My experience is that the credit card company will contact you if the merchant contests your side of the story or if they are going to give you your money back.

My experience is that the credit card company will contact you if the merchant contests your side of the story or if they are going to give you your money back. I've been on both sides of a chargeback. Though, it may depend on the specific bank. 1) When a customer lied and tried to charge back a ~$250 software purchase where we had emailed each other a few times about it, I simply forwarded the emails to the card issuer and the case was dropped. My company got the money. 2) When I found someone locally had stolen my card number and booked a hotel and tickets to Disneyland, I told my card issuer that I had no idea what those charges were. The hotel and ticket seller wrote back contesting it, so my card issuer contacted me and I signed an affidavit saying that, "No, really, I wasn't at Disneyland 50 miles away and also buying gas by my house at the same time". I eventually got a letter saying the charges had been reversed.