Consumers have a powerful tool in credit card chargebacks

Credit card users who feel helpless when dealing with merchants that provide shoddy goods and services should know they have a powerful tool available to them: chargebacks.

[...] consumers can also dispute a charge if they're dissatisfied with the quality of merchandise, service or delivery and the merchant refuses to make things right, according to the federal Fair Credit Billing Act.

When Consumers' Checkbook, a nonprofit rater of local service vendors, asked its members to share stories about chargebacks in 2016, more than 100 replied, and 90 percent said they were successful, according to Executive Director Kevin Brasler.

Consumers might even dispute charges in an attempt to get their money back and keep the merchandise, a behavior sometimes dubbed "friendly fraud."

[...] as merchants incur the costs of chargebacks, they pass them along to consumers in the form of higher prices, says Craig Shearman, spokesman for the National Retail Federation.

On Oct. 1, 2015, liability for in-person fraudulent purchases switched from banks to retailers if the disputed charge came from a credit card equipped with an anti-fraud microchip, but the retailer's card reader didn't accept chip cards.