Virgin Atlantic Credit card

pstaylor

Hi, I have finally been refunded from Virgin Holidays after waiting the 130 days.... unfortunately my joy was short lived when I tried to have the money transferred back from my Virgin Atlantic credit card to be told there is a £13 pending transaction so they cannot refund until this is clear. The credit amount of is circa £2400 (after this months spending has been deducted. I queried the delay (they can take the £13 pending amount if needed) only to be told that in order to get a refund I need to send them a copy of a bank statement by post before they can issue a refund! I pay my account off every month using a debit card (and have done so for years), so I do not understand why they cannot refund me back to the card that I originally made the payment from. I cannot believe that this is standard practice??

Malkytheheed

They don't need to see your bank statement. thats ridiculous and I suspect would be illegal & fraudulant. They are your credit card provider, not your bank. They have no right to nosey through your bank statement.
I can understand that they need your bank DETAILS to refund the amount to you via BACS or cheque. This is normal for larger amounts. Are you sure you are not confused and this is what they are asking? 

pstaylor

Hi, please see below, a copy of the secure message portion which asks for the statement to be sent...
We have reviewed your account and can confirm you are currently in credit by £2354.25. In order for us to refund this we need you to send a current personal bank statement showing your name account number and sort code to this address....

Gerry1

Redact everything except your name, account number and sort code.

dr_adidas01

Malkytheheed said:

They don't need to see your bank statement. thats ridiculous and I suspect would be illegal & fraudulant. They are your credit card provider, not your bank. They have no right to nosey through your bank statement.
I can understand that they need your bank DETAILS to refund the amount to you via BACS or cheque. This is normal for larger amounts. Are you sure you are not confused and this is what they are asking? 

A lot of providers ask for this when doing a refund especially if its quite a substantial amount its not illegal and not fraudulent.  They want to make sure that the money being refunded is going to the account holder and not someone else, its also part of

AML regulations.

If you don't want them trawling through your statement then blank out the bits you don't want them to see. The other alternative is if you don't want it to be refunded back to your bank account, is just spend as normal on your credit card until you've spent the credited balance.

born_again

The Op has been paying via debit card. Virgin will not have the facility to refund that way, just the same as other card providers do not.
They need sort code & bank acc details to make a refund.
Had Op had a DD set up this would be easy. As they have not. Do you think that virgin will simply take the details over the phone? No. They will want proof that they are refunding to the account holder.

Which is one reason why you should always have at least a min DD set up.

pstaylor

born_again said:

The Op has been paying via debit card. Virgin will not have the facility to refund that way, just the same as other card providers do not.
They need sort code & bank acc details to make a refund.
Had Op had a DD set up this would be easy. As they have not. Do you think that virgin will simply take the details over the phone? No. They will want proof that they are refunding to the account holder.

Which is one reason why you should always have at least a min DD set up.

Hi,
I understand and agree with your statement, however I am conveying with Virgin via their secure message service service (as in I am logged onto my online virgin credit card account having gone through the necessary authentication/verification) , surely that should be sufficient to verify who I am as I have the ability to transfer money off my credit card into a bank account of my choosing? Obviously if I did this, I would incur a 5% handling fee which I'd rather not do.

Sandtree

pstaylor said:
Hi,

I understand and agree with your statement, however I am conveying with Virgin via their secure message service service (as in I am logged onto my online virgin credit card account having gone through the necessary authentication/verification) , surely that should be sufficient to verify who I am as I have the ability to transfer money off my credit card into a bank account of my choosing? Obviously if I did this, I would incur a 5% handling fee which I'd rather not do.

As has already been stated, the reason for doing this is classic anti-money laundering... buy something with a credit card, use dirty money to pay off the credit card, return the item to get a refund, have shiny new clean money put into a bank account by your credit card company.

AML processes say you should always put the money back where it came from, because you pay by debit card and we are not talking about full refund of a single transaction they cannot do this. They therefore want evidence that the money is at least going back to you and to create a paper trail if it turns out you are trying to launder money through them.

pstaylor

Sandtree said:

pstaylor said:
Hi,

I understand and agree with your statement, however I am conveying with Virgin via their secure message service service (as in I am logged onto my online virgin credit card account having gone through the necessary authentication/verification) , surely that should be sufficient to verify who I am as I have the ability to transfer money off my credit card into a bank account of my choosing? Obviously if I did this, I would incur a 5% handling fee which I'd rather not do.

As has already been stated, the reason for doing this is classic anti-money laundering... buy something with a credit card, use dirty money to pay off the credit card, return the item to get a refund, have shiny new clean money put into a bank account by your credit card company.

AML processes say you should always put the money back where it came from, because you pay by debit card and we are not talking about full refund of a single transaction they cannot do this. They therefore want evidence that the money is at least going back to you and to create a paper trail if it turns out you are trying to launder money through them.

Well Virgin have now agreed that I can supply my Bank details via the secure message facility and they will refund my credit amount. I am not sure what you mean by it not being a single transaction, it was a single payment for a hotel booking that Virgin cancelled. I was never disputing that they needed to understand where the money was going, my issue was that they said I had to send a Bank statement by post, where they could quite easily verify my identity on the basis I was logged onto my online credit card account (a card which I have had a number of years and never requested a refund previously). Anyway all resolved now