Fighting with your credit card company?
By Libby Wells • Bankrate.com

 

Here are 5 effective counter-punches:

1. Keep documents from credit card companies. Six years is the recommended time because account records are valuable at tax time. The most important documents are the ones that lay out the rules and the ones that you're disputing. So keep the disclosure statement you get when your card first comes in the mail and the fine-print documents that amend it. They're your contract with the credit issuer. In a dispute? You need the bill that contains the disputed item and the postmarked envelope in which it arrived.

2. Keep charge receipts and compare them with each credit card bill. "You need to be very timely in evaluating and reviewing your accounts," says Nancy Nauser, president of Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Kansas City and Mid-Missouri.

3. Read the fine print. "Even though it is incredibly dense and long and difficult to follow, people need to make a hard effort to read that," says Paul Bland, a lawyer with Trial Lawyers for Public Justice. "Most consumers are unaware of it, but courts hold them to the fine print unless it is incredibly unfair."

4. Don't do business with card companies that take away your right to sue them. This clause, which you will find in the fine print, is called an arbitration provision. "Arbitration provisions are not in consumers' best interests," says Robert Green, a lawyer with the National Association for Consumer Advocates.

5. If your dispute is with the merchant, tell the card company to stop payment on that bill.  The Fair Credit Billing Act gives consumers the right to withhold payment on poor-quality or damaged merchandise purchased with a credit card.  You need to make a real effort at resolving the dispute with a merchant before you can ask your issuer to stop a credit card payment. The law also states the sale must be for more than $50 and have taken place in your home state or within 100 miles of your home address, but few issuers issuers enforce the $50 or 100-mile rule on purchases made in the United States.

-- Updated: Jan. 7, 2002