Dispute credit card transaction with merchant or credit card company?
"You should dispute the transaction with the credit card. Describe the story and attach the cash payment receipt, and dispute it as a duplicate charge. There will be no impact on your score, but if you don't have the cash receipt or any other proof of the alternative payment - it's your word against the merchant, and he has proof that you actually used your card there. So worst case - you just paid twice. If you dispute the charge and it is accepted - the merchant will pay a penalty. If it is not accepted - you may pay the penalty (on top of the original charge, depending on your credit card issuer - some charge for ""frivolous"" charge backs). It will take several more years for either the European merchants to learn how to deal with the US half-baked chip cards, or the American banks to start issue proper chip-and-PIN card as everywhere else. Either way, until then - if the merchant doesn't know how to handle signatures with the American credit cards - just don't use them. Pay cash. Given the controversy in the comments - my intention was not to say ""no, don't talk to the merchant"". From the description of the situation it didn't strike me as the merchant would even bother to consider the situation. A less than honest merchant knows that you have no leverage, and since you're a tourist and will probably not be returning there anyway - what's the worst you can do to them? A bad yelp review? You can definitely get in touch with the merchant and ask for a refund, but I would not expect much to come out from that." Most merchants (also in Europe) are reasonable, and typically are willing to work with you. credit card companies ask if you tried to work with the merchant first, so although they do not enforce it, it should be the first try. I recommend to give it a try and contact them first. If it doesn't work, you can always go to the credit card company and have the charge reversed. None of this has any effect on your credit score (except if you do nothing and then don't pay your credit card bill). For the future: when a transaction supposedly 'doesn't go through', have them write this on the receipt and give it to you. Only then pay cash. I am travelling 100+ days a year in Europe, using my US credit cards all the time, and there were never any issues - this is not a common problem. "As a rule of thumb, go in the order of proximity to the transaction. This would typically mean: Side note: I own a website that provides an online service that accepts PayPal and credit cards (via PayPal), and I personally have experience with all 3 of the above options. I can tell you from the merchant's point of view that I would also prefer the same order. I've had people contact my customer service department asking for a refund and we always immediately comply. Some people never contact us and just file a dispute directly with PayPal, and although refunding through the PayPal dispute is just as easy as refunding directly, it always makes me ask, ""Why didn't they just contact us first?"" One time we had a customer skip us and PayPal, and filed a dispute directly with their Credit Card. The CC company contacted PayPal and PayPal contacted us. The process was the same from my point of view, I just clicked a button saying issue refund. But my $5 refund cost me an additional $20 due to the CC dispute. Now that I know this I will never approve a CC dispute again. Anytime one happens I would just issue a refund directly, and then notify the dispute that their CC has already been refunded, which should end the dispute." "It's very straightforward for an honest vendor to refund the charge, and the transaction only costs him a few pennies at most.  If you initiate a chargeback, the merchant is immediately charged an irreversible fee of about $20 simply as an administrative fee.  He'll also have to refund the charge if it's reversed.  To an honest merchant who would've happily refunded you, it's unfair and hurtful.  In any case, now that he's out-of-pocket on the administrative fee, his best bet is to fight the chargeback - since he's already paid for the privilege to fight. Also, a chargeback is a ""strike"" against the merchant.  If his chargeback rate is higher than the norm in his industry, they may raise his fees, or ban him entirely from taking Visa/MC.  For a small merchant doing a small volume, a single chargeback can have an impact on his overall chargeback rate.  The ""threshold of proof"" for a chargeback varies by patterns of fraud and the merchant's ability to recover.  If you bought something readily fungible to cash - like a gift card, casino chips, concert tickets etc., forget it.  Likewise if  you already extracted the value (last month's Netflix bill).  Credit card chargeback only withdraws a payment method.  Your bill is still due and payable. The merchant is within his rights to ""dun"" you for payment and send you to collections or court.  Most merchants don't bother, because they know it'll be a fight, an unpleasant distraction and bad for business.  But they'd be within their rights.  Working with the merchant to settle the matter is a final resolution."
