How to Dispute a Charge: Deadline, Letter, and Bank Duties

To dispute a credit card charge, send a written notice to the billing inquiries address on your statement within 60 days of the statement that first showed the charge. The Fair Credit Billing Act then forces your card issuer to acknowledge the dispute, investigate it, and either fix the error or explain in writing why it won’t. Getting the process right matters, because a dispute filed the wrong way or sent to the wrong address can quietly cost you the federal protections that make the whole exercise worth doing.

Charges You Can Actually Dispute

Federal law defines specific categories of billing errors that trigger your card issuer’s legal duty to investigate. Regret and general dissatisfaction don’t qualify. What does:

Unauthorized charges you didn’t make and didn’t authorize anyone else to make.
A charge for the wrong amount, meaning it doesn’t match what you agreed to pay.
Goods or services that were billed but never delivered, or not delivered as agreed.
Payments or refunds you made that don’t show up on your statement.
Math errors the creditor made on the statement itself.
A statement the issuer failed to send to your current address, assuming they had it at least 20 days before the billing cycle ended.
A charge you simply can’t identify and want the issuer to document and explain.

That last category is broader than most people expect. If you look at a line item and don’t recognize it, you can demand that your issuer produce evidence of the charge, and they have to respond.¹ Disputes over the quality of something the merchant did deliver run on a separate rule, covered further down.

The 60-Day Deadline

Your written dispute must reach the card issuer no later than 60 days after the issuer transmitted the first statement showing the error.² The regulation says “transmitted,” not “received,” so the clock starts when the statement was sent, whether that’s a paper statement dropped in the mail or an electronic statement posted to your account.

Miss this window and you lose your federal protections. The card issuer has no legal obligation to investigate, and the charge stands regardless of whether it was legitimate. This is the single most common way people forfeit an otherwise valid dispute. Check your statements when they arrive rather than letting them pile up.

What to Put in the Dispute Letter

Your notice needs enough detail for the investigator to identify the problem. At minimum, include your name and account number, the dollar amount of the disputed charge, the date the charge appeared on your statement, and a clear explanation of why you believe it’s wrong. The FTC publishes a sample letter that follows this format.³

Attach whatever evidence backs your case. If the merchant refused a refund, include copies of that email exchange. If you returned a product, include tracking confirmation. If you never received an item, a screenshot of the merchant’s delivery promise alongside proof of non-delivery helps. The easier you make the investigator’s job, the faster and more favorably your dispute tends to move.

Keep copies of everything you send and note the date you sent it. You may need that timeline if the bank later claims the notice arrived late or never showed up.

Why Writing Beats Calling

Here’s where people trip. Calling customer service or tapping the “dispute” button in a mobile app may not preserve your federal rights under the Fair Credit Billing Act. The law requires a written notice sent to the address your card issuer designates for billing inquiries.² That’s not the same as the payment address. You’ll find the correct address on your monthly statement, in your card agreement, or on your issuer’s website.³

Send the letter by certified mail with a return receipt. The receipt is your proof of the exact date the issuer received the notice, and that proof is what protects you if the bank later claims the 60-day window was missed. The FTC specifically recommends this approach.⁴

Should you still call or use the app? Yes, as a first step. A phone call sometimes resolves things immediately, and many banks process online disputes efficiently. But if the charge is significant and you want the full force of federal law behind you, follow up with a written letter. Treat the call as a courtesy and the letter as the legal move.

What the Bank Must Do After You File

Two federal deadlines start running the moment your written dispute arrives. Within 30 days, the issuer has to send you a written acknowledgment, unless it resolves the dispute completely within that same period.² The investigation itself has to be finished within two full billing cycles, and no more than 90 days, from the date the issuer received your notice.

While the investigation is open, you don’t have to pay the disputed amount or any interest and fees that accumulated on it. Most issuers apply a temporary credit that removes the charge from your balance in the meantime. You still owe the rest of your bill, though. Keep paying the undisputed portion on time, because falling behind on the rest of the balance triggers late fees, interest, and possible credit damage that has nothing to do with the dispute.

