I used a service that allowed you to lock in the price of gasoline and then redeem it when you needed it (ideally when the price was higher). I used a Citi card to prepay gasoline in 2015 and again in 2016. Over the past few months, the service became highly unreliable (three redemption requests went unpaid for months) and then the company's website & contact lines went dead at the first of the year. Attempts to reach them via the attorney general & BBB have been unsuccessful.
I remembered I had made the charges on the card and attempted to dispute. The 2016 charge still showed up in my 24 month history online. Despite me having paid the bill ages ago, it let me submit the dispute and I received a temporary credit (they are waiting to hear from the merchant, which they may never now). The 2015 charge I could not access, so I sent a letter dispute. Citi quickly responded that it could not dispute the charge because it was so old. When I asked why the 2016 charge could be disputed then, they reiterated that I had to dispute a charge within 60 days of receiving the statement (they seemed to ignore my question).
I get the "buyer beware" issue with using this service (and I should have cashed out long ago, even when the price of gas dropped), and it won't be cost effective to pursue the owner in an out-of-state court, so I'm resigned to a loss of around $200. However, Citi seems to have been inconsistent in their treatment of these charges - maybe I just found a loophole in their online banking system. It makes sense that you paying the bill implies you accept the goods/services you received, but then you would never be able to get your money back if you bought an airline ticket (or prepaid a hotel reservation) months in advance only to have the merchant go out of business.
Any thoughts on this?
