Cancelling a Credit Card Order: A Comprehensive Guide

Cancel a Credit Card Order

When you place an order online or through the mail, the company you are ordering from gets an authorization number from your credit card company before sending out the order. This makes it difficult to cancel the order in some cases. Most companies these days have a money-back guarantee or a decent return policy, but some will give you a hard time in hopes you will give up and they can keep your money. The advantage of using a credit card is that most have a department that will help you if you can't work it out with the company you from which you ordered.

Step 1

Call the company you ordered from and inform it you want to cancel your order. You should have your order number, confirmation number and credit card information for the credit card you used to place the order. Ask for an email address so you can follow up the cancellation in writing. If the company gives you a confirmation number for the cancellation, make sure to write it down.

Step 2

Call the credit card company or go online and check to see if your order was refunded. In some cases, if the order had already been mailed out to you, you may have to send it back and wait to check for the refund.

Step 3

Send a registered letter to the company canceling your order. If you can't find a phone number, email address or the company isn't willing to cancel the order on the phone, you must send a letter with a receipt requested to the company. Include the order number, confirmation number and the date of the order in the letter. When you get the receipt back, check online for the refund again. It should not take longer for the company to post the refund than it took for the receipt to come back to you.

Step 4

If nothing else works, call the credit card company and file a dispute. Once you have exhausted all ways of dealing with the company you ordered from, register a dispute with the credit card company. It will start an investigation, and you can provide letters, receipts, dates of phone calls and emails. The credit card company will take the charge off your credit card until it finishes the investigation. If it finds you don't deserve a refund, it will put the charge back on. But if it finds in your favor, the charge will never be put back on your credit card. If you've kept good records of your attempts to deal directly with the ordering company, you stand a very good chance of having the money refunded.