Chargeback
A card-scheme protection letting your bank reverse a payment for undelivered or misdescribed goods.
Chargeback is a protection built into the Visa, Mastercard and other card schemes that lets your bank reverse a card payment and reclaim it from the seller's bank. You can use it when goods never arrive, turn out significantly not as described, or the seller has vanished — which makes paying by card one of the strongest defences against a fake shop.
It is a scheme rule rather than a law, and it runs to deadlines: the window is usually about 120 days, counted from the payment or from when delivery was due, so acting promptly matters. Chargeback applies to both debit and credit cards. On a credit card, a separate legal protection also applies: under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, your card provider is jointly liable for a single item costing more than £100 and up to £30,000. To claim, contact your card provider, explain what happened, and supply evidence such as order confirmations, messages and screenshots. Our write-up on paying online safely explains why a reversible method beats an irreversible one, and getting your money back after a scam walks through raising a claim step by step.