Does Section 75 apply if I paid by debit card or bank transfer?

No. The Financial Ombudsman Service lists debit cards, charge cards, overdrafts, general-purpose bank loans, cash, credit card cheques and bank transfers as outside Section 75. A debit card may still support a chargeback, which is a card-scheme process rather than a legal right. Bank transfer and cryptocurrency leave you with neither.

How long do I have to raise a chargeback?

The Financial Ombudsman Service says you usually have around 120 days, running either from the date you expected the goods and did not receive them, or from the date you received goods that were defective or not as described. Limits can be longer or shorter, which matters for made-to-order dolls because production can take 4 to 12 weeks before the clock is even visible.

Is a chargeback guaranteed if my claim is valid?

No. The Financial Ombudsman Service states plainly that a bank or lender does not have to raise a chargeback, though it can be good practice where valid reasons exist. This is why chargeback advice in forums contradicts itself: chargeback is governed by individual card-scheme rules, not by statute.

Your order went wrong. Now who do you complain to?

Q: I only paid a deposit by credit card. Am I covered?

In the UK, the test is the cash price of the item, not the amount you put on the card. The Financial Ombudsman Service states that Section 75 applies even if you only made part of the payment using credit. So a deposit paid by credit card on a doll with a cash price over £100 and not more than £30,000 can still bring the whole purchase within Section 75.

Every doll guide on the internet, this one included, used to answer dispute risk the same way: pick a vetted vendor. That advice ends at the moment you pay, which is the moment the question actually begins.

This page starts where that advice stops. It is about what recourse survives after the money has left — and it is deliberately the one page on this site carrying no affiliate link at all. If you are here, a vendor has already let you down. Earning a commission off that moment would discredit the only thing we have.

Four things stack badly in this category, and all four are normal: the doll is made to order, production runs 4–12 weeks, the supplier is overseas, and you likely paid a deposit then a balance. By the time anything is visibly wrong, an ordinary chargeback window can already be closing.

Check what covers you

Where are you?

We only assert statute we have read. UK law is what this page can source; see the note below the result if you are elsewhere.

How did you pay the first instalment?

Cash price of the doll itself (£)

The price attached to the single item, not your order total. A £90 wig bought alongside it is a separate item and is tested separately.

What went wrong?

Date it arrived — or the date you were told to expect it

Used only to show how much of the chargeback window is left. It stays in your browser.

What appears to apply

Gather this before you call

The Financial Ombudsman Service lists the material a bank or lender finds useful. For a made-to-order doll, the third and fourth items are usually the ones that decide it — a configuration page or an order-confirmation email is what turns "I'm unhappy" into "this is not what was contracted".

Sources for everything above: the statute itself (Consumer Credit Act 1974, s.75) and the Financial Ombudsman Service's guidance (page dated 9 July 2026). We read both in full rather than quoting summaries of them.

The part most people get backwards

A chargeback is not a legal right. It is a process run under the rules of your card scheme, and the Financial Ombudsman Service says outright that "a bank or lender doesn't have to raise a chargeback". That single fact explains why forum threads on this contradict each other so violently: there is no statute to quote, so everyone is describing a different bank's discretion and assuming it is the rule.

Section 75, where it applies, is the opposite. It is statute. Section 75(1) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 says that where you have a claim against the supplier for misrepresentation or breach of contract, you have "a like claim against the creditor", who is "jointly and severally liable". In plain terms: your card issuer stands in the same position as the vendor who is ignoring your emails, and unlike the vendor, your card issuer has a regulator.

Why a deposit still counts

This is the detail that matters most here and the one least often stated correctly. The threshold test in s.75(3)(b) runs on the cash price the supplier attached to the single item — over £100 and not more than £30,000. It does not run on how much you put on the card. The Financial Ombudsman puts it directly: "it's the cash price of the goods or services that matters, not what you paid on your credit card or loan – for example, Section 75 applies even if you only made part of the payment using credit."

So the common pattern in this category — a few hundred on a card as a deposit, balance later — does not shrink your protection to the deposit. If the doll's cash price sits in the range, the claim relates to the doll.

Two things we could not confirm, and will not pretend otherwise.

1. Whether Section 75 reaches an overseas supplier. It is widely stated that it does, on the authority of OFT v Lloyds TSB [2007] UKHL 48. We were unable to retrieve that judgment to read it, so we are not asserting it. Raise it with your card issuer; do not take our word for it, because we do not have one to give.

2. Whether paying through PayPal or a similar service breaks the chain. Section 75 requires an unbroken debtor-creditor-supplier agreement, and the Financial Ombudsman says whether one exists "isn't always straightforward". Many sources say an intermediary defeats the claim. We could not verify that as a general rule, so we flag it as a live risk to ask about rather than a settled answer.

Outside the UK

We have not verified a statutory equivalent for the US, EU, Canada or Australia, so this page does not offer one. That is a real limitation rather than an oversight: this site covers import rules for eleven countries, and payment recourse deserves the same treatment before it is published. What travels regardless is the chargeback path, because card-scheme rules are not country-specific in the way statute is — and so does the ordering principle behind all of it: the payment method you choose is the dispute protection you will have, and it is chosen before anything goes wrong, not after.

Before you are ever in this position

The whole of this page is a worse outcome than not needing it. If you have not ordered yet, the Scam-Check tests the vendor, and the first-buyer checklist covers what to confirm in writing before you pay — configuration, lead time and refund policy are the three that turn into disputes. The import cost guide covers the other surprise that arrives after payment.

This is information, not legal advice. It describes what published sources say, with those sources named so you can check them. Your circumstances may differ, and a regulated adviser or your card issuer is the right place for a decision about your own claim.