Haute Florist- money taken twice after website claimed payment couldn't be taken. Refused refund

Katia92

I tried to place an order with Haute Florists for a bouquet of flowers for my mother in law at approximately 9:40am. I chose to pay via ClearPay and received a message saying that my payment could not be made and advising me to try again

As I knew I was using a card with sufficient funds on it I pressed the try again button only to get the same message. I then checked my bank to see if there were any issues with the card and noticed that a payment had actually been taken on both occasions. I checked my Haute account and could see that two orders had been placed within minutes of each other, both for the exact same flowers, going to the exact same address with the exact same wording on the card

I contacted Haute customer services less than half an hour after the orders had been created. I spoke to one bot and two customer service agents who all told me that as it was a peak time (close to Valentines day) the order had been fulfilled and no changes could be made. I was happy to even continue with both orders and just have an address changed to send one elsewhere, as I completely appreciate that this is a busy time and processing a refund could be problematic, but this offer was rejected. Despite my swift contacting of customer services, and them admitting that it seemed the order was clearly an error, they insisted there was nothing that could be done other than refund me the £4 delivery charge on one of the orders. I was advised to get in touch with Royal Mail to change the address on one of the orders, despite my misgivings that this was not something that could be done.

I have tried to change the address with Royal Mail on one order as soon as the tracking number went live but, as I suspected, this is not an option they offer, I have also been in touch with ClearPay but they have advised that the ability to refund or create changes is with the merchant (yourselves) and not them.

I believe I have done everything in my power to rectify and issue which is down to a fault with their website, as opposed to user error. I am extremely unhappy with the way things have been left and sent an email to their customer service team alongside screen shots of the 'unable to take payment' message and other pictures to evidence each part of my complaint. I formally request this to be escalated to a more senior company source than those I have spoken to. 

I received a curt response back this morning stating 'I can see that this issue has been resolved in the form of a delivery charge refund as discussed on the 12th of January. Let me know if I can help with anything else'

My main concern is that had I not checked my bank I would have continued to try and make the order again, believing it had failed due to what your website told me, leaving me even further out of pocket.  I would appreciate a thorough investigation into how this could have happened but don't know what else to do in terms of taking this further.

Any advice would be most gratefully appreciated.

Katia.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Really they should cancel the second order, pretty obvious something has gone wrong as why would someone order two of the same flowers to the same person?

@born_again might have an opinion regarding chargebacks in this specific situation. 

Whatever happens I'd be leaving them a bad review somewhere... 

Katia92

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head Thank you for your response its most appreciated. I would have been (grudgingly) happy just to accept a redirection on one of the bouquets and would have sent it elsewhere, or even a gesture of goodwill such as credit on my account (I am a regular customer) but the customer service has been awful and really as it is there fault a refund should have been provided.

I contacted them immediately, within half an hour of the orders being placed,  and I cant believe the system is so rigid that a cancellation of one bouquet couldn't have been made. They claim the issue is because it was two separate orders (despite them being exactly the same and to the same address with the same gift card message) but I would never have made another order if I hadn't have been told my payment had failed and told to try again. It seems incredibly wrong of them to do that and then not accept any liability for me following their instructions after they claimed the payment had failed.

A capture of the message I received confirming (incorrectly) failure of payment is below for reference purposes. 

 

born_again

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

Really they should cancel the second order, pretty obvious something has gone wrong as why would someone order two of the same flowers to the same person?

@born_again might have an opinion regarding chargebacks in this specific situation. 

Whatever happens I'd be leaving them a bad review somewhere... 

No chargeback right.
Sadly user error, & happens often with these types of messages. Error could be retailer end or Op has a pop up blocker that is stopping 2FA screen coming up.

Like the way all the reasons are banks related. Nothing about possible that error with retailer & only a bit about contacting bank if fraud. 

TBH. Best way with anything like this is NEVER press submit again, without checking bank account to see if there is a authorisation (reduced balance) on the bank account. Which means a error at retailer or your computer end.

Katia92

@born_againThank you for your response, there are no pop up blockers on my phone and the message is clearly from Haute Florist (see screen grab above)  but I guess you mean my phone could somehow have reproduced that screen in error? I got the except same error message twice, it was the second time I checked with my bank as I knew I had sufficient funds.

I totally understand what you are saying and will never again press try again again without further checks, it just came up in a completely legitimate way from the retailer website so I did as instructed to try and rectify the issue. In my phone history it also shows the progression to the payment failure screen (included for reference). I am usually super cautious about things but this all seemed to be completely legitimate an part of Hautes payment processes. 

If the error is retailer ended is there any way that can be proved? Or indeed if it is user error. 

Their customer service fell incredibly short of expectations too, but that's another issue I guess and one best dealt with a negative review. Just a very disappointing experience overall. 

born_again

Sadly this happens a lot, worst I have seen is someone doing it 10+ times. 

