Very.co.uk late payment on incorrect charges

Made a post about this on the consumer rights board, but realised this board might be better.


Wife ordered an item from Very.co.uk, order was charged to account rather than CC
Raised a return and returned item via Collect+ within 14 days.
Received SMS May 15th saying return had been processed.

Received another SMS May 18th, saying 'Payment due' and 'Ignore if you've recently made payment'
Assumed the recently processed return counted and duly ignored (a mistake in hindsight but personal issues took priority)
Received another SMS June 27th saying 'there is a small balance you may have forgotten about'
Checked the account and while the value of the item had been credited, the outgoing (standard) postage of £3.99 hadn't (required under distance selling rules).
Because of the delay, interest of £0.21 had been added bringing the account to £4.20

Contacted customer support immediately, as soon as the postage charge was pointed out to them it was removed without us having to ask. (A legal obligation, not goodwill)

When asked about the interest, we were told a formal complaint must be made, which was opened there and then.


Now waiting for the complaint handler to call.


It's not the 21p we're concerned about, it's a potential late payment marker.
Our position is that the debt is not owed and never was.

Very may well be perfectly reasonable about this when they call, so I might be worried about nothing, but I'd like to know where we stand in the event they aren't.


Their payment reminder message instructed us to ignore it if payment had already been made, we had a reasonable belief it had been credited to 0. Perhaps we should have checked the account sooner, but are they allowed to ding my wife's credit file for a debt which legally should not have existed as the item was returned before the balance was due?


The account appears on her Experian file, not checked the others yet. In good standing as of the last time the report was generated.



TIA