I’m not trying to demonise you. I’m sorry if what I have written leads you to think this. I don’t work for them but do have sympathy for peeps who have a job dealing with customers direct. I thought you had a delay because of decorating but I’m wrong on that.
Cheques are old. My employer needs 4 different signatures on a cheque request form. It’s so much hassle to get one created it’s just not worth it. Especially when there’s limited peeps wo can sign a cheque, and the sig on the cheque has to be different again. All down to security as a cheque is sent to a ‘name’ on it, which could be a scam theft. BACS is available but it wouldn’t surprise me if they limit it to bill paying only like gas, electric, established maintenance contracts etc. That will be locked down to stop mistakes happening as it’s too easily done. It’s always difficult to get accounts in a large company to do anything different to their processes as they heavily reply on process for their tax return and auditing. They audit the process to make sure it work. Transactions used under it are then said to be ok. So I can understand why their options are limited on refund methods.
Where individual staff say one thing then it doesn’t happen, my finking on this is… it would more often than not be down to the member of staff not knowing what alternative options are available. Like offering to refund in a different way only to find it’s not possible. To a tele-handler it’s just a refund via a different method but to accounts I would expect them to want to refund against the original payment, even if it’s a different method. That auto reverses the tax part of the payment which will be key to their processes. Similar could be said for the passport request. I think someone has gone a bit too far in wanting proof of who they’re refunding too.
The best way to search a web site I find is to use google. If you put ‘paypal refund policy days’ into google it will come up with the answer and the link to find it on their site. You still need to check the link in case the web site has updated but google hasn’t noticed. Rare but happens. Google collect ‘copies’ of web sites for its devilish work and scans them. I use the same method for landyzone anorl to search for fings on here. ‘argos nextbase’ is one I used earlier for a camera.
Thank you for clarifying what to us was a mystery.
At the same time, once this happened I looked at all the negative comments on the website and found that nearly all of them were exactly the same as ours, namely failure of customer service to engage and refund.
I think maybe it is my history of dealing with companies when a problem occurs with a product and as I may have already mentioned, they tend to fall into two camps, those who recognise the problem and then put it right quickly, like John Lewis recently who provided us with a brand new induction hob within days of the problem. And those who fight tooth and nail to not pay up, Like Carphone Warehouse, (since bought out, and maybe better now.)
At the time of my problem with them I had a colleague who had exactly the same problem and posted a note on the staff notice board asking for help with sorting it out as she just couldn't sort it.
What you said about the refund and the member of staff not being aware of what could actually be done.... When one said they couldn't do any of the things I asked, I did ask her to put her supervisor on and she refused saying that he/she would just say the same as her. This I think was a mistake on her behalf because she was saying a refund through Paypal was impossible although, as we now know, in the end it was possible.
I am not saying I don't sympathise with the people who have to deal with problems like these. They did agree right at the beginning of the business after delivery about the refund and simply asked for proof, which is fair enough. We supplied this and they picked the item up 3 days later.
So we were happy about this although not happy that it took them 7 months, after payment, to deliver faulty goods. But it took them from the 15th of November to just this week to agree on a refund method, which it would appear they could have done as soon as they got the item back. And we are sure that they only moved on this once the credit card company got involved.
We also were concerned that the time frame for the credit card company would be a problem as we paid for the item so long ago, but they agreed that they could get involved as we had not received the item until 11/11/21.
It's not fun but it is still a learning curve and now we know about manual Paypal refunds, should it prove necessary in the future.
I am glad that equilibrium between us has been reestablished.
Re using Google to search websites, I often find Google searches Landyzone better than landyzone's search engine. No criticism, it is just the way it is, they don't have the resources to be as sophisticated as Google.