The Fair Credit Billing Act, and your warning
The most common complaint I hear about chargebacks is that the customer never contacted us first.
Federal law is explicit that they do not have to. That is not a loophole or a bank policy, it is written into the regulation, and understanding it changes what you build rather than what you resent.
What the regulation actually says
The Fair Credit Billing Act of 1974 is implemented through Regulation Z, and the billing-error provisions live at 12 CFR § 1026.13. From the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's text, checked August 19, 2026:
"A consumer is not required to first notify the merchant or other payee from whom he or she has purchased goods or services and attempt to resolve a dispute regarding the good or service before providing a billing-error notice to the creditor."
That is the sentence. There is no obligation to email you, call you, or open a ticket. The customer may go straight to their card issuer, and the issuer is required to act.
Everything merchants find unfair about chargebacks follows from that one provision, and no amount of policy text on your site changes it.
The timeline the law sets
| Step | Deadline | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer sends billing-error notice | No later than 60 days after the creditor transmitted the first periodic statement reflecting the error | Consumer |
| Creditor acknowledges in writing | Within 30 days of receiving the notice | Issuer |
| Creditor completes resolution | Within 2 complete billing cycles, and in no event later than 90 days | Issuer |
Note where the 60 days runs from. It is not 60 days from the purchase, it is 60 days from the first statement showing the charge, which can put the real outer limit meaningfully later than merchants assume.
What counts as a billing error
Regulation Z defines it broadly. The categories include a charge not made to the consumer, unauthorised use, misidentification of a transaction, non-acceptance of goods or services, failures to post payments, computational errors, and requests for clarification or documentary evidence.
The last one is worth noticing: a consumer asking for documentation is itself a billing-error notice under the regulation, and it starts the same clock.
What the FCBA does not cover is a complaint purely about the quality of goods or services delivered. That distinction is where a lot of merchant argument lives, and it is narrower than it sounds, because "not as described" often gets framed as non-acceptance rather than quality.
What this means for how you operate
Four consequences, and none of them are legal strategy.
Stop building policies that assume contact. A returns policy requiring a customer to contact you before a refund does not bind their card issuer. It is a customer-experience document, not a legal shield.
Make yourself easier to contact than the bank. This is the only real lever. The customer chose the issuer because it was the path of least resistance. Order confirmation emails with a visible support route, a recognisable billing descriptor, and a self-service option compete directly with the dispute button.
Assume the window is longer than you think. Sixty days from statement, plus up to 90 days of issuer resolution, means a case can surface months after the order. Retain evidence accordingly.
Answer documentation requests properly. A request for clarification is a billing-error notice under the regulation. Treating it as a casual query rather than a case with a clock is how it escalates.
The commercial version of all this is that prevention beats representment because the law is structured to favour the cardholder at the point of filing. Winning a dispute does not remove it from your ratio, and the FCBA is the reason there is nothing upstream of the filing you can require.
Reclaim handles representment after a chargeback lands, free and with no success fee, for Stripe, PayPal and Shopify Payments. It operates entirely inside the process the FCBA created; it does not change who may file or when.
What the FCBA is not
It is not Regulation E. Debit card and electronic fund transfer disputes run under a different regulation with different rules and different timelines, covered in Regulation E disputes.
It is not the card network rules. Visa and Mastercard operate their own dispute frameworks, reason codes and time limits, which are contractual rather than statutory and are frequently more generous to cardholders than the law requires. The FCBA is the floor, not the ceiling.
It is not a US-only concern with no equivalents. Other jurisdictions have their own consumer credit protections. If you sell internationally, the FCBA is one framework among several.
The honest part
I am describing a federal regulation, not giving legal advice, and the summary above compresses a long and technical section. If a specific dispute turns on whether something meets the regulatory definition of a billing error, that is a question for a lawyer with the actual facts, not for an article.
The 60-day rule also has exceptions and extensions in practice. Issuers frequently accept disputes well outside it as a customer-service matter, and card network rules often permit longer windows than the statute requires. So the legal deadline is a floor on cardholder rights rather than a cap on what you will actually see.
And nothing here is an argument that the law is wrong. It was written because consumers had almost no recourse against billing errors, and the asymmetry it creates for merchants is the deliberate price of that. Building around it works better than arguing with it.
Frequently asked questions
Does a customer have to contact the merchant before filing a chargeback?
No. Regulation Z states explicitly that a consumer is not required to first notify the merchant and attempt to resolve a dispute before providing a billing-error notice to the creditor. Any merchant policy requiring contact first is a customer-experience document, not something that binds the card issuer.
How long does a customer have to dispute a charge under the FCBA?
The billing-error notice must reach the creditor no later than 60 days after the creditor transmitted the first periodic statement reflecting the alleged error. The clock runs from the statement rather than from the purchase, so the effective window depends on where in the billing cycle the charge fell.
How long does the bank have to resolve an FCBA dispute?
The creditor must send written acknowledgement within 30 days of receiving the billing-error notice, and must complete the resolution procedures within two complete billing cycles and in no event later than 90 days after receiving it.
What does the Fair Credit Billing Act not cover?
Complaints purely about the quality of goods or services delivered fall outside it. It also does not govern debit card and electronic fund transfer disputes, which run under Regulation E, and it does not replace card network dispute rules, which are contractual and often more generous to cardholders than the statute requires.
The change worth making off the back of this: open your own order confirmation email and count how many taps it takes a customer to reach a human. If it is more than the two it takes to open a dispute in their banking app, the law has already told you which one they will choose.