Section 75 Claims
What is Section 75?
Whether you purchase a service or a product from a business, if that business is in breach of contract, or is untruthful about the goods or service you are receiving, you can actually claim the total amount you paid from your credit card company. This is because of valuable consumer protection under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 ("CCA 1974")
Under Section 75, the supplier and your credit card company are joint and severally liable. This means you can pursue either the credit card company or the seller when things go wrong.
Neither claim carries more weight than the other, but it's a good idea to pursue your credit card company first, especially if the supplier has gone out of business. It may also be better to claim against the credit card company for overseas transactions as it provides a better level consumer protection. An overseas seller is going to be difficult pursue unlike UK based credit card company
Section 75 applies where the price of a single item is at least £100 and not more than £30,000. You don't even have to pay for the full purchase price using your credit card. For the protection of Section 75 to be available, you could pay just £100 by credit card and the rest by cash and your credit card company will be liable for the full amount.
There are many circumstances when you might be able to fall back on Section 75. For example, you purchase a product from a shop and that product is faulty and does not work; the credit card company would be accountable to you under their joint and several liability. Likewise, if the supplier of the product you purchase the item from goes bust and your order never arrives, Section 75 allows you the opportunity to recover your money.
You may also be able to claim for any further financial loss incurred as a result of the problems you've experienced with your purchase. For example, if you've booked a new flight to get you home, because the original airline you booked with went bust, you could claim for the full cost of the new flight.
Best of all, there's no upper limit on the amount of damages you can claim. Your credit card company won't make the process easy for you to claim against them, though. If they reject your case and you feel the decision is unfair, contact Mercantile Claims immediately and we are experts in failed 75 claims. We will undertake a thorough review of your claim and resubmit it to the credit card company and, to the Financial Ombudsman Service, if necessary.
How Can Section 75 Claims Help You?
Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 says that a credit card company is 'jointly and severally liable' for any breach of contract or misrepresentation by the company to which you have paid money for goods and services.
Part of the purchase must be made using credit, which is directly linked to the goods or the services. For this reason, it tends to be most closely associated with credit cards, but it applies equally to other credit arranged specifically for the purchase of a given product, for example, car finance. Indeed, the Consumer Credit Directive, which came fully into force on 1 February 2011, added Section 75A to increase the upper limit for creditor liability to £62,260 in certain limited cases, for breach of contract, where Section 75 does not apply.
The service you have paid for must have cost more than £100 and but not more than £30,000.
You don't have to have paid the full amount on your credit card - the credit card company will be liable even if you made only part of the payment on your card. It is the value of the service you have paid for which is key, not the amount paid on the card.
Section 75 does not apply to Debit Cards