How long do I have to sue a guest over a reversed room charge?

Four years is the working answer, and it comes from the same statutory provision whether you frame the claim as a breach of a written registration agreement or as an unpaid book account, which is why the framing decision does not usually cost you time. The clock starts when the obligation was breached, meaning when payment was due and not made. In a chargeback scenario that is the date the funds were pulled back and left the folio unpaid, not the date you finished arguing with the bank. If nothing was signed and the arrangement was purely spoken, you are on a two-year clock instead, which is a real reason to care whether a signature exists.

Four years sounds generous and functions as a trap, because none of your supporting evidence lives that long by default. Property management systems purge folio detail, door lock controllers overwrite logs on a rolling window measured in weeks or months, staff who could testify move on, and email retention policies quietly delete confirmations. The effective deadline is not the statutory one, it is the shortest retention period among the records you would need. Find out what that period is for your lock system specifically, because it is almost always the shortest and almost always the most persuasive document you have.