LL - Missing Refund - refund inquiry after refund issued

What do we do if someone says they haven’t received their refund.

• Look up their order and confirm if a refund has been requested and processed.
• If it was NOT requested, you should request it asap by assigning to the refund team, and let them know the timeframe it will take to post back to their CC (typically about 3 days but could be up to 10 days).
• If it has been processed and MORE THAN 10 business days have passed you should note the ticket and assign it to Gigi and make a post in the urgent billing channel.
• Gigi will ensure the refund was processed successfully in our payment gateway and will provide the customer with a confirmation from the payment gateway that the refund processed successfully. 
• Once a refund has processed successfully in our gateway it will be up to the customer's bank to post the funds to their account.

Considerations:

One of the first things you want to consider, ESPECIALLY if this is a TSM order, is was it voided? If the billing was voided rather than refunded, they are not going to see a completed charge and subsequent credit. Usually the people who were voided who write in after the fact saying they haven’t seen their refund yet don’t fully understand how voids are different than refunds. Reiterating what we said before, but wording it differently, can help them better understand. If they no longer see a pending pre-authorization for that charge, and they do not see it as a completed charge, the money went back into their available balance as if it never happened - which is what happens with voids. If they’re still unsure, send them back to their bank for help with verifying that we did not paid and they still have that money available. 

It was refunded? Then what is “more than long enough”?

Different payment systems have different refund timeframes. While TSM members get refunds in 2-3 days, our supplements and rad members may wait 3 -10 days. And those are just estimates. Some banks (like the ones inside walmart that are targeted to bad credit/low income people who can’t otherwise get a bank account) hold onto refunds for a full 14 days before they release it to the customers account. 

• That should be your first consideration - what is the refund timeframe? 
• Has it been within 10 days of processing? If it has, we’re sending them to the bank with the refund transaction information. 
• Has it been older than 10 days? Further investigations are needed by our team - and this would be noted on the ticket so Gigi can view the payment gateway.
• What steps do YOU take in this investigation? Remember - You own this issue. This is your customer so what are you going to do to help?

What if it’s a TSM member? 

This becomes a CHO Operations ticket. Let the customer know that you are working with the billing manager to look into their concern and that you’ll be back in touch with them just as soon as you have more information to share. In your note, tell Gigi what’s going on. She’ll be able to look at the payment gateway to see if there was an error in processing the refund. If there was, she’ll push it through. If there was no error, then they really need to talk to their bank. In either case, she’s going to put the results of her investigation in a note in that ticket and then give it back to you so you can let the customer know. 

What if it was a refund for a Recharge order?

Who can tell me a reason why someone’s recharge refill refund was not posted in the given timeframe? 

1 - they were refunded in shopify directly rather than in the recharge plug in

2 - they were refunded in recharge, but not in the gateway

Assign the ticket to the refund team per the CHO ticket guidelines. You will use the Notes Entry SR when assigning it to her and explain the situation and the results of your investigation in full. The refund team will look into it and put the results of her investigation in her own note in that ticket and give it back to you so you can let the customer know. 

Any time someone has a concern about a billing or a refund, we want to do what we can to provide them with the best and most accurate information possible. That’s why we do things like send transaction numbers with the name of the person who processed that refund, the amount refunded, and date/time stamps as evidence we processed the refund. 

If that means you have to tell them that after we looked into it, we found that there was an error in processing the refund BUT we were able to resolve that error and process the refund successfully today, then do. No reason to lie about it.

People want to be told that you are sorry for their inconvenience. Not only have they been expecting that money back, but they also had to take the time to write back in.

How would you feel if this happened to you? You should also thank them for bringing this to your attention! In a digital world, things can go wrong at any time. If that refund error was caused by something we need to look into and fix to make sure it doesn’t happen to someone else, that’s something we want to take care of. Usually it’s a fluke, but we still look for patterns. Report it to your manager!