Wickes disgraceful "policy"

Sellins

I ordered 6 doors from Wickes, they were in stock on the website and were to be delivered within 7 days. I booked a fitter. The next day i got an email from Wickes to say the doors were out of stock, but not to worry because i would get an email within 14 working day (about 2.5 weeks) about my refund of £800 and it would take 3 to 5 further days to get back to my account. 3 weeks! They managed to take the money out of my account in less than 30 seconds. 
I spoke to 3 levels of customer service who said it was their policy and i had signed up to it when i ordered. 
I can't believe the arrogance of companies like this. I rang head office, asked to speak with the ceo who was not in the office, asked to speak to his secretary, who was working from home and not taking calls... I emailed the whole board, twice, before i got a phone call agreeing to get my money back to my account the next day with an additional £200.
My point is don't accept this crap from any company. If they had gone into administration during that 3 weeks my money would have sunk without trace. 

TadleyBaggie

How did you pay? If by card they couldn't have taken the money in 30 seconds, simply requested an authorisation which puts a pending transaction on the account. The money isn't actually taken until later, whenever the actual processing is done (often overnight).

Brie

TadleyBaggie said:

How did you pay? If by card they couldn't have taken the money in 30 seconds, simply requested an authorisation which puts a pending transaction on the account. The money isn't actually taken until later, whenever the actual processing is done (often overnight).

Given that many transactions are practically instantaneous these days I don't know how you can assume that this one wasn't.  Do you have evidence of this?  I ask because we've doing a lot of transactions lately on a particular card and within minutes of each transaction I get a text from the card company telling me what my new balance is so I'm assuming things are actually going through.  And if I was a shop selling things I wouldn't be happy about not know if I was going to get paid before people left the shop with goods.

p00hsticks

Brie said:

TadleyBaggie said:

How did you pay? If by card they couldn't have taken the money in 30 seconds, simply requested an authorisation which puts a pending transaction on the account. The money isn't actually taken until later, whenever the actual processing is done (often overnight).

Given that many transactions are practically instantaneous these days I don't know how you can assume that this one wasn't.  Do you have evidence of this?  I ask because we've doing a lot of transactions lately on a particular card and within minutes of each transaction I get a text from the card company telling me what my new balance is so I'm assuming things are actually going through.  And if I was a shop selling things I wouldn't be happy about not know if I was going to get paid before people left the shop with goods.

The retailer certainly won't have actually received the money within thirty seconds.

Your bank might have authorised the payment and deducted it from your available balance, which is effectively a guarantee for the retailer that the card issuer will honour the transaction, but to actually get their money the retailer needs to pass the transaction details onto their merchant acquirer, who will pass it on to the card company (Visa, Mastercard, Amex etc) who will in turn pass it to the issuing bank who will then pass the money back.

A lot of this still happens as overnight batch processing so it's certainly not instantaneous.

maisie_cat

Wickes stock control is atrocious so it's common for "in stock" items to be wrong.
In my experience your scenario is common but the money is refunded quicker than their estimate.
I've also had experience of them delivering something better than ordered to sub for the missing ordered item, but that was wood.

TadleyBaggie

Brie said:

TadleyBaggie said:

How did you pay? If by card they couldn't have taken the money in 30 seconds, simply requested an authorisation which puts a pending transaction on the account. The money isn't actually taken until later, whenever the actual processing is done (often overnight).

Given that many transactions are practically instantaneous these days I don't know how you can assume that this one wasn't.  Do you have evidence of this?  

Only my own experience. I've never seen any credit or debit card payment actually taken on the same day it was made.

Sellins

When i say 30 seconds, it goes from your available balance and they know they are getting it. Nothing I could do to stop it. The ins and outs of bacs payments might mean waiting a couple of days but at least they should be pushing the button immediately and it should be back in the bacs system immediately they know they cant deliver the goods. It may happen quicker than they say it will, it should be policy that it does. 

TELLIT01

Setting aside the poor customer service, it's never a good idea to arrange for trades to attend until you have a confirmed delivery date for the items ordered.  By doing so, not only are you inconvenienced, the person doing the door fitting has lost a day's work, unless you paid them for their wasted day.

Jonboy_1984

Sellins said:

When i say 30 seconds, it goes from your available balance and they know they are getting it. Nothing I could do to stop it. The ins and outs of bacs payments might mean waiting a couple of days but at least they should be pushing the button immediately and it should be back in the bacs system immediately they know they cant deliver the goods. It may happen quicker than they say it will, it should be policy that it does. 

Card Refunds don’t go via the BACS system. Under the merchant agreements they have to go back via the card network to help ensure both you and the retailers position is understood by your and their banks in the event of issues, chargebacks, S75 etc etc,

Sellins

Jonboy_1984 said:

Sellins said:

When i say 30 seconds, it goes from your available balance and they know they are getting it. Nothing I could do to stop it. The ins and outs of bacs payments might mean waiting a couple of days but at least they should be pushing the button immediately and it should be back in the bacs system immediately they know they cant deliver the goods. It may happen quicker than they say it will, it should be policy that it does. 

Card Refunds don’t go via the BACS system. Under the merchant agreements they have to go back via the card network to help ensure both you and the retailers position is understood by your and their banks in the event of issues, chargebacks, S75 etc etc,

I think you rather miss the point. However the payments happen, they should happen immediately they know they cant deliver the goods. Telling people it might take up to 3 weeks is just wrong. 

Sellins

TELLIT01 said:

Setting aside the poor customer service, it's never a good idea to arrange for trades to attend until you have a confirmed delivery date for the items ordered.  By doing so, not only are you inconvenienced, the person doing the door fitting has lost a day's work, unless you paid them for their wasted day.

True, but space is an issue. The problem with not getting the money back for 3 weeks is that i had to find more money to buy more doors. You dont really expect to have to plan for in stock items to be out of stock.