Another complaint about Littlewoods

Avalynn62

I'm really fed up with Littlewoods online and I'm after some advice please. 
I set up a direct debit some time ago for my littlewoods catalogue. I've long since paid my account off but littlewoods continued to take the direct debit. Now I'm in credit £288. I had a message saying they would send it to me and I managed to find out how to cancel the direct debit. However, they didn't send it and it's now gone 6 weeks or more. I've emailed several times and eventually got their number. I explained to a lady who could barely speak English what had happened and she told me she would action a refund. She was really really rude. 
Since then I've had several emails with different amounts on them saying they can't refund as there's no money on my card!! What card?? 
They ignore my emails and I'm stuck as to what to do. Can anyone help please?
Lynn

born_again

Should not have cancelled the DD if that is the only payment details they have. How else are they going to refund you?

Ask them to set up DD again & refund you. Then cancel once you have the refund.

GrumpyDil

Genuine question but why do they need a DD to complete a refund? If OP gives them her bank details they can refund using those details (which is ignoring the fact that even if the DD is cancelled at the bank I would expect the details to be retained on Littlewoods system).

PHK

GrumpyDil said:

Genuine question but why do they need a DD to complete a refund? If OP gives them her bank details they can refund using those details (which is ignoring the fact that even if the DD is cancelled at the bank I would expect the details to be retained on Littlewoods system).

Payment regulations do not allow companies to keep bank or card details (other than partial card number)

When a payment is made, a direct debit setup or a CPA setup then the bank (actually one of the processors in between) generates a token. Which  identifies that payment method and is used by the company. 

So Littlewoods won't have the bank details. Not all card schemes allow a generic refund (only a full or partial refund of an existing transaction - the retailer supplies the token and the transaction ID) so Littlewoods may well not be able to refund without taking details. 

born_again

GrumpyDil said:

Genuine question but why do they need a DD to complete a refund? If OP gives them her bank details they can refund using those details (which is ignoring the fact that even if the DD is cancelled at the bank I would expect the details to be retained on Littlewoods system).

Exactly what @PHK said.

GrumpyDil

born_again said:

GrumpyDil said:

Genuine question but why do they need a DD to complete a refund? If OP gives them her bank details they can refund using those details (which is ignoring the fact that even if the DD is cancelled at the bank I would expect the details to be retained on Littlewoods system).

Exactly what @PHK said.

Actually, that was something I was aware of in relation to card details but not in relation to direct debits so you learn something new every day but in that case I would hope the company concerned have a system to allow manual payments to be made without setting up a DD as personally if I had a problem with a company I wouldn't be keen on setting up a new DD trusting them to correctly credit money back?