of mind. That is a different question, and Australian Consumer Law does not give a general change-of-mind right either.

Contact the merchant first if they are still trading, in writing, and give them a short deadline. Banks generally ask whether you tried, and the correspondence is evidence either way. Skip this only where the business has collapsed or is clearly fraudulent.

Then contact your bank and use the word 'chargeback'. Asking for a 'refund' can get you routed to a complaints queue rather than the disputes team, and the two are different processes internally.

Do it in writing as well as by phone — internet banking usually has a transaction dispute form, and the written record establishes when you raised it, which matters against the time limit.

Provide the transaction date and amount, the merchant name as it appears on the statement, what you ordered and what happened, your correspondence with the merchant, and any evidence — order confirmations, tracking showing non-delivery, photographs, the advertisement as it appeared.

The bank raises the chargeback with the merchant's bank. The merchant can represent — dispute it back — and provide evidence, in which case you may be asked for more.

Timeframes vary but a straightforward chargeback commonly resolves within a few weeks. Some banks provisionally credit the amount while it is investigated.

If the chargeback is declined, ask for the reason in writing and the specific scheme rule relied on. Declines are sometimes wrong, and the reason is what you need for the next step.

Card scheme rules impose deadlines, commonly around 120 days, and banks apply them strictly because the schemes do.

The clock generally runs from the transaction date, or from the date you expected to receive the goods or services where that is later. For a flight booked a year ahead, that distinction matters enormously, and it is worth stating explicitly in your dispute which date you are relying on.

There is usually an outer limit — often around 540 days from the transaction — beyond which no chargeback is possible whatever the circumstances.

For a long-running subscription, each charge has its own clock, so older charges may be out of time while recent ones are not. Dispute the recent ones rather than being told the whole matter is too old.

Do not wait for a business to stop replying before acting. The single commonest reason chargebacks fail is that the customer spent four months politely chasing a merchant and then discovered the window had closed.

If a business has entered administration or liquidation, act immediately rather than waiting for the administrator's process, which will almost certainly take longer than the chargeback window and return little.

Where the window has closed, you still have Australian Consumer Law rights against the business, and can lodge with your state fair trading body or a tribunal — but only if the business still exists.

Ask for the decline reason in writing. Banks must give reasons, and a decline citing a scheme rule you can check is very different from a vague refusal.

Lodge a complaint through the bank's internal dispute resolution process. Banks are required to have one and to respond within regulated timeframes.

If still unresolved, go to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority. AFCA is free, independent, and its determinations are binding on the financial firm but not on you. Chargeback disputes are squarely within its jurisdiction, and it regularly overturns bank decisions.

AFCA requires you to have complained to the bank first and generally to have given it time to respond, so the internal complaint is a necessary step rather than an optional one.

In parallel, your Australian Consumer Law rights against the merchant continue — the consumer guarantees on acceptable quality, fitness for purpose and matching description are statutory and cannot be excluded. A chargeback failing does not extinguish them.

Report the merchant to the ACCC through Scamwatch where the conduct was fraudulent, and to your state or territory fair trading body where it was a legitimate business behaving badly. Neither resolves your individual case directly, but patterns drive enforcement.

Keep every document. A chargeback, an AFCA complaint and a tribunal claim all rely on the same evidence, and assembling it once serves all three.