Online Shopping
Orders that never arrived, items nothing like the listing, and marketplace sellers who vanish the moment you complain.
Online shopping generates more card disputes than every other category put together, for consistent reasons: the seller is remote, often overseas, and frequently trading through a marketplace that presents itself as an introducer rather than the retailer.
The most useful thing to establish early is who your money actually went to. The merchant of record determines whether you are dealing with the marketplace, the seller or a payment intermediary, and that determines which claim applies. It is not always who the website appeared to be.
Chargeback is usually the strongest route here because it works on debit cards, has no minimum value, and reaches sellers a UK county court realistically cannot. Where the purchase was over $100 on a credit card, Section 75 runs alongside it and lasts years rather than months.
The problems that come up most
Drawn from the claims we actually run in this area, not from a generic list of consumer complaints.
Orders never dispatched, with tracking numbers that lead nowhere
Items materially different from the listing, which is then quietly edited or deleted
Counterfeit goods sold as genuine through a convincing storefront
Overseas sellers outside the practical reach of a UK court
Marketplace guarantees that turn out narrower than the marketing suggested
What clients in this sector achieve
These are the outcomes engagements in this sector are scoped to produce. They are written into the proposal so success is defined before the work starts, not assessed afterwards.
- Refunds recovered from sellers with no UK presence
- Listing evidence preserved before the seller amended it
- Claims filed under the correct reason code first time
- Section 75 run in parallel where the purchase qualified
Where sector programmes usually start
Goods Not Received
You paid, the order never arrived, and the seller has stopped replying. Your card provider can reverse the payment.
Faulty or Misdescribed Goods
What arrived is not what was advertised, or it broke almost immediately, and the seller will not put it right.
Duplicate and Incorrect Charges
Charged twice, charged the wrong amount, or charged in the wrong currency at a rate you never agreed.
Section 75 Claims
On credit card purchases between $100 and $30,000, your card provider is equally liable with the retailer. That is statute, not a scheme rule.
Engagements in this sector
$2,480 refunded on counterfeit goods after the marketplace ruled for the seller
The marketplace closed the case in the seller's favour. The card claim did not depend on the marketplace's opinion, and reached a seller in another jurisdiction that no UK court…
- Refunded in full
- $2,480 Refunded in full
- To resolution
- 11 weeks To resolution
- Card claim of the platform decision
- Independent Card claim of the platform decision