What to Do When a Company Won't Give You a Refund

You paid for something, it was wrong, and the company has said no. This guide is the five steps that come next, in the order to try them: asking the merchant properly, escalating in writing, disputing the charge with your card company, complaining to a regulator, and small claims court. There is a letter below you can copy and fill in.

A refusal from a customer service agent is not a final answer. It is the first rung of that ladder, and most disputes are resolved somewhere in the middle of it.

Work through the steps in order. Each one is more effort than the last, so stop as soon as you get the result you want.

The one thing that decides whether this works is documentation. From the first message onwards, keep everything.

Gather your evidence before you contact them

You will need the same handful of things at every step below, so collect them once.

• What you paid, and the date. A statement line or receipt.
• What you were promised. The product page, the advertisement, the terms, the email confirmation.
• What actually happened. Photos of a damaged or wrong item, a screenshot of a service that did not work, a delivery record.
• What the company has said. Every email, chat transcript, and the date, time and agent name for phone calls.
• Screenshots, not bookmarks. Take a screenshot of any web page you are relying on — the product description, the terms, the delivery promise. A bookmark only points at the page as it is today, and companies quietly edit product pages and terms. A screenshot is what you actually had in front of you when you paid.

Step 1: Ask the merchant properly

Most refunds are won or lost here, and the framing matters more than people expect.

Be specific about what you want. "I am requesting a full refund of $89.99 charged on August 3" tells an agent exactly what to do. "This is unacceptable" does not.

State the reason in terms of what went wrong, not how you feel: the item never arrived, it was not as described, the service did not work, you were charged after canceling.

Give a deadline. Seven business days is reasonable.

Stay factual and civil. Agents have discretion, and they use it more readily for people who are easy to help.

Use a written channel — email or chat — so you have a record. If you must call, follow up with an email summarizing what was agreed.

Write your refund request

Fill in the form below and the letter writes itself as you type. When it is finished you can print it, or copy it into an email. Nothing you enter is sent to us — it stays in your browser, and the Clear button wipes it.

Three things people get wrong when they adapt it. Ask for one specific amount, not "a refund or some kind of credit" — an agent cannot approve something vague. Give a date, because an open-ended request sits in a queue. And do not threaten to sue: it reads as noise, and the two consequences you actually have — the card dispute and the regulatory complaint — are the ones a company takes seriously.

Step 2: Escalate in writing

If the first agent says no, do not keep re-asking the same person. Escalate.

Ask for a supervisor or the complaints team. Many companies have a formal complaints process that front-line agents do not mention, so ask directly whether one exists and how to use it.

Where to send it. Use whichever of these produces a written record, in this order: reply on the existing email thread if you have one, so the whole history stays together; a complaints or support form on the company's own website, screenshotting the confirmation; or the customer service email address in the site's contact or help pages. Keep a live chat open only if the transcript can be emailed to you. Physical mail is worth it only for a formal complaint to a head office, or where the terms require written notice at a specific address — send it so you can prove it arrived.

Include: the order number, dates, what you were promised, what happened, what you have already been told and by whom, and what resolution you want. Say that you will pursue a card dispute and a regulatory complaint if it is not resolved.

That sentence is not a threat, it is information, and it frequently changes the answer. Asking your card company to reverse a payment is called a chargeback, and it costs the merchant a fee on top of the refund itself — so a merchant facing one is usually better off just refunding you.

A word on emailing executives, which gets recommended a lot: it works far less often than the internet suggests. Inside a large company, a message to the whole leadership team demanding a $9 refund, particularly one threatening to sue, is routed straight back to the same support queue and carries no more weight than the ticket you already have. What does help is finding the right team rather than the most senior person — a customer relations or executive complaints function, addressed politely, with your order number and one clear request. Send it to one recipient, not a list.

Step 3: Dispute with your card issuer

If the merchant will not resolve it, your payment method usually will. This is the single most effective step for most people.

Credit cards are the strongest position. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, the federal law covering credit card billing disputes, you can dispute a billing error — including goods or services not delivered, or not as agreed — by notifying the issuer in writing within 60 days of the statement containing the charge. The issuer must acknowledge and investigate, and you do not have to pay the disputed amount while it does.

Beyond the statutory route, card network chargeback rules are broader than the law and cover most "did not receive it" and "not as described" cases.

Debit cards are weaker but still useful. Debit transactions fall under a different federal law, the Electronic Fund Transfer Act, and the rule that implements it, known as Regulation E. That regime is aimed at unauthorized transfers and errors rather than dissatisfaction with a purchase. Network chargeback rights still apply, so file the dispute, but expect a narrower test.

This is the strongest practical argument for putting anything risky — a large purchase, a new merchant, a subscription, anything paid well ahead of delivery — on a credit card.

How to file: most issuers have a dispute button next to the transaction in their app. Choose the reason code that matches — not received, not as described, duplicate, canceled subscription — and attach your evidence. It is common to get provisional credit while they investigate — a temporary refund that sits in your account until the dispute is settled.

Be accurate. Disputing a charge you did in fact authorize and receive is fraud. This is for genuine failures.

Step 4: Complain to a regulator

Regulatory complaints will not always get your money back directly, but they are logged, they are visible to the company, and they do produce refunds more often than people expect. They also feed the data that drives enforcement cases.

The CFPB handles banks, credit cards, debt collection, credit reporting, loans, and money transfers. Companies are required to respond, usually within 15 days, and the complaint and response go on the record. For anything financial, this is the most effective single complaint you can file.

The FTC takes reports on deceptive advertising, fraud, and unfair business practices. It does not resolve individual disputes, but its reports drive enforcement, and enforcement is what produces the refund programs and settlements that pay people back later.

Your state attorney general handles consumer complaints under state law, and many run mediation programs that contact the business directly on your behalf. For a dispute with a company in your own state, this is often the most productive route.

Your state insurance or utility regulator, if the dispute is with an insurer or a utility. These regulators have direct authority over licensees and tend to get fast responses.

Step 5: Small claims court

Worth it more often than people assume, particularly for amounts in the hundreds.

Filing fees are modest, usually somewhere between $30 and $100. You do not need a lawyer, and in many states lawyers are not permitted. Limits vary by state, commonly between $5,000 and $10,000.

The practical effect is often that filing itself resolves the matter: a company weighing the cost of sending someone to court over $400 will frequently settle first. Send a final demand letter saying you intend to file, and give a deadline.

What if the company has gone out of business?

Your card dispute is the main route, and it is worth filing even after the usual window, since issuers have discretion where a merchant has ceased trading.

If the company is in bankruptcy, you can file a proof of claim as a creditor, though consumer claims usually rank behind secured creditors and recovery is often partial at best.

When a refusal is a company-wide practice

If a company has treated a lot of people the same way, individual complaints are not the only remedy. That pattern is what class actions and regulatory enforcement exist for, and it is where refunds arrive years later, often to people who had given up.

Chimo tracks those cases, matches them against companies you have actually used, and helps you file the claim.

Check open consumer claims and settlements.

If you think you have found something nobody is acting on yet, tell us. If a company has refused you on grounds that look like policy rather than a one-off — a fee nobody agreed to, a renewal that was never disclosed, a refund term that contradicts what was advertised — email support@chimo.ai with what happened and what you were told. Patterns are hard to see from inside a single complaint, and we look at cases that are not yet filed anywhere.

Related reading

If the charge was never authorized in the first place, the route is different and faster: see what to do if your card is charged without permission. If the money went to a scammer rather than a real merchant, read what to do if you paid a scammer. For subscription charges specifically, see how to get a refund for a subscription you forgot to cancel.