Your tracking page has said "in transit" for three weeks. The seller's chat is a wall of blue ticks and no replies. The marketplace help center keeps sending the same automated email. At this point most people give up — and that is exactly what a bad seller is counting on. The money is usually recoverable, but only if you do three things in the right order and fast enough: freeze the evidence, put the seller on a legal clock, and only then bring in the bank.
Here is the whole path, from the first silent day to a chargeback, with the deadlines that actually matter in the US, the EU and the UK.
Step 1: Stop chatting and start building a file
A support chat is not evidence. It disappears when the seller deletes the account, and a screenshot of "Hi, where is my order?" proves nothing about what you paid for.
Within the first hour, collect:
- The order confirmation — the email with the order number, item description, price and delivery date. Save it as a PDF, not a screenshot.
- The payment record — a bank or card statement line, or the PayPal/Stripe receipt. This is the document the bank will ask for first.
- The seller's own terms — the returns page, the shipping promise, the "delivery in 5–7 days" banner. Take a dated screenshot; sellers quietly edit these pages once complaints start.
- The full message history — export it or screenshot every message with visible dates.
This is the boring part, and it is where most claims die. If your order confirmation is buried in a mailbox with 4,000 unread emails, an AI twin at asibiont.com can search your inbox for the order number, pull the confirmation and the payment receipt, and compile them into one PDF file you can attach to a complaint. The decision about what to claim stays with you.
Step 2: Send a formal demand, not a message
A chat message asks. A written demand creates a record — and in most dispute systems, the record is what converts "unhappy customer" into "creditor."
Send it by email to the seller's official address (check the site footer, the invoice, or the marketplace seller page), and duplicate it through the platform's dispute form if there is one. Keep it short and factual:
- Order number, date, amount paid, promised delivery date.
- One sentence of facts: "The parcel has not arrived and tracking has not updated since [date]."
- A clear demand: full refund of [amount] to the original payment method.
- A deadline: 14 days is a reasonable and widely understood window.
- A consequence: "If I do not receive the refund by [date], I will initiate a chargeback with my card issuer and file a complaint with the consumer protection authority."
That last line is not a threat, it is a notice — and banks and consumer bodies look favorably on claimants who gave the merchant a fair chance to fix it.
Drafting this letter from scratch is where people stall, because the tone matters: too soft and it gets ignored, too aggressive and it reads like a scam. An AI twin can pull the order details from your email, calculate the 14-day deadline, and draft the demand letter as a document you review and send yourself. You still press send — and you should read it before you do.
Step 3: Know your clock before you run out of it
Chargeback rights are not unlimited. Card networks set windows, and they are counted from the transaction date or from the date you should reasonably have expected delivery — and the two are not the same in every scheme.
| Region | Main lever | Typical window to act | Where to file |
|---|---|---|---|
| US | Fair Credit Billing Act (billing error disputes) | 60 days from the statement showing the charge | Card issuer, in writing |
| US | Card network chargeback rules | Often up to 120 days from the transaction or expected delivery | Card issuer |
| EU | Consumer Sales Directive (2019/771) — delivery within 30 days unless agreed otherwise | 2 years for lack of conformity; refund due within 14 days of withdrawal | Seller, then national consumer body |
| UK | Consumer Rights Act 2015 | 30 days to reject goods/services for a full refund after a failed repair or replacement attempt | Seller, then card issuer under Section 75 (credit cards, £100–£30,000) |
Read that table as a warning, not a guarantee. The 60-day US figure is a legal floor for billing errors; the card networks' own chargeback rules usually give longer, but the issuer applies them, not you. In the EU and UK, the statutory rights run long, but the practical clock is shorter: the longer you wait, the harder it is to prove the parcel never arrived rather than was stolen from your porch.
Step 4: Chargeback — the mechanism, and where it fails
A chargeback is not the bank taking your side. It is a formal dispute routed through the card networks, where the bank debits the merchant's account and the merchant has a limited window to respond with proof of delivery.
What you actually do:
- Call the number on the back of your card and say: "I want to dispute a charge for goods not received." Use those words — "fraud" triggers a different, weaker process.
- Submit the form the issuer sends, with your evidence pack: order confirmation, payment record, demand letter, proof you contacted the seller.
