Chargeback

A chargeback is a request to your bank or card provider to take a card payment back from the seller's bank. It is a rule of the card schemes (Visa, Mastercard and American Express), not a law, and it works on debit and credit cards.

According to the Financial Ombudsman Service (checked 27 September 2026):

• you usually have around 120 days to raise a chargeback, counted from when the goods should have arrived or you found the fault;
• valid reasons include goods that never arrived, goods that were not as described, and faulty goods;
• a bank does not have to raise a chargeback, but it can be good practice to do so where valid reasons exist.

There is no minimum or maximum amount, so a chargeback can help where section 75 cannot: a £60 purchase, a debit card payment, or an item over £30,000.

Example: you pay £85 by debit card for concert tickets on 1 June 2026 and the event is cancelled on 15 July 2026 with no refund. Section 75 does not apply (debit card, under £100), so you ask your bank for a chargeback, well inside 120 days of the cancelled date.

See which route fits your payment in the scam recovery planner.