Refunds to credit cards

mawallace

I bought some goods which I had to return to the shop.

they were happy to refund me - but I did not have the orginal credit card with me.

they refused the refund - as it is against the law to refund to a different card - even if it is in the name of the same person.

Is that correct?

meer53

Not against the law but certainly the normal procedure in most retailers.

bris

Not against the law, (unless you are money laundering) but against their merchants terms and conditions, which means they can lose their service if they get caught doing it.

withabix

It also requires the shop staff to make some effort. Most can't be bothered.

aveylee

There are no laws or legal regulations that require repayment of a refund through the payment method it happened to be purchased by.

The retailer is probably trying to insist on it, because it offers them some protection that they are repaying the person who actually paid for it in the first place. Rather than a relative or some stranger of the street.

Quite reasonable from the Traders point of view, but they cannot insist upon it. As for example the CC may have been closed; it may be a 'pre-paid' CC which may make it impossible to gain a cash refund from the CC company.

Finally what happens if you pay you CC bill in full? my CC for example says I should not have a debit balance upon it.

tomjonesrules

withabix wrote: »

It also requires the shop staff to make some effort. Most can't be bothered.

As it is against most retailers policies, perhaps the staff are more bothered about keeping their jobs?

aveylee wrote: »

There are no laws or legal regulations that require repayment of a refund through the payment method it happened to be purchased by.

The retailer is probably trying to insist on it, because it offers them some protection that they are repaying the person who actually paid for it in the first place. Rather than a relative or some stranger of the street.

Quite reasonable from the Traders point of view, but they cannot insist upon it. As for example the CC may have been closed; it may be a 'pre-paid' CC which may make it impossible to gain a cash refund from the CC company.

Finally what happens if you pay you CC bill in full? my CC for example says I should not have a debit balance upon it.

A refund can be made to a closed credit card. It is possible to withdraw money from a prepaid credit card. Your lender will not bat an eyelid at a random credit on your account. If you call them up they'll even transfer it back to your current account for you.

Talk about finding barriers where they don't exist!

meer53

aveylee wrote: »

There are no laws or legal regulations that require repayment of a refund through the payment method it happened to be purchased by.

The retailer is probably trying to insist on it, because it offers them some protection that they are repaying the person who actually paid for it in the first place. Rather than a relative or some stranger of the street.

Quite reasonable from the Traders point of view, but they cannot insist upon it. As for example the CC may have been closed; it may be a 'pre-paid' CC which may make it impossible to gain a cash refund from the CC company.

Finally what happens if you pay you CC bill in full? my CC for example says I should not have a debit balance upon it.

Quite a lot of rubbish quoted here.

The retailer has a contract with Visa or Mastercard and they stipulate that a refund "must" be processed on the card which was used for the original payment. If they don't they run the risk of losing their ability to accept payments by CC. Not many retailers will risk this.

If the card is closed, the credit can still be made, the CC issuer can move it to a cheque account if the card is no longer used.
It doesn't make any difference how you pay your bill, if you pay in full and end up with a credit balance, your CC issuer isn't going to worry, either use it against further spending or ask for it to be moved back to your cheque account.

Be careful about posting things that you aren't entirely sure about, someone might use your advice and end up in bother.

Unintentional

The sales contract is with the card holder. So they can in fact insist on refunding it to that specific card and as many people have already said. They can lose the ability to take payment through cards.

withabix

tomjonesrules wrote: »

As it is against most retailers policies, perhaps the staff are more bothered about keeping their jobs?

I find dragging the store manager away from snoozing in his office usually works.

notechno

A similar problem here

A few days before Xmas my daughter took an item back to Next. It had been purchased on her boyfriend's card, but she didn't have his card with her. She didn't tell them it was going to a different card, she simply handed over her card. When she looked at the receipt it had the last few digits of her card number so she thought everything was fine

Needless to say, the money hasn't come back into her account. Her boyfriend doesn't have the same access of online banking so we can't see if it's simply been transferred back to the original card. Is that what will have happened (hopefully) or will the money be floating around in banking space?

texranger

bris wrote: »

Not against the law, (unless you are money laundering) but against their merchants terms and conditions, which means they can lose their service if they get caught doing it.

this is true but if you have a replacement card then the retailer should call their merchant service provider and get authorisation to refund to replacement card.