When a number of budget airlines went under in fairly quick succession more than a decade ago, not many consumers knew about chargeback, a lovely consumer protection offered worldwide by the credit card companies.

In short, a chargeback or reversal is the return of funds from a merchant’s bank account to yours, via your bank, when you dispute a purchase you made with your credit or debit card — as long it’s branded with a Visa, MasterCard or American Express logo — either because you didn’t get what you paid for, or it was a fraudulent transaction.

It gave me great pleasure to advise those holding tickets with Nationwide, 1Time and Velvet Sky how to apply for chargeback and get their money back, all those years ago when those airlines ran out of runway. ..