Having fraudulent charges on your credit card account can be nerve-racking, so it’s understandable why you’d want them removed as quickly as possible. Before we get into the timetables – both legal and practical – for this to occur, it’s important to note that The Fair Credit Billing Act limits your liability for unauthorized credit card charges to $50 and all major credit card companies have voluntarily extended $0 liability guarantees. This means that you will not be held responsible for purchases that you did not make if you report them promptly.

In most cases, a simple phone call to your creditor will be sufficient and you should expect the entire process to be resolved within a couple of weeks. However, if you want legal protection under the aforementioned Fair Credit Billing Act, there is a formal fraud reporting process that you are required to follow.

This necessitates that you send a letter to your credit card company’s billing inquiries address so that it arrives within 60 days of your first monthly statement containing an error being made available. This letter should be sent via certified mail and should contain your name, address, account number, the date and amount of the fraud in question, and any police reports pertaining to it. That’s your part of the deal. When it comes to your creditor, it must acknowledge your complaint in writing within 30 days of receiving it (unless the issue has already been rectified). It must then resolve the issue within 90 days (two billing cycles) of receipt of your letter.

Finally, it’s important to point out that while most people think of credit cards and debit cards bearing either the Visa or the MasterCard logo as being the same when it comes to fraud protection, debit cards are actually governed by the Electronic Fund Transfer Act. Different rules and reporting procedures therefore apply.