The advantages of credit cards
by: Christine Breen
There are many evils associated with
credit cards, but there are benefits that are hard to ignore. One
benefit is having the credit card company act in your behalf to
recover funds from a disputed transaction. Under the Fair Credit
Billing Act the credit card company has to investigate the dispute and
either take the charge off your bill or explain why it is correct.
Even better, you don't have to pay the portion of the credit-card bill
or related interest charges while the dispute is being investigated.
The types of blling disputes/errors
covered by the Fair Credit Billing Act are:
- Charges that list the wrong date
or amount.
- Charges for goods and services you
didn't accept or weren't delivered as agreed.
- Math errors.
- Failure to post payments and other
credits, such as returns.
- Unauthorized charges.
Before you dispute any of issues you
must first contact the retailer and try to settle the dispute. If they
ignore you, or the dispute is not settled then contact the credit card
company. Usually you need to have your dispute in writing to the
credit card company. The address for billing disputes is different
then the address to send payments. The billing dispute address can be
found on the back of your monthly statement. If it cannot be found,
call the credit card company's customer service for the billing
dispute address. You usually only have a certain number of days to
dispute the billing error so make sure you mail in your dispute before
the deadline.
If contacting the credit card company
doesn't resolve the dispute, you may contact the Office of the
Comptroller of the Currency's Customer Assistance Group. Their website
is www.occ.treas.gov/customer.htm
and phone number is 800-613-6743.
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