Dealing With Unauthorized or Fraudulent Charges
By [[User:|]] on
Have you noticed a charge on your credit card or bank statement that you don't recognize?
Possible explanations:
- You just forgot about a purchase you made.
- Bad communication: The note on your credit card statement about who charged you may not be the same as the website you made the purchase from. Sometimes websites have other companies handle their e-commerce or credit card processing and that other company/website may show up on your statement instead of who you made the purchase from. Or the name of the main website or parent company may show up instead of the website you remember being on.
- A completely random charge (malicious or accidental) has been charged to you
If you do have an unauthorized charge on your statement, here are some steps you can take to try to get your money back.
#1 Try contacting the site
Because this is the easiest and most straight forward, it's worth a shot. If the charge was from a legitimate website with some customer service skills, contacting them can resolve the matter.
- Look on the site itself for some contact info.
- If you don't find any contact info on their website itself, you can check their whois record for contact info on the owners of their website or domain name. Go to DomainTools.com and search for the website that charged you (like example.com) for that.
#2 Dispute the charge with your credit card company or bank
In the U.S. at least, you usually have some protection against unauthorized charges on your credit card. After jumping through some hoops (like getting a new card with a new number) and the necessary paperwork, your credit card company should remove the charges from your account.
Unauthorized charges on your debit card (these come directly out of the checking account in your bank account) are less protected and harder to get back, but it's still worth trying and a good bank or credit union that wants your business will usually help you out and remove the fraudulent charge.
#3 Warn others about this site
If #1 or #2 didn't work, or if it will make you feel better, you can let other people know about the website that charged you fraudulently in several ways:
- Complain to the website's host. The hosting company has the servers that the website lives on, and it has the power to shut the website down (until they set up shop somewhere else at least). You can find out who hosts a particular website on {{{2}}} (visit).
- Edit the website's page here on AboutUs.org to let people know. To get there, search for the website (like example.com) at the top right. Then edit the Wiki section of the page and copy and paste this text/code in there and save: {{PossibleFraudCharger}}
- Rate and comment about the website on Web Of Trust at MyWOT.com, a community site for warnings about scams, malware, spam sites and more. They offer a free helpful plug-in that can warn you anytime you visit a website that has been rated "red" (bad) on their website.
- You can also contact the Better Business Bureau (visit) or post on various consumer sounding board sites like {{{2}}} (visit), {{{2}}} (visit) and {{{2}}} (visit).
