Virgin Trains has triple-charged me!

aless02

Actually, it was a friend who this happened to, but since she was buying tickets to get to MY wedding, I want to be as helpful as possible.

She's in the US and was trying to purchases train tickets on virgintrains.com. Basically, the system isn't set up to deal with US addresses properly, so whenever she'd plug in her billing address, it would come back with an error message saying they couldn't process her transaction. She tried a few different times, all with the same message.

Lo and behold, THREE sets of train tickets came to me today (I had told her to have them posted to my UK address). I feel really awful because now she's been charged 3 times and has 3 sets of tickets she doesn't need! (because I went and bought the tickets for her under my own card later) I've advised her to call Customer Service and demand a refund ASAP (I'll send the tickets back). However, I'm concerned because they are value advance fares & technically non-refundable.

Has anyone else ever been in a similar situation and managed to get their money back?? Help! !:mad::mad:

TimothyEBaldwin

aless02 wrote: »

Actually, it was a friend who this happened to, but since she was buying tickets to get to MY wedding, I want to be as helpful as possible.

She's in the US and was trying to purchases train tickets on virgintrains.com. Basically, the system isn't set up to deal with US addresses properly, so whenever she'd plug in her billing address, it would come back with an error message saying they couldn't process her transaction. She tried a few different times, all with the same message.

Lo and behold, THREE sets of train tickets came to me today (I had told her to have them posted to my UK address). I feel really awful because now she's been charged 3 times and has 3 sets of tickets she doesn't need! (because I went and bought the tickets for her under my own card later) I've advised her to call Customer Service and demand a refund ASAP (I'll send the tickets back). However, I'm concerned because they are value advance fares & technically non-refundable.

Has anyone else ever been in a similar situation and managed to get their money back?? Help! !:mad::mad:

The terms and conditions of the tickets are irrelevant.

Your friend made an offer of a contract permitting Virgin Trains to take payment from her card in return for the delivery of the tickets, which Virgin Trains respond with a refusal. The refusal of a contract means the offer is no longer valid, and can not be accepted at a later time. Therefore the card transactions are unauthorised and your friend is entitled to a refund, irrespective of what happens to the tickets; if she has no luck with Virgin Trains she should take up the matter with the card issuer.

However I think Virgin Trains are entitled to the tickets back at their expense.

aless02

Thanks...yeah, I already told her that I will send the tickets back to Virgin or hand them in at a rail station when they agree to her refund. But thanks for the technical wording!! That should be really helpful.

ticketcollector

Tell your friend to "dispute the charges" with their credit card issuer.
The technical term is a "chargeback".
Also if the amount is the same amount times three, then it can also be diputed as a duplicate transaction.