Last reviewed: 6 October 2026

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Disputing a credit card charge under the Fair Credit Billing Act, explained

Every other dispute covered in this Library is about a credit report — a wrong balance, a stranger's account, a debt that's aged out. This one is about a credit card bill, which runs under a completely different federal law with its own deadline, its own defined list of what counts as an error, and its own consequence for an issuer that ignores it. Mixing the two up — and sending a credit-report-style dispute instead of the written notice this law actually requires — is a common, avoidable way to lose a real right.

A "billing error" is a specific, defined term — not just "I disagree with this charge"

The Fair Credit Billing Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1666-1666j — a set of amendments to the Truth in Lending Act, implemented today through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Regulation Z, 12 C.F.R. § 1026.13 — applies to open-end credit, in practice almost always a credit card, and defines a "billing error" as one of several specific things: a charge you (or someone you authorized) didn't make; a charge for goods or services that weren't delivered as agreed; a computational or accounting mistake on the statement; a failure to credit a payment or return you already made; a statement not mailed to your current address after you gave the issuer reasonable, timely notice of a change; or a charge you're asking the issuer to document or explain. It doesn't cover a charge you agree is accurate but simply regret, or a merchant dispute over quality that isn't about non-delivery — those are separate consumer questions this specific law doesn't reach.

The 60-day clock runs from the bill, not from when you noticed

To use this right, you have to send the card issuer a written notice — not just a phone call — identifying your name and account number, the dollar amount you're disputing, and why you believe it's an error, within 60 days after the issuer mailed or transmitted the first billing statement that contained the error. That deadline runs from the statement date, not from whenever you actually caught the charge, which is exactly the kind of gap that costs people this right if a bill sits unopened or unreviewed for more than two months.

What the issuer has to do once it gets your letter

The issuer must acknowledge your dispute in writing within 30 days of receiving it, unless it resolves the whole thing that quickly, and must complete its investigation and give you a final answer within two complete billing cycles — a period the statute caps at 90 days from receiving your notice, whichever comes first. While that investigation is pending, the issuer can't try to collect the disputed amount, can't close or restrict your account over it, and can't report it as delinquent to a credit bureau — though it can continue listing the disputed amount on your statement and note that it's under dispute. An issuer that skips these procedural steps forfeits its right to collect the disputed amount and related finance charges, with the forfeiture capped at $50 in total, under 15 U.S.C. § 1666(e) — a specific statutory penalty that applies regardless of whether the underlying charge turns out to have been accurate after all.

If the issuer decides you actually owe it

Should the investigation conclude no billing error occurred, the issuer has to send you a written explanation and give you a reasonable time to pay the amount — including any finance charges that accrued during the dispute — before reporting it as delinquent to a bureau or resuming ordinary collection. If you then tell it in writing, within the time allowed to pay, that you still dispute part of the amount, it may report the account as delinquent only if it also reports that the amount is in dispute and sends you the name and address of each person it reports to, and it must report any later resolution to those same people (12 C.F.R. § 1026.13(g)(3)-(4)).

Why a debit card doesn't get the same protection

A debit card runs under an entirely different statute — the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and its implementing Regulation E — with a materially weaker consumer position. Instead of suspending your obligation to pay while a dispute is investigated, the money is simply already gone from your account, and your protection is a set of liability limits in 12 C.F.R. § 1005.6(b). If a card or other access device is lost or stolen and you notify your bank within two business days of learning of it, your liability is limited to the lesser of $50 or the unauthorized transfers made before you notified it. If you don't, your liability is limited to the lesser of $500 or the sum of $50 (or the unauthorized transfers in those first two business days, if less) plus later unauthorized transfers that the bank establishes would not have occurred had you notified it in time. Separately, you must report an unauthorized transfer that appears on a periodic statement within 60 days of the bank sending the statement; if you don't, you can be held liable, with no fixed dollar cap, for unauthorized transfers after those 60 days that the bank establishes would not have occurred had you reported in time. The regulation also requires the bank to extend these time limits to a reasonable period when extenuating circumstances caused your delay. That's a real, meaningful gap from the FCBA's billing-error process, where a properly disputed charge doesn't have to be paid at all while it's under investigation — a distinction worth knowing before deciding which card to hand over for an online purchase or an unfamiliar merchant.

A "chargeback" isn't the same right as an FCBA dispute

A chargeback is a process created and run by the card networks — Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover — under their own private contractual rules with issuing and merchant banks, not a right created by federal statute. In practice the two overlap heavily for a fraudulent or non-delivered charge, and a network's own rules can allow different dispute timelines than the FCBA's 60-day written-notice window, and those timelines vary by network, issuer and the reason for the dispute. But a network rule is exactly that: a rule the network and its member banks agreed to enforce against each other, not a law you can point to the way you can point to 15 U.S.C. § 1666. The FCBA notice described above is the one dispute right that exists regardless of which network your card runs on.

Correction, 6 October 2026: an earlier version of this page said that, for a debit card, you are liable for up to $500 "if you notify within 60 days of the statement showing it," and potentially unlimited liability beyond that. That misdescribed Regulation E. Under 12 C.F.R. § 1005.6(b)(1)-(2), the $50 and $500 limits turn on when you notify the bank after learning that the card or other access device was lost or stolen (within two business days, or later). The 60-day, statement-based deadline is a separate rule in § 1005.6(b)(3), covering unauthorized transfers that appear on a periodic statement. The page now describes each rule separately. We also corrected a sentence saying an issuer must tell you, on request, who it reported a dispute outcome to: Regulation Z requires that notice when the issuer reports a still-disputed account as delinquent (§ 1026.13(g)(4)), and we corrected the page description and list card, which said a debit card does not carry a $50 cap (it can, under § 1005.6(b)(1)). We also reworded a sentence on the issuer's penalty for skipping the investigation steps: under 15 U.S.C. § 1666(e) the forfeiture covers the disputed amount and related finance charges, capped at $50 in total. We also removed a statement that Visa gives cardholders up to 120 days to dispute a charge: we could not trace that figure to an official Visa source, and network time limits vary by network, issuer and the reason for the dispute. Sources: the CFPB's Regulation E § 1005.6 and Regulation Z § 1026.13 pages, cross-checked against the eCFR.