Argos refused to refund damaged item due to card renewal

dav8t

Hi,

I visited Argos today to return faulty fairy lights but they refused because my debit card had been renewed in the last 7 days and therefore did not match the debit card number on the receipt.

I explained that the card was attached to the same current account and was simply a replacement of the card shown on the receipt because its expiry date was coming around at the end of the month. The teller told me that this meant that I was only entitled to a gift voucher and not a full refund. I asked the manager, who said that I was entitled to a refund only if I could reproduce the old (now destroyed) debit card.

I left the shop again with my set of broken fairy lights with a phone number for customer service and a rude message to obtain proof from my bank that the two cards were the same.

Any thoughts on this? Surely my rights as a customer returning a broken item don't change just because my debit card has been renewed?

Greta_Sharbo

You only have consumer rights if you bought them. At the moment Argos have no proof you bought them. It's annoying but it's one of these things that happens sometimes and your bank shouldn't have too much difficulty providing you with the proof required.

marcarm

Greta_Sharbo wrote: »

You only have consumer rights if you bought them. At the moment Argos have no proof you bought them. It's annoying but it's one of these things that happens sometimes and your bank shouldn't have too much difficulty providing you with the proof required.

The OP has the receipt so not sure why you think they do not have proof. The issue is that the card number is different on the receipt to what they have in front of them.

But I would agree that going to your bank and asking for te proof would be the easiest thing to do in this case.

But if the debit card expired at the end of this month, is the new one valid yet? Is there a crossover period? I forget when mine has been renewed what happens.

jweb2k

Bank statement has the transaction, also includes sort code and account number which will be on the new card. Should be easy to obtain proof this way?

Carrot007

So as usual a poorly trained manager (the others have a resonable excuse as it's an non-usual situation) has decided that the silly money laundering rules are not flexable. They are.

You can get a refund with a different method but they don't like to do it because "ohh scary, I might have done something wrong".

Just ring up the number you have been given and hope to get someone better trained that will tell them it is OK.

*The new ones are valid as soon as you use them. Which cancels the old one.

Keeping old cards around for a while does help as sometimes they will refund to the new if they can see the old. Not needed though.

dav8t

Thanks Carrot007 I think you've hit the nail on the head. I am going to try customer services instead and see how I get on as the branch staff are hopeless.

agrinnall

marcarm wrote: »

But if the debit card expired at the end of this month, is the new one valid yet? Is there a crossover period? I forget when mine has been renewed what happens.

It would be very unusul for there not to be at least 1 month when both cards are valid, my new Santander 123 credit card overlapped the old one by 2 months.

Le_Kirk

Well, that's weird, I have just received my replacement Debit card (old one expired due to date) and it is the SAME number, as have been all my replacement cards for years. Did you cancel the card and have replacements due to fraudulent activity for example?

pmduk

Le_Kirk wrote: »

Well, that's weird, I have just received my replacement Debit card (old one expired due to date) and it is the SAME number, as have been all my replacement cards for years. Did you cancel the card and have replacements due to fraudulent activity for example?

Many banks change the last couple of digits on cards upon renewal and most will tell you to destroy the old card once you've received the new one.

gener8or

They don't need your card to refund you.
Just use contactless.

dav8t

Just to follow up, I sent a message to Argos' customer service team late last night (about midnight) and they got back straight away advising that they were happy to refund the item onto my new debit card. I returned to the store and they did, case closed.

I got a sense that the situation may have been different if the value of the item were higher so lesson learned, keep the old card until all recent purchases are up and running.