Customer says the order never arrived, or only part of it

Amex C08 means the customer says the goods or services never arrived, or only part of them did.

How it arrives

The notice comes through Amex's merchant portal or through your payment company (Stripe, Shopify Payments and the like). It carries the dispute reason (the code on your notice), names the sale, and gives the customer's claim (Amex calls customers cardmembers), which can be that none or only part of the order arrived. Respond before the date on that notice. Your payment company sets it, and it comes before the card network's own limit.

What the issuer is looking for

Amex asks whether you delivered what the customer paid for. It gives more weight to delivery to the verified address on file than to a signature alone.

• Physical goods: proof of delivery to the billing or shipping address.
• Digital products and subscriptions: login records, session timestamps, and usage history.
• Either case: messages in which the customer acknowledged receipt, asked a follow-up question, or used the product before disputing.
• Partial orders: itemised shipping records showing what shipped and when, and any back-order notice sent at the time of the order.

Common scenarios and the evidence for each

• Package marked delivered, customer says it never arrived. Carrier tracking comes first. Amex gives less credit to a signature at an unverified address.
• Digital product never set up. Your platform's activity log: account creation time, welcome email delivery, first login.
• Multi-item order, some items missing. The pick, pack and ship record. Without it you usually lose the missing portion.
• Service the customer says was not performed. Technician notes, GPS timestamps, and a signed completion form. A missing signed form is the most common reason these are lost.

If the claim is different

If the customer says the charge was not theirs, the dispute belongs under Amex's fraud codes: F29, Amex's card-not-present code, or F24, its general no-authorization code. Quality complaints arrive under a different C-series code. Fraud or quality evidence on a C08 misses what Amex asked.

How we help

We draft C08 responses when you have proof of delivery or of the service being completed. Because the window is short, we put C08 cases first. If you have received one, your first response is free. Try free.