No goods or Refund from American Apparell

miket1964

Can anyone help with this....

Bought a bag from this website as a present for my daughters birthday.

Upon arriving it was not the correct item, even though I had been billed for the more expensive bag which we had ordered.

Contacted American Apparel and asked if they could send the correct bag and we would return the wrong item.

This is where things have gone stupid.

The bank account I paid from with a debit card was closed on the 29th of May as I had changed my business to a limited company.

American Apparel state that their operating policy is to refund when items are returned and take a new payment, problem is we have not received the refund as the account they are trying to pay into was the closed account, they state refund was made on the 6th June

I have checked twice with the Barclays Business Team and they confirm yes the account was closed and no payment has been received as the account no longer exists.
I have even sent a copy of my final statement to American Apparel which shows the date the account was closed and final transactions etc/

They are adamant they have made a refund, but I again stated that this was not possible and for them to check with their bank and show proof of the account this payment was made to. They say I should track the payment, which Barclays advised they cannot do as its the issuing bank that has to do this.

I have made a complaint, but any advise much appreciated.
All I wanted was the right bag....

InsideInsurance

miket1964 wrote: »

Bought a bag from this website as a present for my daughters birthday.

miket1964 wrote: »

The bank account I paid from with a debit card was closed on the 29th of May as I had changed my business to a limited company.

Why was your business buying a birthday present for your daughter?


That aside, I cannot say for Barclays but certainly other banks I have worked for a refund to a closed account certainly is possible and is the norm because of anti-money laundering/ counter fraud recommendations. With them the money would go into the branch's suspense account where it sits until such time as someone works out what should happen to it. The suspense account is used for other things too but always had very big numbers of money/ transactions going into it.

Barclays should be able to definitively say what happens to a refund paid to a closed account and if they have an equivalent of a suspense account or not etc.

What timescales are we talking here? What date did AA say they'd actually made the refund? These things tend to go by BACS and so can be 5 working days so basically 1 week to get to Barclays and then a second week for them to send it back to AA. The day the agent at AA requests the refund isnt necessarily the date the bank is instructed to transfer the money too.

JJ_Egan

As above Refund bounced a week later roughly returned to vendor who then issued a cheque .But that was not a business account .