Refund on expired card.

dezpaula

I had my flights cancelled with Emirates back in April 2020. I was issued with a travel voucher. In December 2021 I realised the voucher was not much use to me, as due to covid restrictions was still unable to use the voucher. I asked Emirates for a full refund. They agreed on 26/12/21 told my I will receive a full refund within 15 days, paid to the debit card I used for payment. After 15 days and no refund made I realised the debit card had expired. I asked my bank Lloyds to trace my refund. Lloyds told me they had returned the refund to the merchants bank. Emirates have said that no monies has been returned and I have been refunded. My bank have said the time scale has gone to issue a debit card dispute. After playing ping pong with the both of them, many emails and phone calls, im unsure what to do next. Anyone got any ideas what I might try next.
Thanks for any advice.

Aylesbury_Duck

Have Lloyds messed up here?  The debit card itself may have expired, but was the account to which it was linked still in existence?  On the rare occasion I've had a refund in a period just after a replacement card has arrive, the refund arrives as normal on the account, despite the old card that was originally charged having expired.

Manxman_in_exile

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Have Lloyds messed up here?  The debit card itself may have expired, but was the account to which it was linked still in existence?  On the rare occasion I've had a refund in a period just after a replacement card has arrive, the refund arrives as normal on the account, despite the old card that was originally charged having expired.

I think I agree with that.  The fact that the "old" card had expired is not a reason in itself for Lloyds to reject the refund.  Even if the refund had been made to an account that had since been closed I'd have thought the bank would have had a responsibility to notify the former holder of that account that a refund had been received and what did he want the bank to do with it.

If I were the OP I'd go back to Lloyds and ask for a better explanation of what has happened.

(Of course - it may be that the OP has had a better explanation but didn't understand it ... )

dezpaula

My Lloyds account is still active. The only change is my last 4 numbers on my latest card. The only explanation Lloyds have given is they returned the refund for this reason. I think ill try what you suggest and ask them for a thorough explanation.Thanks

MattMattMattUK

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Have Lloyds messed up here?  The debit card itself may have expired, but was the account to which it was linked still in existence?  On the rare occasion I've had a refund in a period just after a replacement card has arrive, the refund arrives as normal on the account, despite the old card that was originally charged having expired.

I largely agree, but my only thought might be that due to the time difference between the original transaction and the "refund" is that the refund from a card perspective is not a refund. By that I mean that using the credit card system for work I can only "refund" a payment up to 12 months from the transaction date, after that the refund option is greyed out (I have just looked) and beyond that from looking at the documents I would need to instead process a new transaction. What I am thinking is that if that card number (as the last four digits have changed) is no longer valid that may mean that there is an issue with the way that the transaction is processed through the whole process which has caused the issue. 

born_again

Any refunds to a expired card go to a banks internal account. How each bank deals with this varies. We used to manually look at the payments & make a decision on what to do. Either pass to customer or send it back.

If Lloyds are saying it was sent back it will have been. The problem is then getting someone at retailers merchant bank to trace the payment at their end. Or the finance team to check their accounts at airline. Which will have a credit showing.