Sadly no way to prove where the error is, from a customer perspective. 
Bank could give you the time of the transactions.
But given you have 2 transaction on bank account. Error is clearly on the retailers site. Could be a simple time out error.

HillStreetBlues

I don't see how it can be a customer error, the customer received notification payment had failed,  not might of, but actually failed.
The customer can't control the messages they are sent.
What the message should say, "the payment might have failed and delay reordering  (instant time-frame here) to avoid duplicate orders.

born_again

HillStreetBlues said:

I don't see how it can be a customer error, the customer received notification payment had failed,  not might of, but actually failed.
The customer can't control the messages they are sent.
What the message should say, "the payment might have failed and delay reordering  (instant time-frame here) to avoid duplicate orders.

I get what you are saying & the delay reordering in bold would help a lot.

The last section of their warning is nearly there. But should not mention previous card usage at all, as that is not how fraud systems always work. Should simply tell customer to contact bank to check.👍

The reason I use customer error (not meant in any nasty way, just a description of the error) is that they have pressed again without checking if it had gone through. Working on the bank side you see a lot of this, & retailers should do more to stop people retrying straight away. As many of the errors are retailer related.
Page timeouts, or not allowing enough time for transaction to process.

RefluentBeans

born_again said:

HillStreetBlues said:

I don't see how it can be a customer error, the customer received notification payment had failed,  not might of, but actually failed.
The customer can't control the messages they are sent.
What the message should say, "the payment might have failed and delay reordering  (instant time-frame here) to avoid duplicate orders.

I get what you are saying & the delay reordering in bold would help a lot.

The last section of their warning is nearly there. But should not mention previous card usage at all, as that is not how fraud systems always work. Should simply tell customer to contact bank to check.👍

The reason I use customer error (not meant in any nasty way, just a description of the error) is that they have pressed again without checking if it had gone through. Working on the bank side you see a lot of this, & retailers should do more to stop people retrying straight away. As many of the errors are retailer related.
Page timeouts, or not allowing enough time for transaction to process.

Out of interest - given some online purchases now require 2FA to authorise them, what stops banks etc from implementing a feature like ‘this is the same retailer for the same amount in a very short amount of time - are you sure you want to process another charge?’ Sort of message? I guess it does somewhat out banks in liability if the system doesn’t catch one. Wasn’t sure from your experience if there was any reason something like that wouldn’t work? 

nyermen

To add: It won't be 2FA being blocked by pop-up blocker, because - obviously - the payment wouldn't have been approved.

It sounds like the company's payment services provider (PSP) incorrectly tagged it as failed - I would say thats an issue with them (as its their agent not the OP's) and not a mistake with the OP (who hasn't gone and clicked "buy" twice quickly or similar, and they're being very unreasonable as a result.  Maybe a (factual, try and leave emotions out) review might make them reconsider.

Edit: To add, they seem to be responsive on trustpilot, and at least one review said "they resolved after I posted"

born_again

RefluentBeans said:

born_again said:

HillStreetBlues said:

I don't see how it can be a customer error, the customer received notification payment had failed,  not might of, but actually failed.
The customer can't control the messages they are sent.
What the message should say, "the payment might have failed and delay reordering  (instant time-frame here) to avoid duplicate orders.

I get what you are saying & the delay reordering in bold would help a lot.

The last section of their warning is nearly there. But should not mention previous card usage at all, as that is not how fraud systems always work. Should simply tell customer to contact bank to check.👍

The reason I use customer error (not meant in any nasty way, just a description of the error) is that they have pressed again without checking if it had gone through. Working on the bank side you see a lot of this, & retailers should do more to stop people retrying straight away. As many of the errors are retailer related.
Page timeouts, or not allowing enough time for transaction to process.

Out of interest - given some online purchases now require 2FA to authorise them, what stops banks etc from implementing a feature like ‘this is the same retailer for the same amount in a very short amount of time - are you sure you want to process another charge?’ Sort of message? I guess it does somewhat out banks in liability if the system doesn’t catch one. Wasn’t sure from your experience if there was any reason something like that wouldn’t work? 

Banks can only decline a certain % of transactions. To many & FCA are on their backs, & fines. So where 2FA would be concerned they are genuine transactions. As clearly customer is entering details.
If retailer wanted to implement such as system, then that would be OK, as they are not regulated.

A simple, failed transaction. You can not try again for say 5 mins. Would help no end. But that would have to be retailer implemented. 

It's a issue that in many way could be solved. But requires so much input from the various area's. Especially around retailers coding of sites, how 2FA is implemented into them & cross browser support.
At one point people using Apple systems had major issues with Safari & purchases. It was a know issue, but took ages for Apple & retailers to sort out. But caused many complaints as retailers kept blaming banks, so customers complained to banks.
We found a quick work round, simply needed customers to TAB between fields to bring up a missing field. Most people simply hit enter. Which missed to missing field 🤷‍♀️