The Fair Credit Billing Act, which protects consumers against unauthorized or fraudulent credit card purchases, does not apply to goods purchased by credit card that arrive damaged or in error. However, you might be able to dispute the payment for defective merchandise purchased by credit card through by asserting your "claims and defenses."

The purchase must be for more than $50 and take place in your home state or within 100 miles of your current billing address. Many credit card companies don’t enforce these mileage limits. Also, these limits do not apply if the credit card company is connected to the merchant, which may be the case with department-store cards.

You must first make a good faith effort to resolve the dispute with the merchant. Notify the merchant in writing and keep a copy of your correspondence. If the merchant doesn’t settle the dispute, you can assert your claims and defenses by writing to the credit card company showing that you tried to resolve the problem with the merchant. Tell them you are withholding payment until the problem is resolved. Once you pay the disputed amount, you cannot assert claims and defenses.

For more information on this procedure, see http://consumer-affairs.co.la.ca.us/tsCreditCardDispute.htm