Does anyone understand M&S?

wendym

Briefly, 3 items costing me £11 were missing from an online order, customer services agreed a refund, and I got £9.81, with this as an explanation in the email:

Since a promotional certificate or discount was used for this order, your refund reflects the amount paid for the given item(s) after these promotions were applied. Examples of promotions/discounts include Free Shipping, Buy 3 Get 1 Free, 10% off your order, etc.

CS are now saying that that is a mistake, and the difference somehow reflects VAT (the missing things were children's clothes, but I was definitely charged the full £11 as on the website). I think it's something to do with having free delivery, but can't get to grips with it. Can anyone help?

Nicolefury

Not all childrens clothes are VAT exempt. The only departments in mands kids which are VAT free are babywear, toddler girls upto a certain age and toddler boys upto a certain age which I think is 5-6?! not entirely sure. Babygros and the like are classified as underwear, and therefore have a vat charge on them.

wendym

But I paid £11, and was refunded £9.81 because of a 'promotional certificate or discount' so don't see what VAT has to do with it.

Has this happened to anyone else who did not get items ordered in their October sale?

Nicolefury

Well, obvious question is, did you use a discount code or not. Also, did you get free postage, cos you'll only get a partial refund if you did, cos they are refunding with a piece taken off which represents a price for those items being delivered.

wendym

There was blanket free delivery across the site. So is it really the case that they can charge me £1.19 for not delivering items I paid £11 for?

kmeast

You wouldn't receive the full £11 as they would take off the extra vat (about 2%) but that would only be worth about 20 something pence I think.

Perhaps they have assumed that you used a promotional code for free delivery, when it in fact covered all orders at the time.

I would query how they have arrived at this figure.

System

This happened to me aswell, got an order and returned the full order to them. P&P was free at the time.

However I'd payed approx £39 and they refunded approx £2 less - I haven't contacted them yet but in this instance it's straight forward as it's the whole order which should have been refunded and so the costs should be the same :rolleyes:

wendym

It seems to me to be a very dubious system.

According to CS I am absolutely mistaken - the refund difference is purely 'something to do with VAT'. I am going to try to get a response from their accounts dept - it adds up to a lot of money if they're taking £2 ish regularly. My items hadn't even been delivered.

I'd be very interested to hear what response you get, Summer01.

pollyskettle

Nicolefury wrote: »

Not all childrens clothes are VAT exempt. The only departments in mands kids which are VAT free are babywear, toddler girls upto a certain age and toddler boys upto a certain age which I think is 5-6?! not entirely sure. Babygros and the like are classified as underwear, and therefore have a vat charge on them.

To my knowledge, the age is 13 and under for VAT exempt childrens clothes and size 5.5 for girls shoes (not sure about boys shoes!) unless you market them specifically for children then you can zero VAT larger shoes. I believe the treasury have a standard set of sizes that clothing must be smaller than. There are other considerations too, but they are very basic.

I may be wrong though, it's been a while

Nicolefury

I work in M&S kids, and thats definately what the VAT situation is in the kids department at the minute. Other than those 3 departments, VAT applies.

Not sure about shoes, I never take that much notice other than making sure theres a left and a right!

System

wendym wrote: »

It seems to me to be a very dubious system.

According to CS I am absolutely mistaken - the refund difference is purely 'something to do with VAT'. I am going to try to get a response from their accounts dept - it adds up to a lot of money if they're taking £2 ish regularly. My items hadn't even been delivered.

I'd be very interested to hear what response you get, Summer01.

I've just checked and I was actually refunded the correct amount and have since had an email with the correct amount, this was before I got round to contacting them so looks like they corrected their error quite quickly here..