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Comment by danielfoster | Hacker News Reader

I recently won a credit card dispute over a hotel resort fee. The hotel claimed they had high-speed Internet. The speed was only 2-3 mbps. I was able to use the current FCC definition of high-speed to claim a refund.

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Credit cards almost always side with the consumer if you have meaningful spend and very few issues/chargebacks/claims. If you never use the card, and then chargeback, they'll just deny your claim and drop your ass. It's not about the money of the individual charge (for small stuff like this anyway), it's about keeping you happy and spending on the card.

I highly doubt the argument itself was relevant whatsoever.

Hasn't worked for me. Chargebacks are pretty much non-existent. The bank will just contact the vendor, ask them if they delivered "the product" and if they just say "yes" (no proof needed, and they always say yes) they deny my claim. I barely even got it back when my kid stole my credit card and gave it to a scammer selling "minecraft accounts."

Maybe I need to find a different bank?

> I barely even got it back when my kid stole my credit card and gave it to a scammer selling "minecraft accounts."

Nor should you quite frankly. Kids buying stupid things is not the same as fraud.

I'd assume in this case the fraud is not getting the minecraft account for advertised price and/or abusing the credit card info afterwards.

Exactly. If I had run the card myself in this case, it would not have changed. The dude took the money and ran, never delivered anything

Perhaps you missed the word "scammer" in my comment? I'm glad you weren't the person deciding on my case. It has nothing to do with the fact that my kid stole my card. The scammer who made the charge was committing text book fraud[1]

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fraud

I've done several chargebacks and never had an issue (with Chase).

$500 for items stolen off my porch. So they WERE delivered, but I didn't receive the item.

Over $1,000 for a hotel I booked and they wouldn't let me reduce my 5 day reservation by 1 day (the first day because I realized I couldn't get there on the expected day). I went back and forth between the booking website and the hotel 3 times each with them both telling me only the other could change the dates. So, I charged back the whole stay and found a different hotel for my updated timeline.

That's not how chargebacks work at all in my experience, from the point of view of the company getting charged-back. I worked for a indie small retail store that also sells online, and I was the guy the owner would give the chargeback notices to and was told to "figure it out". No matter whether a chargeback for an in-store charge or an online order, the credit card company never once granted it the store's favor in all the times I tried. Further they require a lot of proof, more proof than we could actually provide. For weborders, simply showing them the weborder and the tracking info was not enough. They needed _proof_ that what was ordered was what was sent, which we couldn't provide because we weren't taking photos/video of us packing the products. For chargebacks on in-store purchases, it was just as burdensome to present proof. I even had one time when the customer emailed saying she did a chargeback by accident, and I provided that email and what records of the sale I had from the POS system, and the chargeback still went through.

(Also, a bit of a side-point: The chargeback notices always had a VERY short window during which you were allowed to contest them. In most cases we had about 5 days to respond, but sometimes the notice wasn't delivered until after the respond-by date.)

This is why I pay almost exclusively with Amex. They do contact a vendor and sometimes the vendor tries to fight it, but if I reopen the dispute, I always get my money back (and I dispute a lot of transactions).

I have the opposite experience with Mastercard. Of the dozen or so disputes across 5 cards I had over the years I essentially lost them all. Visa is somewhere in the middle. They tend to side with customer but also will investigate thoroughly.

The claim was $700.

Whoa, was this for multiple parties or a month long stay or something?

how did you pay $700 for internet at any speed? was this a cruse ship?

Was the wifi access part of the resort fee? Curious how you went about explaining the monetary value of the wifi portion of your stay to the credit card company.

Yes, it was advertised as part of the fee.

That is awesome. Can you say more about your process?

I feel like you almost always win credit card disputes - could have just said it felt slow and won.

probably just called the card issuer. It's a valid chargeback reason, here's Visa's guidance (probably under section 13.3): https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/global/support-legal/d...

"You inaccurately described the merchandise or services at the time of purchase." (billed as high-speed, it wasn't)

I took screenshots of text from the hotel’s website claiming what was included, then sent them to Amex when I filed my dispute online. Of course I tried to work with the hotel before going this route, but they refused to refund anything.

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