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The
Fair Credit Billing Act delineates guidelines
for disputing what you believe to be an error on
your
credit card statement.
The Fair Credit Billing Act only applies to
accounts considered to be open-end accounts such
as your credit card accounts and charge accounts
issued by department stores. The Act does not
apply to installment loans.
The Fair Credit Billing Act provides a way for
you to dispute a number of situations that can
show up on your account statements including
charges that appear for goods and/or services you
never received, goods that were damaged at the
time of receipt, errors that appear in the amount
you should have been charged or the date the
charges should have been posted, and credits you
are entitled to but that have not yet shown up.
The Fair Credit Billing Act can also protect you
if your account statement was mailed to an
incorrect address, provided you properly notified
the issuer within the time period outlined in the
Act. You even have the right to question any
charge appearing on your statement that you do not
recognize. When you take this type of action, the
issuer must gather documentation about the charge
and then present it to you. If the issuer fails to
take these steps, you will not be responsible for
paying the amount in question.
Should any of these types of errors show up on one
of your open-end account statements, the Fair
Credit Billing Act requires you to provide written
notification of such error to the “billing
inquiries” address listed on the corresponding
statement. The written account of the error must
arrive within 60 days of the date that the issuer
mailed the statement to you, regardless of the
date you received the statement.
You won’t have any protection under the Fair
Credit Billing Act if you notify the issuer any
way other than written notification sent via the
mail (US Postal Service). Once the issuer receives
your written dispute, it must follow the
resolution guidelines and schedules that also make
up the Fair Credit Billing Act. Failure to do so
can result in penalties.
The Fair Credit Billing Act also defines what
information an issuer can and cannot forward to
the credit reporting bureaus. This section of the
Fair Credit Billing Act is very powerful because
it can protect against having negative or
derogatory information appear on your credit
report.
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