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Passbooks, paper pay packets and credit card printers. All were part of the way we banked, got paid and shopped in 1974 – the year when Parliament passed the Consumer Credit Act introducing Section 75.
For more than 50 years, Section 75 has protected most credit card purchases between £100 and £30,000. It means your credit card provider shares equal responsibility with the retailer if things go wrong.
However, a lot has changed since 1974. Today, most of us shop at least some of the time on online marketplaces, and many of us pay using services such as PayPal that didn’t exist when it was written.
As the way we pay has evolved, quirks and caveats increasingly affect whether Section 75 claims succeed. Here, Which? explains the quirks and loopholes, why claims can be rejected, and how to give yours the best chance of success.
Section 75 applies where there is a breach of contract or misrepresentation by the seller. It allows you to get your money back if:
The protection is broader than you might think. It applies whether you shop online, in person, over the phone or by mail order, and isn’t limited to credit cards. Point-of-sale loans, store cards and catalogue accounts can all be covered too.
Since coming under Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulation in July, buy now, pay later products such as Klarna and Clearpay can also benefit from the protection.
You have up to six years to make a claim in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and five years in Scotland.
Which? member Howard made a claim through his Tesco credit card after buying what turned out to be a counterfeit Swatch watch on eBay. When it broke 18 months later, the eBay resolution window had already closed.
He provided seller correspondence and a jeweller’s note (which cost him £20) confirming the watch was fake, Tesco refunded both the watch and the jeweller’s fee without hassle.
You can’t claim under the law if you have simply changed your mind about buying something, but it does cover a wide variety of purchases.
Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide told us that travel, holidays, vehicles, home improvements and electrical goods generate the vast majority of disputes, frequently due to poor workmanship, faulty items or trading insolvencies.
Section 75 should not be confused with chargeback. Unlike Section 75, chargeback is a voluntary scheme run by card networks such as Visa and Mastercard. Banks will often try chargeback first because they can recover the money from the retailer’s bank, rather than paying the claim themselves.
Lynne and husband Mike bought a £1,400 bed in store using a Barclaycard credit card. Lynne told staff the gap between their wardrobes was 150cm, and they assured her a king-size bed would fit. The invoice listed the bed as ‘five foot’ without metric measurements. However, five feet is around 152cm –2cm wider than the space they had.
On delivery, the bed was too big. Lynne raised the issue with the retailer, but it refused a refund and said it would cost an extra £300-400 to remake the bed to the correct size. She contacted Barclaycard to make a Section 75 claim, and was incorrectly told that the retailer needed to agree before it could be processed.
Lynne knew this was wrong. She consulted Which? Legal then submitted a formal claim citing misrepresentation, the bed being unfit for purpose and the lack of metric measurements on the invoice. Three weeks after she launched her claim, Barclays hadn’t contacted her.
When approached by Which?, Barclays said it couldn’t establish a breach of contract or misrepresentation and rejected the claim. It did admit that its representative had given Lynne incorrect Section 75 advice and fallen short of its usual service standards.
It apologised, credited her account with £200 for the inconvenience and said that it could try to recover the money through chargeback. However, it said this would depend on the retailer accepting the chargeback claim.
Lynne disagrees with Barclays’ decision and believes the use of imperial rather than metric measurements amounted to misrepresentation and breached Trading Standards rules.
Under UK metrication laws, traders must use metric units as the main measurement for packaged or loose goods, with imperial measurements given as additional information. However, there is no standard size format for mattresses and bed frames in the UK. She also argues that the bed was not as described under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, as it was larger than she had been told. With support from Which?, she now plans to take her complaint to the FOS.
Section 75 relies on an unbroken legal link between three parties: you (the debtor), your credit card issuer (the creditor) and the seller (the supplier). This is called a Debtor-Creditor-Supplier (DCS) link.
In simple terms, it boils down to two questions: who did you buy the goods or services from, and did you buy directly? If this chain breaks, your card provider could tell you that this protection vanishes.
When it was introduced, this wasn’t much of an issue. Today, it’s a different story. Transactions are routinely routed through payment services such as PayPal, booked via platforms like Booking.com, arranged through travel comparison sites, or processed by online marketplaces that don’t supply the goods – they simply host third-party sellers.
In some of these cases, card providers argue that a fourth entity has entered the transaction, breaking the link. That’s not the only potential stumbling block.
Contractual details can create similar traps – particularly the little-known caveat on ‘goods for your benefit’. This means what you buy has to be for you, not someone else.
So if you buy a flight for yourself, you’re covered under Section 75. If you buy one for another person, then you’re unlikely to be. The same applies to additional cardholders. Their purchases are usually only covered if the primary cardholder benefits too. The line gets blurry with shared purchases.
If you can show a direct or indirect benefit – such as buying a joint holiday package or taking advantage of a ‘two-for-one’ flight deal – the argument for coverage is stronger.
Then there are gifts. You might reasonably argue that buying presents gives you pleasure too, and should be covered. Not necessarily. Each claim is assessed on its own facts, and how its interpreted can vary between card providers.
