When does Section 75 protect a credit card purchase?

Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 makes your credit card provider jointly and severally liable with the seller for misrepresentation or breach of contract. It applies when you paid on credit, when there is a direct link between you, the lender and the supplier, and when the item in question has a cash price of more than £100 and no more than £30,000. That means you can claim from your card provider instead of the seller — which matters most when the seller has gone bust, vanished, or simply refuses to help.

Which conditions must all be met?

Section 75 is not a general "credit cards give you your money back" rule. Four things have to line up at the same time, and the Financial Ombudsman Service applies the same four when it decides these complaints:

Condition	What it means
Credit was used	A credit card, a point-of-sale loan, or certain catalogue shopping accounts. Not a debit card.
The price falls in range	The cash price of the single item is over £100 and no more than £30,000.
A debtor–creditor–supplier link exists	You bought from the supplier, using credit arranged with that purchase in mind.
The supplier did something wrong	Misrepresentation, or a breach of the contract — not just a change of mind.

Miss any one of the four and the claim fails, however unfair the situation feels.

Why does the £100 limit apply per item, not per basket?

This is the condition people get wrong most often. The statute does not talk about what you spent. Section 75(3)(b) removes protection "so far as the claim relates to any single item to which the supplier has attached a cash price not exceeding £100 or more than £30,000".

So the test is the price tag on the one thing you are complaining about:

• A £150 pair of headphones that never arrive — covered.
• A £400 order made up of ten £40 items, one of which is faulty — not covered, because no single item is priced above £100.
• A £45,000 car — not covered by Section 75, because it exceeds the ceiling.

Note also that it is the cash price that counts, not the amount that went through the card. You do not have to pay the whole price on credit for the claim to stand — paying part of it can be enough, and the claim can still relate to the full cash price.

Which payment methods qualify?

Qualifies	Does not qualify
Credit cards	Debit cards
Point-of-sale (retailer) loans	Charge cards
Certain catalogue shopping accounts	Overdrafts and general-purpose bank loans
	Cash, bank transfers, credit card cheques

That list comes from the Financial Ombudsman's consumer guidance. The logic behind it is that Section 75 attaches to a credit agreement linked to the purchase. A debit card moves your own money and creates no such agreement, which is why a bank transfer to a fraudster is dealt with under an entirely different set of rules — see will my bank refund me if I was tricked into sending money.

What is the debtor–creditor–supplier link, and when does it break?

The Act only bites on a "debtor–creditor–supplier agreement": a three-cornered relationship between you (the debtor), your card provider (the creditor) and the business you bought from (the supplier). The link is typically questioned when:

• You did not buy from the supplier directly. If you bought through a marketplace, broker or agent rather than from the business that was supposed to supply the goods, the chain may not hold.
• A payment intermediary sat in the middle. The Financial Ombudsman is explicit that this is not automatic — its guidance to firms says such intermediaries "don't always mean that a Section 75 claim isn't valid", and it expects lenders to read the contractual paperwork before rejecting a claim on this ground.
• Someone else is the debtor. The protection belongs to the person who is party to the credit agreement. An additional cardholder buying on someone else's account is not in the same position as the main cardholder.

If a lender rejects your claim in one line citing "no DCS link", that is a reason to push back rather than to give up.

What can I actually claim, and how does it differ from chargeback?

Section 75 gives you a like claim against the lender — meaning whatever you could have claimed from the supplier. MoneyHelper notes this can extend beyond the price itself to related expenses and consequential losses, such as damage caused by a faulty item.

Chargeback is a different animal: it is a card scheme rule, not a legal right. It works on debit cards as well as credit cards and has no price floor, but it is limited to reversing the transaction, and it runs to strict scheme deadlines — the Financial Ombudsman points to a window of around 120 days from the expected delivery date or from when the problem came to light. Section 75 has no equivalent short deadline, though ordinary legal limitation periods still apply, so do not sit on a claim.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Where both are available, the Ombudsman's view is that a lender should generally consider them together.

What is not covered?

Section 75 is about the seller failing you. It does nothing about:

• Buyer's remorse, or an item that is simply not to your taste.
• An investment or asset that falls in value.
• Your bank or card provider failing — that is deposit protection territory, covered in how much of my money is FSCS protected if my bank fails.
• The cost of the credit itself. The rate you pay on the card is a separate matter; on how advertised rates work, see what does "representative APR" mean on a UK loan.

In short

If you paid for something on a credit card, the item was priced above £100 and no more than £30,000, you bought it directly from the supplier, and the supplier misled you or broke the contract — Section 75 lets you claim from your card provider as well as the seller. Put the claim in writing to your card provider, set out which of the four conditions each fact satisfies, and attach the order confirmation and correspondence. If it is refused, complain formally, and take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service if you are not satisfied after eight weeks.

This is general information about how a statutory protection works, not advice about your own circumstances. Card terms and scheme rules change, so check the current position with your provider before relying on it.