- Wait. Provisional credit often appears within days, but the case can take 45–90 days if the merchant fights it.
Where it breaks:
- You paid by bank transfer or a wallet top-up. Chargeback protection is a card-network feature. A direct transfer to a seller's IBAN has no such route — your only lever is a civil claim, and that is a lawyer's decision, not an AI's.
- You filed too late. Once the network window closes, the issuer cannot open the case, no matter how good your evidence.
- The merchant produces a delivery scan. A "delivered" status with a photo of a doorstep is enough for many issuers to side with the merchant. Your counter is a police report for theft or a written statement that no parcel was received — get it before the case closes, not after.
- You used a debit card. Rights exist but are weaker and slower in most jurisdictions. Credit cards give you the extra layer of statutory protection in the UK and stronger dispute leverage in the US.
There is a real trade-off here. Filing a chargeback is fast and free, but many marketplaces suspend your account while a dispute is open, and some sellers blacklist buyers who charge back. If you still want the item, ask for a replacement first and keep the chargeback as the second move.
Step 5: Escalate to consumer protection — and what that actually does
A consumer authority rarely recovers your $200 personally. What it does is create pressure: a formal complaint can trigger a merchant investigation, and in the EU and UK it feeds into systems that sellers care about.
- US: file a complaint with your state attorney general's consumer protection division and with the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov. The FTC does not resolve individual cases, but patterns matter.
- EU: the European Consumer Centre in your country handles cross-border disputes with traders in another member state, free of charge.
- UK: Citizens Advice runs the Consumer Service, which refers eligible cases to Trading Standards.
You fill these forms yourself — there is no shortcut, and an AI cannot file a government complaint on your behalf without a configured integration. What it can do is read the seller's terms and flag the clauses that work against you, so you know which ones to quote. The same skill applies to any contract you sign online, and it is worth reading how to challenge unfair contract terms before you pay — most of the clauses that sink refund claims are visible before checkout.
The case that shows how it goes wrong
A reader in the UK ordered a €340 jacket from a small EU-based shop. Tracking stopped updating after 11 days. She messaged the seller four times over six weeks, got one reply ("checking with courier"), and by the time she called her card issuer, the merchant had closed the storefront and the chargeback window on her scheme had passed.
Where it broke: she treated chat silence as a reason to wait. The correct move on day 14 was a written demand with a deadline, and on day 28 a chargeback. Instead she lost seven weeks — and the seven weeks were the whole case.
The same scenario handled correctly: demand on day 14, chargeback on day 28 with the demand letter attached, provisional credit within a week, merchant unable to prove delivery, refund confirmed. Same facts, different order of operations.
What changes with the situation
Generic advice fails in predictable places:
- Marketplace vs. independent shop. On a large marketplace, the platform's buyer protection is usually faster than a chargeback — use it first, and keep the bank as backup. With a standalone shop, the bank is your main lever.
- Cross-border purchases. EU consumer rules protect you when the seller is established in the EU; a seller outside it changes everything, and the European Consumer Centre is your realistic route.
- Low-value orders. Below roughly $50, the time cost of a full dispute often exceeds the refund. A single firm demand letter is usually the rational stopping point.
- Digital goods and services. "Not received" does not apply; you need "not as described," which is a harder case and needs screenshots of what was promised.
Keeping the deadlines from slipping
A dispute is a chain of dates: demand sent, 14 days elapsed, chargeback filed, merchant response due, escalation window closing. Miss one and the rest collapse.
This is the part worth automating. An AI twin can read the seller's returns page and pull out the actual refund window, create reminders for each deadline on your calendar, and send you a nudge the day before the chargeback window closes. It can also keep the correspondence in one thread and draft follow-ups when the merchant goes quiet again. The calls, the bank conversation and the decision to escalate stay yours.
Start with the two dates
Find your order confirmation and your payment record today, note the payment date and the promised delivery date, and send the demand letter within 48 hours. That is the entire game — everything else is follow-through.
If you want the paperwork handled, hand the AI twin at asibiont.com your inbox search for the order, the deadline calculation and the first draft of the demand letter. Then read it, sign your name to it, and send it yourself. See also , and Microservices Architecture in Practice.