If you paid via Cc sure, but, in the EU at least, bank or debit card are pretty common, and while it is possible to charge back with those, it is pretty hard depending on the policies and size of the bank. I have a bank acc in Spain who chargeback without questions when I pop over an email, while my dutch or uk accounts require stacks of paperwork and often say ‘nope’.
I'm in UK (so until not that long ago, EU :) ). Don't need credit cards for the "credit" part, but I'm exclusively using them for online (or any) shopping, purely for the safety reasons mentioned. As far as I can see, there's no downsides as long as you're paying it all off every month.
So I'm in the UK as well, and have you ever actually tried issuing a chargeback? Because I have - and unlike in US, where I understand that you can just issue a chargeback by just asking your bank to do it, in here I was asked to provide all kinds of proof, then they had to wait 30(!!!) days for a reply from the seller to give them their version of events, then it took another 2 weeks for the bank to reply that yep, looks like you've been scammed alright, here's your money back.
It's my understanding that in US you "just" ask the bank to reverse the transaction and they do - if the company still believes you owe them money after that, they can pursue you through collections or other legal means. The bank isn't in charge of "investigating" anything.
I'm not saying it's better - just that when Americans mention "just do a chargeback" it doesn't really work this way for people outside of US.
If it was a chip transaction, the bank may or may not agree to temporarily reverse the transaction for you depending on the transaction and your history with the bank while they contact the merchant and investigate.
If it was a non chip transaction, and the merchant has a physical presence, then the chargeback is almost always immediately approved due to the merchant not having updated their machines to accept chip transactions.
If it was an online transaction, it gets murkier depending on how secure it was. I have been asked for SMA 2FA confirming charge and amount when buying from BestBuy.com, which I imagine is harder to chargeback than a hotel reservation made without the hotel even verifying the card name/address or requiring CVC.
But 99% of the time, if a product/service is blatantly not delivered or the charge was fraudulent (stolen, higher than receipt, etc), the bank will almost always immediately reverse it for you. Although, with chip transactions, I am not sure how it works if you wait a week or month to report it stolen. Presumably, the onus is on the cardholder to report it lost/stolen within a certain period of time.
Of course, whether or not a bank reverses a transaction for you, the merchant can always take you to court or collections (not that they would win, but it would be an inconvenience to deal with).
I recently went through this process with American Express. Here was my situation and experience.
I bought something online that was supposed to come in two packages. One package arrived. The other didn't arrive even after three weeks. The tracking information they sent me was wrong, and when I figured out what it was supposed to be, it showed as being stuck in one of the sorting facilities.
I tried to contact the vendor over a period of a week- emailed them, called them multuple times- no response or reply.
I called Amex and they opened a report. They asked me if I'd tried to contact the vendor- what had they said. I even explained that I didn't feel I was entitled to the whole amount, only the part for the second package.
Amex told me that they'd need to open up their own investigation, attempt to speak with the vendor, etc. and I should expect to hear back from them by email in two weeks.
That seemed reasonable to me.
Three days later, I got an email saying they'd give me the entire amount, including the part I didn't ask for.
A few days after that, the vendor got back to me and it turns out the tracking info was wrong, and the package had been delivered but I hadn't seen the package.
I felt bad for them that they were out the money for the product, but the fact that they sent me wrong information, didn't contact me for a week, only responded after the bank contacted them, and then misspelled my name and offered no apology helped curb some of those feelings.
All in all, the process was easy and reasonable.
I've only done two chargebacks in my life, and I think the other took a bit longer but was roughly the same. The bank is doing very rough justice but if the amount is small enough, they just offer it back to the customer as in my case, which was ~$500. If it was a larger amount, I'd expect a longer, more involved process.
I understand you feeling a bit sorry for the seller, but unless it was a very small entity (like a person on etsy), I wouldn't give it a second thought. I think it incentivises the seller to clean up their processes, to everyone's benefit. Also, buyers feeling comfortable about chargebacks and returns promotes more sales in the long run.
> just that when Americans mention "just do a chargeback" it doesn't really work this way for people outside of US.
It's this way in the US...for major credit cards and banks.
If your bank is a community credit union or you have a usurious credit card, the chargeback experience [can be] as onerous as yours. It starts with you needing to fax all of the required forms and evidence.
I mean, I can do(and have done) the exact same thing with a Debit card payment, so using a credit card has offered no extra benefit here. But yes, if you just used a direct bank transfer then you're screwed.
> I can do(and have done) the exact same thing with a Debit card payment, so using a credit card has offered no extra benefit here.
If you're in the USA (elsewhere I don't know the rules) there is a big difference that isn't immediately obvious.
With a credit card, you are not liable by law (regulation) so you always have this benefit.
With a debit card, most reasonable banks offer no liability as a customer retention perk, but nothing requires that to be true. They could at any moment decide to leave you hanging, if they decide it's cheaper to lose you as a customer than offer the benefit.
Exactly, plus I believe paying off a credit card improves your credit score. Some debit cards at least do offer protection (mine is Santander) but it’s not by law so I don’t know if it is as effective as chargebacks, which I’ve had cause to use a couple of times and thought worked great. I also only pay on credit online now and pay off in full, and tell others to do the same.
For what it's worth, some places in EU at least used to have "debit cards with credit-equivalent consumer protection". My MasterCard back in the day explicitly advertised that. Just don't rely on every debit card doing that.
