Long story short, bought a POC Cortex DH helmet for £370 in April fom Winstanleys. It developed a fault with the MIPS system (the third one I had which did) which meant it needed to be returned for a refund.
Winstanleys accepted and acknowledged it was faulty and a refund would be given.
Told Winstanleys not to refund it to the card I made purchase on as it belonged to an account which had since closed back in Germany when I lived there but they ignored that advice and now my refund is floating around in Commerzbanks accounts somewhere, to make matters worse, its now my job to waste more time and go and retrieve it.
Like I havent got anything better to do and like I couldn’t do with that £370 in the run up to Christmas.
Thanks for being useless buggers Winstanley. Ill stick with CRC from now on I think. Their customer service has always been first rate in my experience.

rant over….

you may find that they are obliged by their acquirer to refund to the account the money was originally drawn from.

Not usualy, most shops will either refund by the original method of payment or by vouchers.

On ballance I took a bag back to argos last week as the strap came off after 2 trips in the easyjet hold, no recipt just a vage udea when it was bought. Assistant found it on the system, did all the paperwork and got their managers signature to offer a voucher as a refund all with a minimum of hastle. Good customer service does exist.

Not usualy, most shops will either refund by the original method of payment or by vouchers.

On ballance I took a bag back to argos last week as the strap came off after 2 trips in the easyjet hold, no recipt just a vage udea when it was bought. Assistant found it on the system, did all the paperwork and got their managers signature to offer a voucher as a refund all with a minimum of hastle. Good customer service does exist.

just a quick update for anybody interested,

I’m still stuck between Commerzbank who say they havent got the funds as the account was closed and Winstanleys who says they were sent and wouldnt have been accepted if the account was closed.

End of the day I’m out of pocket which seems unfair.

Who can I escalate this to to resolve?

I’d be surprised if Winstanleys couldn;t look at their records, contact their acquirer and get the money retrieved. Whether they are motivated to do this is another matter.

I would write them a letter outlining;

A) why they offered refund.
B) that you explicitly said not to refund to th eoriginal card
C) that you have not received the refund
and
D) unless the refund is forthcoming within 14 days you’ll be taking them to small claims court for the amount they owe plus costs.

Send it recorded delivery.

Consult your local Citizens Advice.

Have just been forced to do some anti-money laundering training at work I’d be very surprised if they agreed to refund to anything other than the source account / vouchers / in-store credit…