Do I have to accept a refund by cheque if I paid by card ?

lanstrom

Sorry if this has already been answered but I cant find a straight forward answer ...

I paid for goods via debit card. The company promised me 4 weeks ago they would refund me and have now finally said they have processed by refund BUT they want to send me a cheque which I don't want due to having to travel to bank and waiting times for clearance etc.

Am I legally entitled to refuse the cheque since I originally paid by card or do I have to just put up with all the inconvenience it causes ?

Thanks.

wealdroam

lanstrom wrote: »

Sorry if this has already been answered but I cant find a straight forward answer ...

I paid for goods via debit card. The company promised me 4 weeks ago they would refund me and have now finally said they have processed by refund BUT they want to send me a cheque which I don't want due to having to travel to bank and waiting times for clearance etc.

Am I legally entitled to refuse the cheque since I originally paid by card or do I have to just put up with all the inconvenience it causes ?

Thanks.

Regulation 34 of The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 includes:

Reimbursement by trader in the event of withdrawal or cancellation

34. (7) The trader must make the reimbursement using the same means of payment as the consumer used for the initial transaction, unless the consumer has expressly agreed otherwise.

Whether that is applicable or not depends on the reason for the refund.

lanstrom

Thanks for the answer.

The goods/service in question was a re-gas of my air conditioning on my car. I reported the fault that it wasn't working and hinted what the fault might be. Seems the garage couldn't be bothered to investigate and just refilled with a gas at a charge of £264. I then took it to a different dealership who immediately spotted the fault. They changed the part and re-gassed. I made a complain to the original garage and they agreed a refund. Its now taken 4 weeks and today they say they will process it BUT the refund will be by cheque (not by debit card which is how I originally paid).

Do you think that Regulation 34 still applies ?

Thanks for your help.

ERICS_MUM

Some companies (not necessarily this one) might issue a cheque if they have a cash flow problem. By the time they prepare and post a cheque, the time it takes to reach you by 2nd class post then you paying it into your account and the bank putting it through the clearing cycle, a good week or more will have elapsed and hey presto they receive an invoice payment which covers all the cheques issued.

lanstrom

ERICS_MUM wrote: »

Some companies (not necessarily this one) might issue a cheque if they have a cash flow problem. By the time they prepare and post a cheque, the time it takes to reach you by 2nd class post then you paying it into your account and the bank putting it through the clearing cycle, a good week or more will have elapsed and hey presto they receive an invoice payment which covers all the cheques issued.

I realise why they do it (and because they get interest on my money) but in this instance the manufacturer (Nissan) has paid the garage (and that's debatable why Nissan should be paying the dodgy dealership anyway !).

Although the garage had authorisation from Nissan that they would get paid by them (and should therefore give me the refund) they made me wait as they said they wanted the actual (real) money from Nissan before they could refund me. I thought this was disgusting but have had no choice but to wait until they got their cash (at the end of the month with authorisation being on the 5th June). I have now phoned them today and they tell me they have received their cash from Nissan so will now give me my refund however they want to give me a cheque which I don't really want.

I don't know why I should have had to wait for the garage to receive their cash from Nissan as the authorisation that they will get paid should have been enough for them to immediately issue the refund to me but now I have to wait for a cheque to come and then clear .. well that's totally wrong in my eyes !

EDIT: The garage have just phoned me up (after I put a complaint into Nissan) and they have said they will refund by card on this occasion so it might be sorted now anyway. If they would have insisted on a cheque then I would have asked them to add 15% handling charge

gettingtheresometime

I used to work for a dealership and tbh it was standard practice to wait for the payment to come in or at best proof off the manufacturer that it was being - such as a remittance etc.




However it was easier for us to make a payment directly into the customer's bank account than to write a cheque ; if you wanted the payment made on the card then we'd have needed the card details which many customers weren't prepared to give us.

nyermen

I should note - £264 just to re-gas the aircon sounds expensive?!

Just checked Audi's website (hardly known to be cheap) - they quote from £79 for a full aircon service, including checks and re-gas.

powerful_Rogue

lanstrom wrote: »

EDIT: The garage have just phoned me up (after I put a complaint into Nissan) and they have said they will refund by card on this occasion so it might be sorted now anyway. If they would have insisted on a cheque then I would have asked them to add 15% handling charge

And they wouldn't pay the handling charge.

In future, look up debit card chargeback as an alternative option.

spadoosh

Section 34 isnt really applicable in that its pretty unlikely that the business will have a debit card (nor you a card reader for that matter?).

Annual interest on £264 with any interest rate a standard garage will get will likely see them getting no more than about 4p. Youve just wasted a lot more than that using the complaints department and the member of staffs time that called you.

For one off payments i think its much easier paying by cheque. To pay someone new online, i have to input their bank details. Potentially wait 3 days for it to process (never is). Have to authorise it using a silly little calculator and then have the payee stay on the list of payees for me to have to then delete it when i can be bothered to do so. A cheque, just write and send (another dig at the OP, it will cost them at least 56p for a stamp, that interest is looking pretty rubbish now).


Thats a first for me, someone actually complaining about getting a cheque.

lanstrom

nyermen wrote: »

I should note - £264 just to re-gas the aircon sounds expensive?!

Just checked Audi's website (hardly known to be cheap) - they quote from £79 for a full aircon service, including checks and re-gas.

Yes it was disgustingly high ! I didn't expect to pay anything-what-so-ever.

There is a known fault with early registered (in my case a 14 reg) Nissan Qashqai's that the air con condenser fails and leaks gas. I got a letter off Nissan asking me to take the car into a dealership for a recall (something to do with a brake pipe rubbing on an wheel arch liner) and so whilst it was there I asked the garage if they could have a look at the air con system as it wasn't getting cold. A the time of dropping it off I again mentioned that it could be that condenser problem but as they were an official dealership they should be aware of any known problems and I felt a bit embarrassed trying to tell them their job.

When I went to pick the car up they said they had a quick look over it and couldn't see a leak so I owe them £264. I told them that was ridiculous and I cant imagine any other garage charging anything like that amount for a re-gas (they didnt even do a clean of the system) but they said that was the going rate. Obviously when I got home I checked a few places and the HIGHEST price I could find was £180.

I then got Nissan customer services involved (and got allocated a case manager) and told them I was taking the car to another dealership. This dealership fault the leak immediately and confirmed it was the condenser. They then replaced and regassed the system.

Nissan then said they would give me a refund but they had to send the money to the 1st dealership and then get the dealership to refund me. I have had to wait from authorisation on the 5th June until today to get my refund although its still not in the bank !

wealdroam

spadoosh wrote: »

Section 34 isnt really applicable in that its pretty unlikely that the business will have a debit card (nor you a card reader for that matter?).

So are you are telling us that a refund to a card used for the original payment is never possible?

But hang on...
The OP has told us:

lanstrom wrote: »

The garage have just phoned me up (after I put a complaint into Nissan) and they have said they will refund by card on this occasion...

How on earth is that possible??