"It's not usually apparent to the average consumer, but there's actually two stages to collecting a payment, and two ways to undo it.  The particular combination that occurs may lead to long refund times, on top of any human delays (like Ben Miller's answer addresses). When you pay with a credit card, it is typically only authorized - the issuing bank says ""I'm setting this money aside for this transaction"", but no money actually changes hands.  You'll typically see this on your statement as a ""pending"" charge.  Only later, in a process called ""settlement"", does your bank actually send money to the merchant's bank.  Typically, this process starts the same day that the authorization happens (at close of business), but it may take a few days to complete.  In the case of an ecommerce transaction, the merchant may not be allowed to start it until they ship whatever you ordered. On the flip side, a given transaction can be voided off or money can be sent back to your card.  In the first case, the transaction will just disappear altogether; in the second, it may disappear or you may see both the payment and the refund on your statement.  Voids can be as fast as an authorization, but once a transaction has started settlement, it can't be voided any more.  Sending money back (a ""refund"") goes through the same settlement process as above, and can take just as long. So, to specifically apply that to your question: You get the SMS when the transaction is authorized, even though no money has yet moved.  The refund money won't show up until several days after someone indicates that it should happen, and there's no ""reverse authorize"" operation to let you or your bank know that it's coming." Dispute the charge. Receiving the wrong product is grounds for dispute. "You should probably call the travel agency and complain. Not that they will care, but if by any chance they do - they can ask PayPal to remove the block. This is what is called ""authorization pending"". Usually, a credit card transaction has two stages: The merchant requests its payment processor to authorize the transaction. The processor will contact the card issuer with the transaction details and will get the authorization code which will be passed to the merchant. At that stage the transaction enters the ""pending"" stage on your account. The merchant submits the transaction and gets the money from its payment processor, who forwards the transaction to the card issuer and gets the money from there. The card issuer charges the card owner. The transaction should have the same authorization code received in step #1, and by matching it to the pending transaction, the card issuer removes the pending transaction, and posts the actual transaction. However, if the transaction in step #2 doesn't include the code from step #1, the match doesn't occur and you see the situation you have now: both the actual transaction and the pending are active. In this case the merchant should contact its merchant processor and request the revocation of the authorization code. The processor will then forward the request to the card issuer, who will then remove the pending transaction. As you can see - multiple parties have to actually care for that to happen, and many times they don't, because they don't have to. As to the period - it's up to the card issuer (PayPal in your case), but 1 month is a very long time. Usually it's about a week or two, unless it's a hotel/car rental. In any case - once it expires, it will go away on its own and if you don't mind for the amounts to be blocked until then - just let it expire. The fact that you used a debit card for this transaction is irrelevant. Unless it was a pin transaction, debit card transactions are processed as credit card transactions by processors. For pin transactions, there process is different and you shouldn't see doubles. If it was a pin transaction - contact PayPal and check with them what's going on. Generally, PayPal is not to be used as a ""bank account"", it is merely a payment processor, and it is advised to remove the money from there as soon as possible." I used to work for a online payment posting company. Anytime a payment is made via Credit Card to a company that does not have PCI DSS(aka the ability/certification to store credit card information) there is a MD5 checksum(of the confirmation code, not the Credit Card information) that get sent to the company from the processor(billing tree, paypal, etc). The company should be able to send this information back to the processor in order to refund the payment.  If the company isn't able to do this, to be honest they shouldn't be taking online credit card payments. And by all means do not send your credit card information in an email. As said above, call the company's customer service line and give them the info to credit your account. I have already talked to them over the phone and they insist they   haven't charged me yet, and I will not be charged. When I informed   them I had in fact been charged they agreed it would be reversed. So I   have tried to resolve the issue and I don't have any confidence they   will reverse the charge as it has not been done yet. They are   difficult to communicate which makes the whole process more difficult. Your best next step is to call the credit card company and share this story.  I believe the likely result is that the credit card company will initiate a charge back. My question is, is this a valid reason to file a chargeback on my credit card? Yes.   