Disputes
How a card dispute works, what evidence decides it, and the deadlines that matter.
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Nothing here can be disputed
No transaction on this site is real, so there is nothing to raise. This page describes how the process works on a genuine card.
Unauthorised versus disputed
They are different and the distinction decides everything. An unauthorised transaction is one you did not make — report it immediately, because liability limits usually depend on how fast you reported, not on how the fraud happened.
A disputed transaction is one you did make but where the merchant failed you: goods never arrived, arrived broken, or a cancelled subscription billed again. Here the card scheme expects you to have tried the merchant first.
What actually decides a dispute
Evidence, and specifically:
- The order confirmation and what it promised.
- Any tracking or delivery record.
- Your correspondence with the merchant, including the attempt to resolve it directly.
- The merchant's published terms at the time of purchase.
- For a subscription, the cancellation confirmation and its date.
Deadlines
Card schemes impose time limits, commonly measured from the transaction or the expected delivery date, and they are enforced strictly. A well-founded claim raised late usually fails on the deadline alone. Raise it as soon as you know, even before you have gathered everything.