We have had multiple customers complain that our refunds, which we have done as "Refund by Reference" where possible, have gone to cards that they say have been cancelled. Windcave says that the refund by reference should be clever enough to be transferred to a new card (new number or expiration date) connected to the same account (i.e. bank), but these customers claim that they have cancelled the cards in question and closed their accounts with the bank in question. It's entirely possible that the customers believe that they have cancelled the cards but haven't, either in error or because the bank in question is being sleazy, but I don't know what tools we have to research this, and we can't ask our customers to do so (indeed, many of them likely lack the wherewithal). Has anyone else come across this issue or have any tips?
I'm bumping this with very important news: we now have a customer who was able to confirm to us that their money was refunded to a closed account. They had previously both cancelled the card in question and closed their account altogether with the bank (BofA), but after a "long conversation" the bank admitted that they had received the money and offered to write them a check for the amount. I fear many of our other customers will not be able to get this resolved, and of course we have no idea how many times this has actually happened without the customer doing a significant amount of research for us, but we're looking at 4 reported cases, I believe.
I don't see how we can use Refund by Reference in the future if it allows something like this to happen.
Hi Gawain,
We're currently dealing with a refund that went through for a patron who no longer has a relationship with the issuing bank. As a result, they haven't received the money and at the moment, they haven't had success reaching the bank by phone - the bank isn't taking the calls for some reason.
What role did staff at your organization take to help the patron that ran into this? Did they help try to reach the bank on their behalf and perhaps help explain what happened?
Also, I'm curious if you have run into more of these since you started this thread? I suspect there are others that we just haven't heard about yet, particularly given the high volume of refunds we are doing right now.
Thanks,
David
I think at least 4 cases were reported to us, which is the only way we can discover it (whether there might have been a few more, if it was the tip of an iceberg we have no way of knowing). We have one customer constitutionally unable to rectify this themselves, one who did, but reported having to go to great lengths to do so, and one who flat out refused to call their previous (and apparently much hated) bank when we suggested it. I don't know where the other or others lie. I'm pretty sure we've not made any offers to try and intervene: I've left it with the Box Office for now, and haven't had a chance to check in with them on it.