If you attempted to work it out with the vendor and it is not working out, this is an appropriate time to initiate a charge back. You should start a dispute with the credit card company, and they might be able to recover some/all of the money. Usually, if you act fast enough, credit companies (on the merchant's side) have enough of the deposits not yet disbursed to the merchant, and they'll just reverse the charge. The earlier you start the process - the more chances you have. Otherwise you'll have to sue, I'm not familiar with the Canadian legal system. There are three parties involved here: there's the store that issued you the card, then they have some bank that's actually handling the account, and there is some network (VISA, MasterCard, etc.) that the transactions go through. So one avenue to consider is seeing whether all three are aware of you canceling the card. "I'm not sure if this answer is going to win me many friends on reddit, but here goes...  There's no good reason why they couldn't have just told him the current balance shown on their records, BUT...  **There are some good reasons why they can't quote a definitive ""payoff"" balance to instantly settle the account:**  It's very possible to charge something today, and not have it show up on Chase's records until tomorrow, or Monday, or later. There are still places that process paper credit-card transactions, or that deal with 3rd-party payment processors who reconcile transactions M-F, 9-5ish, and so on.   - Most transactions these days are authorized the instant you swipe the card, and the merchant won't process until they get authorization back from the CC company. But sometimes those authorizations come from third-party processors who don't bill Chase until later. Some of them might not process a Friday afternoon transaction until close-of-business Monday.   - Also, there are things like taxicab fares that might be collected when you exit the cab, but the record exists only in the taxi's onboard machine until they plug it into something else at the end of the shift.   - There are still some situations (outdoor flea-markets, auctions, etc) where the merchant takes a paper imprint, and doesn't actually process the payment until they physically mail it in or whatever.   - Some small businesses have information-security routines in place where only one person is allowed to process credit-card payments, but where multiple customer service reps are allowed to accept the CC info, write it down on one piece of paper, then either physically hand the paper to the person with processing rights, or deposit the paper in a locked office or mail-slot for later processing. This is obviously not an instant-update system for Chase. (Believe it or not, this system is actually considered to be *more* secure than retaining computerized records unless the business has very rigorous end-to-end info security).   So... there are a bunch of legit reasons why a CC company can't necessarily tell you this instant that you only need to pay $x and no more to close the account (although there is no good reason why they shouldn't be able to quote your current balance).   What happens when you ""close an account"" is basically that they stop accepting new charges that were *made* after your notification, but they will still accept and bill you for legit charges that you incurred before you gave them notice. So basically, they ""turn off"" the credit-card, but they can't guarantee how much you owe until the next billing cycle after this one closes:  - You notify them to ""close"" the account. They stop authorizing new charges.   - Their merchant agreements basically give the merchant a certain window to process charges. The CC company process legit charges that were made prior to ""closing"" the account.   - The CC company sends you the final statement *after* that window for any charges has expired,  - When that final statement is paid (or if it is zero), *THAT* is when the account is settled and reported to Equifax etc as ""paid"".   So it's hard to tell from your post who was being overly semantic/unreasonable. If the CC company refused to tell the current balance, they were just being dickheads. But if they refused to promise that the current balance shown is enough to instantly settle the account forever, they had legit reasons.  Hope that helps." There generally isn't much in the way of real identity verification, at least in the US and online.  The protection you get is that with most credit cards you can report your card stolen (within some amount of time) and the fraudulent charges dropped. The merchant is the one that usually ends up paying for it if it gets charged back so it's usually in the merchant's best interest to do verification.  However the cost of doing so (inconvenience to the customer, or if it's an impulse buy, giving them more time to change their mind, etc) is often greater than the occasional fraudulent charge so they usually don't do too much about it unless they're in a business where it's a frequent problem. In some case the customer wants the name to be cryptic or misleading. They don't want to advertise the true nature of the business they visited. In other cases the transaction may be reported through another business. A few years ago the local PTA was having a silent auction as a fundraiser. A local business allowed the PTA to use their credit card reader to process transactions over a certain amount. Of course when the credit card statement arrived it looked like you spent $500 at the florist. I have seen PayPal listed when donating to some small charities.  