Are you aware of your legal rights, as stated by the Federal Government, as a victim of fraudulent purchases made on your credit card?

Fraudulent charges on your credit card are defined as charges that you, yourself, didn’t make. Should this happen to you, there is a federal law that endows you, the victim, with certain rights, and limits the billing responsibilities placed on you. It is called the Fair Credit Billing Act, and limits your billing responsibility to $50.00. You must follow a specific procedure right away to claim your rights and resolve the issue.

Immediately call your credit card company and explain that these charges were not made by you, and you don’t know where they came from. The company will then give you a list of instructions for you to follow. It’s a good idea at this point to check any other statements you have, to confirm that there are no more unauthorized charges that you may have missed.

Your credit card company will most likely have you sign a statement confirming that the charges were unauthorized. It’s important that you do not use that specific credit card until the dispute has been resolved.

After the charges have been disputed and then removed from your credit card, and all is resolved, you should get copies of your credit report from the three major credit report bureaus. Make sure that the credit card record has been updated with them.  It’s likely that during the dispute and resolution process, these charges may have been reported to them as late payments, and you need to be sure that if this is the case, that they correct your credit report right away.