A paid order never arrived: getting the money back

Capture the evidence today

Tracking pages are live documents. They get updated, corrected, and eventually purged. The delivery photo that shows a doorstep that is not yours will not be there in a month. Screenshot everything before you start the conversation, not after.

• The order confirmation showing what you bought, the amount, and the promised delivery date.
• The full tracking history, screenshotted — not just the current status.
• The delivery photo or proof-of-delivery, if one exists, at full size.
• The delivery address as the seller has it, in case it is wrong.
• Any carrier notice: attempted delivery, held at depot, returned to sender.

The promised date matters more than you think

Federal rules for mail, internet, and telephone orders require a seller to ship within the time it advertised, or within 30 days if it advertised no time at all, and to offer you the choice of a delayed shipment or a prompt refund if it cannot. A seller that quietly blew through its own promised date and did not offer you that choice has a weaker position than it may realise.

So write down the date the seller promised at checkout, not the date the carrier later estimated. Those are different, and only the first one is a promise the seller made to you.

Escalation order

1. The seller or the marketplace, in writing. State the order number, the promised date, the tracking status, and what you want — replacement or refund. Pick one and say which.
2. The marketplace's own buyer-protection process, if you bought through a platform. These have their own deadlines, usually counted from the estimated delivery date, and they are often shorter than you expect.
3. The carrier, only if the seller asks you to open a claim or the tracking shows something you can uniquely resolve, such as a delivery to a neighbour.
4. Your card issuer or payment provider, if the seller refuses or goes silent. For a credit card this is the billing-error or non-delivery route; for PayPal and similar, it is their own dispute window.

When tracking says delivered but it is not

This is the hard case, and the evidence you gather in the first day decides it. Check the delivery photo against your actual door. Check whether the address on the label matches yours exactly. Ask neighbours and check any parcel room or locker. Ask the carrier for the GPS coordinates recorded at delivery — many will provide them, and a mismatch is close to conclusive.

Then tell the seller what you found, specifically. "It never arrived" is easy to refuse. "The proof-of-delivery photo shows a blue door; mine is white, and the recorded coordinates are 200 metres from my address" is not.

Timing

Marketplace protection windows are the tightest constraint and they are usually measured in days from the estimated delivery date. Find out what yours is before you spend a week in seller support.

Card-dispute clocks run in parallel from the transaction or statement date. A long, polite email thread with a seller can quietly consume a deadline you needed.

Exceptions and limits

• If you asked for the parcel to be left somewhere unattended, or gave delivery instructions, responsibility often shifts to you.
• If you gave the wrong address, that is generally yours to fix, though many sellers will help once.
• Items sent to a freight forwarder or a reshipping service are usually treated as delivered when the forwarder receives them.
• Theft after a legitimate delivery is a different claim — that may be a police report, a homeowner's or renter's policy, or a card benefit, not a seller refund.
• Some sellers offer optional package protection at checkout. If you bought it, use it; if you declined it, it does not remove the seller's underlying obligation, but expect to be reminded that you declined it.

Official sources

• CFPB — getting a refund on something bought with a credit card ↗
• CFPB — how do I dispute a charge on my credit card bill? ↗

Rules referenced in this guide, named so you can read the current text yourself:

• The FTC's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule sets shipping-time obligations and the seller's duty to offer a delayed shipment or a prompt refund. Look it up on ftc.gov for the current text before quoting a specific deadline.
• Marketplace buyer-protection programmes are contractual, not statutory. Their deadlines are set by the platform and can be shorter than any legal deadline.