Americans filed 158 million card-transaction disputes in 2025 — up 29% since 2021, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek piece by Amanda Mull. Worldwide, the jump was even steeper, 46%. Bloomberg describes it as "friendly fraud" — shoppers disputing charges they know are legitimate, a habit TikTok now teaches with step-by-step tutorials on chargeback-ing your way to free stuff.
But Juniper Research's Michael Greenwood says outright theft is only a small slice of the surge. The bigger drivers are confusion — online commerce buries you in mystery merchant names and forgotten subscriptions — plus a growing willingness, especially among younger, cash-squeezed shoppers, to dispute charges they know are real. Return policies got meaner, junk fees multiplied, and customer service curdled into a chatbot maze, so people reach for the one button that still works.
On r/MiddleClassFinance, commenters took issue with "fraud":
"Friendly Fraud" — Using the protections afforded you by your payment method of choice is "friendly fraud"? Fuck that.
— u/whatigotinmyhandnowb
Fraud is when sellers use AI in the product photos to bait and switch. Asking for a chargeback is not fraud when you have legitimately been defrauded.
— u/Euphus
Reaching out to the business and getting the runaround/no response is a valid reason for a chargeback and is not friendly fraud.
— u/Excellent_Kiwi7789
And at least one commenter cheerfully admitted to the real thing, after a West Elm sectional arrived damaged, got replaced with a mismatched "Frankenstein couch," and then stalled for a year:
Eventually I called my credit card company and said I can't take it anymore, they can have the couch back, but I'm not paying for it… A year later I got something in the mail saying if I don't hear from them by a certain date, I should consider it resolved. That date passed recently. Free couch, just like that…so easy.
— u/DistanceMachine
Previously:
• FTC: Amazon tricked users into signing up for Prime and made it too hard to cancel
• Hidden fees in hotel and event ticket prices banned
• Ryanair blacklists passengers who got Covid lockdown refunds