Surinder Sehdev paid a £1,300 deposit on his Halifax credit card to a home improvement firm for his daughter’s window refurbishment. A dispute arose over missing porch ventilation that had been verbally requested but omitted from the plans.
The disagreement led the firm to treat the contract as breached, cancel the order, and retain his full deposit. After multiple attempts to resolve the dispute, Surinder filed an Section 75 claim with Halifax for breach of contract, hoping to recover his £1,300.
Halifax rejected the claim, saying that because his daughter owned the property where the work was due to take place, there wasn’t a DCS link.
Surinder took the case to the FOS. It overturned Halifax’s decision, finding that a valid DCS relationship existed because Surinder was officially named as the purchaser on the contract. His victory was short-lived.
The FOS ultimately rejected his claim because there wasn’t enough evidence that the firm had breached the contract. It noted the signed agreement didn’t include vents and no independent expert survey showed that this breached building regulations.
Lloyds Banking Group, which owns Halifax, said that if Surinder provides a new independent report showing a breach, it will review his claim.
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The government recognises that the legislation is showing its age and in May 2026 it published plans to modernise it.
The biggest proposed change under consultation is moving the CCA away from being law and into FCA regulation instead. However, S75 will not be affected in this round of reforms, as it is one of the more complex consumer protection provisions and requires further policy work and consultation.
Neither HM Treasury nor the FCA has confirmed a timeline for that work. For now, the grey areas surroundingS75 look set to remain.
Section 75 still works but to stay covered, keep these key tips in mind:
Helen booked two holiday lodges for her family party of 11. Due to the size, she had to split the reservation into two £1,139 payments – one on her NewDay credit card, the other on her husband’s card.
While her husband’s name was on the overall booking, the lodges were registered in two names, with one listed under hers, the other her husband’s. Both credit cards were paid off through their joint bank account.
On arrival, the accommodations were not as advertised and, after unsuccessfully raising the issue with the holiday firm, Helen and her husband both filed Section 75 claims.
Helen’s husband’s claim was partially accepted, with 25% of the payment refunded within two weeks. However, Helen’s was rejected by NewDay, which argued that the overall booking confirmation was solely in herhusband’s name – breaking the legal link between cardholder and supplier.
Helen escalated the complaint to the FOS, arguing that it was a joint family holiday from which she also benefited, and that this should mean he was covered
However, the Ombudsman backed NewDay’s rejection, explaining that the protection is strictly limited to the person named on the booking contract– and in her case it wasn’t.
It also said that benefiting from the booking didn’t matter if Helen’s name wasn’t on the contract. In response, NewDay stated that consumers needed to ‘keep this in mind’ when booking travel or buying goods and services for family members and friends.
Helen said she felt ‘angry and annoyed’ throughout the process, and ultimately let down, feeling that ‘it’s not doing what it’s supposed to be doing’.
Credit cards consistently rank among the most complained-about financial products with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). However, because issuers don’t report Section 75 claims separately, it’s impossible to know exactly how many complaints stem from failed claims.
If you aren’t happy with how a provider handles your claim or it has been rejected, don’t take no for an answer. You can escalate it further to the Ombudsman.
The FOS will look at the whole picture of a claim and consider things such as consumer laws, industry standard practices and overall fairness, to decide what is fair and reasonable.
That doesn’t guarantee success. If your claim is outside Section 75, for example, because it’s beyond the price limits, the legal link is broken, or lack of evidence of a breach – the FOS may side with the card provider. But if you can show that the claim should be covered, it may overturn the provider’s decision.
In response to the two claims that went to the FOS in this article, it said that complaints for Section 75 can be ‘complicated’ and are ‘fact sensitive’and outcomes are entirely dependent on individual circumstances.
Knowing your rights gives you valuable leverage when things go wrong – but until it catches up with modern spending habits, avoiding the traps is just as important as the protection itself
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Which? is working to keep Section 75 protections in place for consumers as the government looks to reform the legislation.
Tony Herbert, Which? Senior Policy Advisor says: 'Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act is the ultimate safety net for shoppers. As the CCA was created way back in 1974, it understandably hasn’t kept up with the ways consumers now shop.
'The case studies featured in this article highlight various technical loopholes which mean it can be incredibly difficult to work out which payments are covered, resulting in consumers sometimes having claims refused. Which? welcomes the Treasury’s intention to update the CCA so it’s fit for the 21st century.
'However, modernising the law must not mean weakening it. Any attempt to dilute Section 75 would be wholly unacceptable. Replacing enforceable legal rights, which are highly valued by consumers, with vague regulatory rules would make it much harder for shoppers to get their money back when things go wrong.
'Section 75 also powers consumer demand, giving shoppers the confidence to use credit for big purchases. This vital safety net underpins consumer spending across the UK economy and eroding such protection has the potential to undermine consumer trust and discourage people from making large purchases.
'The Treasury’s goal should be simple in updating the CCA: fix the gaps, future-proof the credit protections consumers rely on, and keep S75 as a strong legal right in legislation.'
