Here I go again.

We have a client that claims to have ordered product from a website that no longer exists and billed under new website. The website that is listed in the transaction details is valid (I was able to visit the site myself as of 06/11/2020).

The client decided to dispute based on the billing information being different from the original site, using reason "product/service not as described," telling us that they decided to look at reviews for both sites claiming they are scams as further justification for the dispute. The client did not describe in any way what they ordered from this website so we cannot determine if the product or service was incorrect. Furthermore the transaction was only initiated on 06/08/2020 and per the billing site, shipments can take up to 5 business days to prepare and an additional 5 business days for delivery, a total of around two weeks from purchase. So I do not think we have a good case for merchandise not received either.

We want to deny this case as we have incomplete information and the dispute seems to be filled out incorrectly with no product or service to compare to the order. Is there any angle we are missing on this case that makes this a valid merchant dispute for chargeback, or even a Reg E dispute based on deceptive practices by the merchant (effectively making the transaction unauthorized)?

Does anybody have some insight as to how we should proceed. I don't feel like we have enough information for a chargeback under any chargeback reason and we have not heard further from the client.

Given that we have no description of the product, product has not had enough time to reach the client and the case was opened as "merchandise not as described," would we be right to deny the client's request until we have better and clearer information?

Look carefully at 1005.11(a) and the definition of unauthorized in 1005.2(m).

(m) “Unauthorized electronic fund transfer” means an electronic fund transfer from a consumer's account initiated by a person other than the consumer without actual authority to initiate the transfer and from which the consumer receives no benefit.

I don't care that the merchant website changed or that the website itself may have been fake. The consumer initiated the charge and they were charged the correct amount. Reg E simply does not consider this to be an error.

If, in your opinion, the consumer has not satisfied VISA/MC requirements for submitting a chargeback because you don't have enough information (e.g. what was ordered vs. what was received) then you can't proceed on the cardholder's behalf until you obtain the information you need.

Thank you Brian. As always, I appreciate your assistance. We will probably have to deny to charge this back for the time being and see if our client can get us a description of what they bought.