I’ve had two random USD txns of large sums siphoned off from my IDFC CC one fine morning when I woke up. Called the bank, they blocked my card off and temporarily reinstated credit equivalent to the money debited while investigation kicked off. Resolved the issue in a month I think. It can take more months usually if it’s not an outright fraud as banks contact seller and merchant but this is one aspect of CC that’s supposed to be a unique feature.
It’s much safer IMHO than UPI/bank txns. You’re legit screwed AFAICT if a similar incident happened directly on your debit card or bank account. I’ll honestly never recommend anyone to do direct bank account/DC transfers, especially for international payments if they can help it.
EDIT: Of course, there are other gotchas to owning credit cards so anyone not in the know should research, read MITC document well and always pay off bills before due date to avoid surprises.
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Not sure if I got lucky but I’ve had positive experience with chargebacks.
Back in 2023 BBD sale, I used a SBI CC to purchase TV from Flipkart. It was open box delivery as usual and everything looked good. Except that it had three dead pixels.
Raised this issue with Flipkart within 24hrs and you can guess what happened…
After few weeks of back and forth, I decided to raise a chargeback with SBI. They have a dedicated section built in the app where you can dispute any transaction in the last 60 days.
Anyway I submitted all the evidences and they took their sweet time to investigate, about a month I think. But next billing cycle they credited my account with the disputed amount. Flipkart then reverted with their side of the story, and I was given another notice by SBI. I then sent all the recorded conversations, email threads, chat logs etc.
In the process I was also contacted by the seller offering INR 15k in credits if I take back the dispute. I forwarded it as an additional evidence to SBI. Also wrote to NeSL that I’m being forced to pay a debt which isn’t mine. CC’d SBI and Flipkart both. Finally they decided to side with me, and asked Flipkart to fuck off.
The entire process was time consuming (took ~3 months) and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. But yes it works.
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Just looking at all the hassle you went through.
Plus Flipkart was ready to dispute that it seems so you had to convince both parties to win this.
Like I said it might work and maybe it is still safer bet than other payment but it is not without its own share of troubles if one ends up with bad deal.
For sure. It’s not as convenient as in the US AFAIK (then again, fees are way higher there) but it’s still better than having to chase after fraud/theft incidents against your savings account balance which is much harder to resolve, might even need to go to the cops.
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Even in Israel My relative were fraudently charged in Delhi while shopping during wedding.
Just one call to customer care and money came back to their account.
I have shared this story here before also but amazing how smooth things work there.
I had a case of a fraudulent transaction from New Zealand charged on my card once several years back and Citi back then was quick about it. Reversed the charge with a day.
Chargebacks though are a different case. I think the episode mentioned here reflects the same. The RBI process itself gives both parties a month to share evidence before it goes to arbitration, so it will definitely be time consuming. AFAIK, only AmEx had a no questions asked chargeback option where they would reverse the charge first and then do the investigation.
With other banks, it is going to be a tiresome process but it still offers some protections compared to UPI which is an upfront loss if things go bad.
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Wonder if that policy is the same in India? I’m aware this is how it is in the US.
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I guess you haven’t tried chargeback with cc banks here much, almost certainly any Indian bank/cc company will reject chargeback claim for a flipkart open box delivery order & even for normal order there is a 50:50 chance it will be rejected.
It was the case when I had an AmEx card, but that was a decade ago now. Not sure if they still do it.
That was pretty nice of IDFC to reinstate equivalent credit. HDFC blocked my credit limit for around a week for a fraudulent international transaction.
For my case, it seems the transaction was flagged at Apple UK’s end, and was never debited, so there was nothing to resolve.
However, the process reporting a fraudulent transaction with HDFC (note that fraud is different from chargeback) was a bit more involved:
- get card blocked (and new card issued at Rs 100 + 18% GST
) - file a cyber crime complaint; note down acknowledgement number
- submit dispute form through HDFC portal with the above ACK number
Filing the cyber crime complaint was the most confusing since there was no transaction ID. I eventually up entering the “Have you lost money?” as no, since it didn’t ask for a transaction ID, and I technically had not lost any money yet.
I got charged as well for the replacement card.
Interesting, via gov. portals?
Yep. Through https://cybercrime.gov.in/.
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nope,Never had the need to charge back.But my friend did it for his phone delivery,had already registered warranty.It was pretty smooth process with his amex card
Amex is an exception in everything from customer support to chargeback. No other cc company/bank comes even close to it in India.