I have noted another case where confusion can occur. I used a debit card to buy a soda from a vending machine: the name and location were the name of the vending machine company and the location of their main office. It didn't say  soda machine city A. It said Joe's vending company city B. In most cases the business and the credit card company want to make it easy to identify the transactions to keep the cost of research and charge backs to a minimum. Your simplest option, and probably the only reasonable one, is to dispute the original charge with your bank.  Since you used a debit card and not a credit card, you don't have quite as much protection, but you still can dispute the charge and ask your bank to step in and help.  See this debit card dispute article for more information on disputing a charge for a debit card. You may or may not have a case here, depending on the specifics.  If the merchant accepted your payment without letting you know you should have used paypal, you may have a shot at getting the full refund; but if it was clearly labelled that you should have used paypal, it may be harder. "When processing credit/debit cards there is a choice made by the company on how they want to go about doing it.  The options are Authorization/Capture and Sale. For online transactions that require the delivery of goods, companies are supposed to start by initially Authorizing the transaction.  This signals your bank to mark the funds but it does not actually transfer them.  Once the company is actually shipping the goods, they will send a Capture command that tells the bank to go ahead and transfer the funds.  There can be a time delay between the two actions.  3 days is fairly common, but longer can certainly be seen.  It normally takes a week for a gas station local to me to clear their transactions. The second one, a Sale is normally used for online transactions in which a service is immediately delivered or a Point of Sale transaction (buying something in person at a store).  This action wraps up both an Authorization and Capture into a single step. Now, not all systems have the same requirements.  It is actually fairly common for people who play online games to ""accidentally"" authorize funds to be transferred from their bank.  Processing those refunds can be fairly expensive.  However, if the company simply performs an Authorization and never issues a capture then it's as if the transaction never occurred and the costs involved to the company are much smaller (close to zero) I'd suspect they have a high degree of parents claiming their kids were never authorized to perform transactions or that fraud was involved.  If this is the case then it would be in the company's interest to authorize the transaction, apply the credits to your account then wait a few days before actually capturing the funds from the bank.   Depending upon the amount of time for the wait your bank might have silently rolled back the authorization.  When it came time for the company to capture, then they'd just reissue it as a sale. I hope that makes sense.  The point is, this is actually fairly common.  Not just for games but for a whole host of areas in which fraud might exist (like getting gas)." "The fee structures are different for PIN-based transactions versus ""credit"" style transactions. Usually there is a fixed fee (around $0.50) for PIN-based transactions and a varying fixed fee plus a percentage for credit transactions (something like $0.35 + 2.5%). There are also value limits for PIN-based transactions... I believe that you cannot exceed $400 in most places. The signature feature of credit transactions isn't there to protect you, it signifies your agreement to comply with the contract you and the credit card issuer, protecting the merchant from some types of chargeback. Some merchants waive the signature for low dollar value transactions to increase convenience and speed up the lines. All of your other questions are answered elsewhere on this site." I would go speak to the bank manager. With Wells, you have to make sure it is the bank manager and not a service manager or something you are talking to (I learned that a few months ago).  Tell her/him exactly what happened in detail and that you want the credit card closed and the credit inquiry removed from your credit report. Further, say that once all of that is done, you will decide whether to continue banking with them and whether any legal action is appropriate.  If they give you any kind of push back, I'd get advice from a lawyer. The truth is they did open an account against your expressed wishes and it required them to check your credit so it does constitute fraud unless they can produce a signed document saying you agreed to the card.  Edit: I just saw that this happened about a year ago. It may have been easier if you had done something at the time and may be more difficult if you've used the card in the meantime. There are different ways of credit card purchase authorizations. if some choose less secure method it's their problem. Merchants are charged back if a stolen card is used.