How to Dispute a Charge With Chase: Deadlines and Evidence

To dispute a charge with Chase, report it through the Chase mobile app, on chase.com, or by calling the number on the back of your card. Which rules protect you, how fast you have to act, and how much money is at risk all depend on whether the charge hit a credit card or a debit card. For credit cards, you have 60 days from the statement date to notify Chase in writing of a billing error. For debit cards, every day you wait raises the ceiling on what you could lose.¹²

Contact the Merchant Before You File

Call or email the merchant first. Many billing problems come from a processing delay, a merchant name on the statement you didn’t recognize, or a subscription you forgot about, and a merchant will often refund on the spot to avoid the fees and paperwork of a bank chargeback. A dispute investigation can take weeks; a phone call can take ten minutes.

For disputes about the quality of goods or services on a credit card, this step isn’t optional. Federal law requires a “good faith attempt” to resolve the problem with the merchant before you can raise those claims against the card issuer.³ Keep the emails, chat logs, and call notes. If the merchant won’t help, that record becomes evidence for Chase.

What Counts as a Valid Dispute

Not every unhappy purchase qualifies. Filing a dispute for a charge you actually authorized — sometimes called friendly fraud — can be denied and can put your account standing at risk. The legitimate categories are:

Unauthorized charges: someone used your card without permission, whether from a stolen number, a data breach, or a skimming device.
Billing errors: wrong amount, duplicate charge, or a charge for something you never received.
Goods or services not as described: what arrived was materially different from what was promised.
Credits not applied: the merchant promised a refund and never processed it.

The Fair Credit Billing Act defines billing errors to include charges for goods not delivered, charges in the wrong amount, and charges you didn’t authorize.¹ Quality-of-goods disputes carry two extra conditions: the original transaction must exceed $50, and it must have taken place either in your home state or within 100 miles of your mailing address. Those limits fall away if the merchant is affiliated with the card issuer or if you bought the item through a mail or online solicitation connected to the issuer.³

How to Submit the Dispute

Chase offers three routes, and all of them feed the same investigation.

In the Mobile App

Open the Chase app, choose the card, tap the transaction, and scroll to the dispute option near the bottom of the transaction details. The app asks a short set of questions about the reason for the dispute and lets you upload documents from your phone.

On chase.com

Sign in, open your account activity, and click the transaction. The expanded view has a dispute link. Confirm the details, pick a reason, upload your evidence, and submit.

By Phone

Call the number on the back of the card. For pending debit card charges, Chase directs customers to 1-866-564-2262.⁴ For a debit card dispute made by phone, Chase may ask you to follow up in writing within 10 business days, and failing to send that written confirmation can affect whether you receive a provisional credit during an extended investigation.⁵

Deadlines That Decide Your Outcome

The single most important variable in a Chase dispute is time, and the clock runs differently on the two card types.

Credit Card: 60 Days From the Statement

Credit card disputes are governed by the Fair Credit Billing Act. You have 60 days from the date Chase sends the statement containing the disputed charge to give written notice of the billing error.¹ Once you’ve filed, Chase cannot try to collect the disputed amount or report it delinquent while the investigation is open, provided you keep paying the rest of the bill. Your account cannot be restricted or closed for refusing to pay the disputed portion during this period.⁶ The disputed money never left your bank account in the first place, which is what makes credit card disputes lower stakes than debit.

Debit Card: Every Day Matters

Debit card disputes fall under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and Regulation E, and the money is already gone from your checking account when you notice it. Your personal liability for unauthorized transfers scales with how fast you report:

Report within 2 business days of learning the card was lost or stolen: liability caps at $50 or the amount of unauthorized transfers before you notified Chase, whichever is less.²
Report between 2 and 60 days after the statement is sent: liability rises to $500 or the total unauthorized amount, whichever is less.
Report after 60 days: you can be responsible for the full amount of any unauthorized transfers occurring after that 60-day window, with no cap.

Chase advertises a Zero Liability Protection policy for unauthorized debit card transactions reported promptly.⁷ That policy can be more generous than the federal minimums, but it’s a bank policy rather than a statutory right, and Chase sets its terms. Report unauthorized debit activity immediately.

Evidence to Have Ready

The strength of your documentation is often the difference between a fast resolution and weeks of follow-up questions. Pull together:

Transaction details: date, merchant name as it appears on the statement, and the amount to the cent, all available in your transaction history.
Order confirmations, email receipts, and tracking numbers that show what was promised and what actually arrived.
Screenshots of chats, emails, and notes from calls with the merchant, with dates and names.
Cancellation confirmations and the merchant’s cancellation policy if the dispute involves a subscription.
Any written promise of a refund the merchant never delivered.

Organize the file by date. Chase uses it to build the case against the merchant’s bank during the chargeback, and gaps in the timeline give the merchant room to push back.

What Happens After You File

The investigation follows different rules for each card type, both driven by federal regulation.

Credit Card Investigations

Chase must acknowledge your dispute within 30 days of receiving it, then has two full billing cycles — but no more than 90 days total — to investigate and resolve it.¹ Chase typically issues a provisional credit so you don’t pay the disputed amount while the review runs, and no interest accrues on it. The merchant is notified and gets a chance to submit rebuttal evidence such as proof of delivery or a signed agreement. If the merchant can’t disprove your claim, the provisional credit becomes permanent. Chase communicates the outcome through the secure message center or by mail.

Debit Card Investigations

Chase must investigate and determine whether an error occurred within 10 business days. The bank can extend that to 45 days, but only if it credits your account provisionally within the initial 10 business days.⁵ For point-of-sale debit card transactions, the extended window stretches to 90 days. Once the investigation ends, Chase must tell you the result within three business days and correct any confirmed error within one business day. If the bank finds no error, it reverses any provisional credit, sends an explanation, and — on request — provides copies of the documents it relied on.

Effects on Your Credit and Rewards

Filing a dispute doesn’t directly hurt your credit score. Credit bureaus may add a notation while the investigation is pending, but the notation alone doesn’t move the score, and Chase cannot report the disputed amount as delinquent while the review is open, as long as you keep paying the rest of your balance on time.⁶

Rewards points work differently. If you earned Chase Ultimate Rewards points on a purchase later reversed through a dispute, Chase will claw those points back under its terms. If you’ve already spent or transferred the points from that purchase, your balance can go negative.

If Chase Denies Your Dispute

A denial narrows your options but doesn’t end them.

For credit card disputes, federal law gives you at least 10 days after receiving the bank’s explanation to respond before any payment obligation kicks back in. Use that window to submit new evidence or challenge the reasoning in writing. If you keep disputing the amount, Chase can report it delinquent going forward, but it must also report that the amount is in dispute and tell you who it’s reporting to.⁶

Beyond Chase, you can file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Include dates, amounts, and copies of your correspondence; most companies respond within 15 days.⁸ A CFPB complaint won’t force Chase to reverse itself, but it creates regulatory visibility that banks pay attention to. If the amount is small and the merchant simply refused to make things right, small claims court against the merchant is an option that doesn’t require a lawyer. Your Chase cardholder agreement may require arbitration instead of a traditional lawsuit for larger amounts, so read the dispute resolution clause before choosing a path.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666 – Correction of Billing Errors
2
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 12 CFR 1005.6 – Liability of Consumer for Unauthorized Transfers
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666i – Assertion by Cardholder Against Card Issuer of Claims and Defenses Arising Out of Credit Card Transaction
4
Chase. Disputing a Charge
5
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 12 CFR 1005.11 – Procedures for Resolving Errors
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1666a – Regulation of Credit Reports
7
Chase. Unauthorized Transactions FAQ
8
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Submit a Complaint