Said It Here

Merchant says refund went to a closed card but bank has no record

When a merchant issues a refund to a canceled or closed card and the bank cannot locate the transaction using a reference number, customers are left with no way to verify the funds. This leaves people stuck between a merchant claiming payment was sent and a bank that refuses to investigate without a visible transaction.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    filing a chargeback through the credit card company
  2. 2
    relying on email correspondence with the merchant to prove active attempts to get a refund
  3. 3
    Emailing customer support
  4. 4
    Scouring the internet for a phone number to call
  5. 5
    Filing a bank dispute

In their words

Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.

“Last month I returned a ring to Zales due to it being faulty and ultimately breaking on me. The ring was returned August 12th and Zales says they processed the return the same day. I let them know that the card I paid with is no longer active and they said it wouldn’t be a problem. It’s now 33 days later and my bank let me know that there hasn’t been a refund while Zales continues to say ir was refunded and gives me a reference number. Chase bank won’t even look at the reference number because they can’t see the transaction.”source ↗

“My question here is do I go ahead and file a chargeback through chase? And in the event that I file the charge back and Zales decides to credit my account what do I do?”source ↗

ComprehensiveWhole69 · r/personalfinance · 3 upvotes

“I put in a dispute on a purchase because I legit accidentally pressed purchase lol”source ↗

“Sent another email, no response after a day. Put in a dispute, yesterday and look who suddenly wants to respond to me! Now say they can’t refund me because it was already delivered. Can I still win my dispute?”source ↗

danny01700 · r/personalfinance

Where this came up

r/personalfinancecredit cardscustomer servicepersonal financerefunds

People with this problem also raised