Credit Card Disputed Charge (2nd Try)

I was reviewing my monthly statement from CHASE last weekend when I noticed something odd. I had a charge for $370 from a company called Istock *International. My first thought was, what the hell did I spend $370's on? A week before that I had purchased a digital still camera in Singapore for nearly the same amount, but I had already identified that purchase. It's not uncommon for me to not remember exactly what I purchased a month ago, but the size of the purchase and the unknown vender struck me as odd, so I did a little more research. I concluded that the purchase could either have been for a Macintosh stock screening application, or an online stock photograph vender. Neither of these purchases makes sense for me, especially since I was on travel to Manila pretty much the whole day in question, so I decided to dispute the charge.

            I was surprised at how easy CHASE made it. I've disputed an unknown charge on one of my credit cards once before, but that was about 10 years ago and I remember that it took awhile just to find out that it was a charge I had made after all but didn't recognize the company name. This time was quite different. CHASE walked me through the steps of identifying to them the charge in question, categorizing what I thought was wrong with the charge, provided me the merchants phone number, and allowed me to give them any comments I had or the merchant had if I contacted them. Using the phone number provided I was able to determine that it was, in fact, the photostock vender who assessed the charge. I'm not keen on paying for random photos since I don't use them professionally, especially digital ones. I tried calling them, but they were closed for the weekend so I went ahead with the dispute anyway. As a final step, CHASE asked me to mail in any evidence I had for the dispute. Since this was a charge I suspect I did not authorize, I have no evidence to send in.

            This morning I got a reply from CHASE saying that their initial assessment is that the charge was invalid, so they are giving me a credit toward next months bill. If the merchant offers evidence to the contrary the matter may come up again, as near as I can tell it's settled. Sweet! That was easy.



(I'm still playing around with email postings. For some reason my first post today didn't show the text!)