subject: UK Basics of Card Refunds and Purchase Cancellations [print this page] UK Basics of Card Refunds and Purchase Cancellations
Have you ever decided to simply not buy something because you are not sure if you'll regret it later? Have you ever gone ahead with the purchase anyway, and then actually regretted it? In that case, what did you do and were you able to get a refund for your purchase?
In the UK, merchants are required by the law to give you a refund for products and services you bought when you decide that you are unable to use it or that it falls below your expectations. It is quite easy to return defective or unwanted things you buy if you get them directly from a retail store. They can simply take back the item and give you a cash refund. However, what happens if you charged it on your credit card. Worse, what happens if you bought it online and charged it to your card? Can you still cancel the transaction if it hasn't gone through yet? Can you easily get a refund from your credit card company?
In cases when the transaction still reflects as pending with the credit card provider, the sad news is that you actually can not just call your credit card company to cancel the transaction before it pushes through. The reason for this is that card payments are considered to be guaranteed, which means any transaction made through your card, as long as you have enough credit limit for it, will push through. This protects merchants from the possibility of fraudsters that would use credit cards for payment and then just simply cancel the transaction each time they already get what they bought for. At the same time, this guaranteed credit card payment method also protects you, as a cardholder, and makes things more convenient since merchants cannot deny you their service by saying that the credit card might not go through.
What you should do then, if you want to cancel the transaction, is to simply contact the merchant and ask them for a cancellation. They can then stop the payment from being processed so that the transaction does not go through your card. If it has already been processed, you can just ask your merchant to either give you a refund directly so that you can use it to pay your credit card bill, or send the refund to your credit card account.
When it comes to refunds, again it is the merchant you need to contact. uk credit card providers are required to process refunds speedily and usually do so within days after the refund has been processed on the part of the merchant.
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