Amazon refund was issued as a "gift card" instead of to my card

michaelm

I bought something from Amazon UK in February this year, When it arrived, it was faulty and I arranged with Amazon to send it back for a refund. I initially said I would like to have the refund issued as a gift card, to offset against the cost of replacing the faulty item. However, when I went to order the replacement, it had been svanged to a Prime-only price and the normal price had gone up by £50. I then contacted Amazon again and asked for the refund to be made to my card instead. As the refund hadn't yet been issued, the representative I was chatting with promised me that the refund would be made to my card.

I went to check that the refund had been made just now, and it was refunded as a gift card, in spite of the promise made to me that it would not be. To make matters worse, I am just finished chatting with another representative who has stated point blank that it cannot be changed to a card refund, and I should just offset the cost of future purchases against it.

So Amazon is basically witholding my money from me and holding me to ransom in an attempt to ensure I spend my money with them, should I want to or not. Isn't this in breach of my consumer rights?

LilElvis

michaelm wrote: »

I bought something from Amazon UK in February this year, When it arrived, it was faulty and I arranged with Amazon to send it back for a refund. I initially said I would like to have the refund issued as a gift card, to offset against the cost of replacing the faulty item. However, when I went to order the replacement, it had been svanged to a Prime-only price and the normal price had gone up by £50. I then contacted Amazon again and asked for the refund to be made to my card instead. As the refund hadn't yet been issued, the representative I was chatting with promised me that the refund would be made to my card.

I went to check that the refund had been made just now, and it was refunded as a gift card, in spite of the promise made to me that it would not be. To make matters worse, I am just finished chatting with another representative who has stated point blank that it cannot be changed to a card refund, and I should just offset the cost of future purchases against it.

So Amazon is basically witholding my money from me and holding me to ransom in an attempt to ensure I spend my money with them, should I want to or not. Isn't this in breach of my consumer rights?

Take out a free month trial of Prime membership, get the cheaper price and use the gift card. Don't forget to cancel the membership before the end of the month or you will be charged.

michaelm

This was in February. I bought the "replacement" from another store for more or less the price I originally bought it for from Amazon. So I have absolutely no need for the "gift card" and could be doing with the money now, tbh.

wealdroam

michaelm wrote: »

This was in February.

After three months I feel that perhaps you have left it a little late to reject their resolution.

lammy82

I think you've probably left it too late, too. If you manage to persuade them to cancel your gift card and reissue your refund as a transfer to your payment card, it's not going to be a quick process anyway.

Has the money been credited to your Amazon gift card balance, or do you still have it as an unredeemed code? There are ways to resell those, but you have to be careful as it's possible to get scammed selling them.

If you can't find £50 worth of stuff on Amazon that you needed to buy in the next few months anyway, then you could look for something that is a real bargain, buy it, and sell it immediately on Gumtree or similar for cash.

LilElvis

lammy82 wrote: »

I think you've probably left it too late, too. If you manage to persuade them to cancel your gift card and reissue your refund as a transfer to your payment card, it's not going to be a quick process anyway.

Has the money been credited to your Amazon gift card balance, or do you still have it as an unredeemed code? There are ways to resell those, but you have to be careful as it's possible to get scammed selling them.

If you can't find £50 worth of stuff on Amazon that you needed to buy in the next few months anyway, then you could look for something that is a real bargain, buy it, and sell it immediately on Gumtree or similar for cash.

As the price had gone up by £50 in price on amazon it's a reasonable assumption that the amount refunded to a gift card is likely to be substantially more.

I would be asking friends and family if there was anything they wanted to order from amazon and recoup the cash that way.

michaelm

lammy82 wrote: »

I think you've probably left it too late, too. If you manage to persuade them to cancel your gift card and reissue your refund as a transfer to your payment card, it's not going to be a quick process anyway.

Has the money been credited to your Amazon gift card balance, or do you still have it as an unredeemed code? There are ways to resell those, but you have to be careful as it's possible to get scammed selling them.

If you can't find £50 worth of stuff on Amazon that you needed to buy in the next few months anyway, then you could look for something that is a real bargain, buy it, and sell it immediately on Gumtree or similar for cash.

The actual figure is over £135, not £50.

Okay, let me explain this a bit better. I returned the item for a refund as they didn't have the item in stock anymore. The advisor I was chatting with told me they would have more of the item in that afternoon or the following day and recommended getting refunded by gift card as it would be quicker that a refund to my card and I could reorder sooner. So I went with that.

I checked the following day if the item had come back into stock and it had. However, the price I bought it for was restricted to Prime members and the non-Prime price had gone up to £189. I immediately chatted with another advisor and explained the situation to him. He promised that the refund, which hadn't yet been issued, would go to my card and not a gift card.

That was on February 21st and the refund wasn't made till February 28th. I think they were given a more than reasonable amount of time to adjust the refund type. That refunding it to my card now would take time, ie no more than 3 banking days, is fine by me.

lammy82

Ah, so it's £135 not £50.

I don't think that drastically alters the situation to be honest. You agreed to a gift card refund initially, and it sounds like despite what you were subsequently told, the gift card issuing process had already got under way during the interim period, and they were unable to/chose not to interrupt it.

It sucks, but if you try to get legal on them they will probably just dig out the transcript of you agreeing to the gift card refund.

You could try asking them again, maybe putting the request in writing, but I wouldn't get your hopes up of having any result within the next 3 days...

sheramber

the refund was made on 28 February and you only checked for it now.

I doubt Amazon will do anything after so long. From their point of view you were happy with the refund to the gift card at the time.

michaelm

Just off the phone with Amazon CS. The guy I spoke to was very apologetic for the conversation I had with the other advior and said that changing the refund to my card was no problem at all. He had the whole thing done and dusted in about 3 minutes. Now that's what I call a good quality service. Obviously the first guy was either a) woken from a snooze by my enquiry or, b) a complete a-hole.