If the investigation finds in your favor, the charge and any related fees or interest come off permanently. If the bank concludes the charge was valid, it has to notify you in writing with an explanation, and you can request copies of the documents it relied on.¹

If the Bank Denies the Dispute

A denial isn’t necessarily the end. When the bank sides against you, it has to explain why and hand over the supporting evidence if you ask. Read that documentation carefully. Surface-level investigations happen, especially during high-volume periods, and the evidence the bank leaned on may not actually contradict your claim.

Watch out for retroactive interest. If you were already carrying a balance on the card when you filed the dispute, meaning you didn’t pay the previous month’s undisputed charges in full, the bank can charge interest on the disputed amount for the entire time the investigation was open.² If you’d been paying in full each month and had a grace period, this backdated interest doesn’t apply. Paying your undisputed balance in full each cycle protects you from that outcome.

After a denial, you have at least 10 days to pay the disputed amount before the issuer can report it as delinquent to the credit bureaus.⁵ If you still believe the charge is wrong, you can send a follow-up written notice within that window stating that you continue to dispute it. The bank can then report the account as delinquent, but it must also report that the amount is in dispute, and it must tell you the name and address of every party it’s reporting to.

Disputing a Charge for Something Defective or Not as Described

The billing-error categories don’t cover situations where the merchant did deliver something, but it was defective, misrepresented, or just poor. A separate provision handles this. Under the “claims and defenses” rule, you can withhold payment on your credit card for a purchase that didn’t meet expectations, but three conditions all have to be met: the transaction exceeded $50, the purchase was made in your home state or within 100 miles of your current billing address, and you tried to resolve the problem with the merchant first.

The dollar and geographic limits fall away if the merchant is also the card issuer, such as with a store-branded card, or if the merchant solicited the sale by mail.⁶ Talk to the merchant before you contact your card issuer. If the merchant refuses to fix it, then dispute the charge and explain what happened and what you tried.⁴

The 100-mile limit catches a lot of people off guard in the age of online shopping. A purchase from a merchant across the country may not qualify unless one of the exceptions applies.

A Note on Debit Cards

Everything above applies to credit cards. Debit card disputes are governed by a completely different federal law, the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, with tighter timelines and weaker liability caps. On a credit card, your total liability for unauthorized charges never exceeds $50 no matter when you report.⁷ On a debit card, the same $50 cap only holds if you report within two business days of learning about the loss; wait longer and your exposure climbs, potentially without a ceiling after 60 days. If the charge you’re trying to dispute hit a debit card, look up Regulation E procedures rather than the ones in this article.

If the Bank Ignores the Rules

When a card issuer fails to follow the billing error procedures, whether that’s ignoring your dispute, missing the 30-day acknowledgment, blowing past the two-billing-cycle investigation cap, or reporting you as delinquent during the investigation, the law imposes an automatic penalty. The issuer forfeits the right to collect the disputed amount and any interest on it, up to $50, even if the original charge would have been valid.¹

That $50 forfeiture is on top of your other remedies. You can sue the card issuer for actual damages, statutory damages of twice the finance charge with a floor of $500 and a ceiling of $5,000 for individual claims on open-end credit plans, plus attorney fees and court costs.⁸ The attorney-fee provision is what makes these cases viable for consumer lawyers even when the disputed charge itself is modest.

If a lawsuit isn’t your speed, file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Submit one at consumerfinance.gov or call (855) 411-2372. The CFPB forwards your complaint to the company, which generally responds within 15 days, and shares complaint data with other federal and state agencies for enforcement purposes.⁹

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666 – Correction of Billing Errors
2
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 12 CFR 1026.13 – Billing Error Resolution
3
Federal Trade Commission. Sample Letter for Disputing Credit and Debit Card Charges
4
Federal Trade Commission. Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC Chapter 41, Subchapter I, Part D – Credit Billing
6
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 12 CFR 1026.12 – Special Credit Card Provisions
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1643 – Liability of Holder of Credit Card
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1640 – Civil Liability
9
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Learn How the Complaint Process Works