[snaimon]

USUALLY.... speaking from some Ebay experiences here - I think the credit card company will issue a temporary credit and send out a formal dispute letter to the card holder. The card holder must document his/her claim with emails, receipts, letters - whatever and mail those in to the credit card company. Upon investigation - and I imagine the credit card company will try to contact the seller, if the card holder has good evidence and the seller cannot document or prove a shipment, then the merchant has no recourse. If the merchant has evidence that conflicts with the buyer (card holder), then I am not sure what happens. In almost every case where my Ebay seller did not deliver the merchandise, I received a refund.

It is a shabby practice to bill for merchandise BEFORE it is shipped. Mind you they are allowed to do an AUTHORIZATION, which decrements your available credit. But they are not supposed to actually put thru the charge until they ship.

When I ordered my son's Dell for college, they sent their authorization thru and I am sure they received approval; however, the charge did not appear until about 10 days later when they actually shipped the goods out.

Stan