Every Deadline That Applies to a Disputed Charge

The clock starts before you look

Almost every dispute deadline in US consumer law runs from the date the statement was sent to you — not the date the charge posted, not the date you opened the envelope or the app.

If you review statements monthly, this rarely bites. If you review them quarterly, or you have a card you barely use, a charge can run out of statutory time before you have ever looked at it. That is the practical reason to scan statements on a schedule rather than when something feels wrong.

The statutory clocks

Debit, ATM and ACH — Regulation E

Reporting a lost or stolen card determines your liability cap:

• Within 2 business days of learning of the loss or theft: liability capped at $50.
• After 2 business days but within 60 days of the statement being sent: capped at $500.
• After 60 days from the statement being sent: potentially unlimited for transfers occurring after that window that a timely report would have prevented.

Reporting an error — a wrong amount, a duplicate, a transfer you did not authorize: notify the bank within 60 days of the statement being transmitted.

Credit cards — Fair Credit Billing Act

The creditor must receive your billing-error notice within 60 days after the first statement containing the error was sent. Put it in writing. A phone call may get the problem fixed, but it is the written notice that engages the statutory protections.

The bank's clocks, once you have filed

Regulation E

• 10 business days to investigate and determine whether an error occurred. Extendable, but only by taking the next step.
• If it needs longer, the bank generally must issue provisional credit within 10 business days and may then take up to 45 days to complete its investigation.
• The outer window extends to 90 days for point-of-sale transactions, foreign-initiated transfers, and transfers on accounts open less than 30 days.
• New accounts get 20 business days rather than 10 for the initial determination.
• Once resolved: if an error occurred, corrected within 1 business day. If not, the bank explains in writing and may reverse provisional credit after giving notice.

Fair Credit Billing Act

• 30 days to acknowledge your written notice.
• Two complete billing cycles, and never more than 90 days, to resolve it.
• While pending, the creditor may not require payment of the disputed amount or report it delinquent on that basis.

The clocks nobody mentions: card-network rules

Behind your bank's process sits a second timetable — Visa's and Mastercard's chargeback rules. These are private network rules, not law, and your bank works to them when it pushes a dispute back to the merchant's bank.

Two things follow. First, the window is often longer than the statutory one — commonly measured in months from the transaction or the expected delivery date, depending on the reason code. This is why an issuer can sometimes help after the statutory window has closed. Second, they are the reason your bank asks oddly specific questions: each reason code has its own evidence requirements, and a dispute filed under the wrong one gets rejected on a technicality rather than on the merits.

Being precise about *what kind* of problem you have is worth more than being emphatic about how wrong it is.

A realistic sequence

1. Day 0 — identify the charge. Do not dispute a charge you cannot name. In our own lookup data, roughly half of the descriptors people bring us cannot be confidently traced to a merchant at first glance, and a large share resolve to a business the account holder does recognise once the processor's prefix is stripped off.
2. Day 0 — contact the merchant, if you know who it is. A refund is faster than a dispute and costs the merchant less, so they are often willing. Keep the correspondence.
3. Day 0–2 — report anything genuinely unauthorized immediately. On debit this is worth real money.
4. Within 60 days of the statement date — file formally, in writing. Include the statement date, the descriptor exactly as printed, the amount, and what specifically is wrong.
5. Track the bank's clock. Diary 10 business days for provisional credit, 45 or 90 days for resolution, 30 days for a credit card acknowledgement.
6. If denied, ask for the evidence. You are entitled to an explanation. A denial based on a merchant's rebuttal you have not seen is worth contesting.

What to write down now

Whatever else you do, record the date on the statement and the descriptor exactly as printed. Every deadline above runs from the first, and every conversation with your bank will turn on the second.