Section 75 refund process

UK Financial Chat
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(sorry for starting a new topic on this - but didn’t seen any recent topics discussing this and didn’t want to raise an old topic from the dead).

A few weeks ago I made the mistake of being dazzled by an ad on the Internet and bought something that looked ok, but turned out wasn’t. FWIW, it was one of those ‘Car Tablet’ things that gives you Apple CarPlay/Android Auto without ripping out your whole radio and replacing/rewiring everything.

The website claimed a 100 day money back guarantee (*) so thought it would be ok.

When I got it, set it up and although it seemed fine, about 10 minutes into any trip the tablet would just crash and reboot itself over and over again. Got in touch with them, they asked me to check a few things (make sure it was plugged in ok, factory reset it) so did all that and no change. They asked me to video it to prove it was happening to did that and sent it over to them.

It then turned out the (*) in their guarantee was doing a bit of heavy lifting - to get the full refund, you had to return the device back to China at your own expense (around £30). I pointed out that elsewhere on their website they claimed that if it was faulty, you can return it free of charge but all they’d offer me with a 40% discount to not return it and I get to keep the tablet (which is useless). So, I’d be paying 60% of the price for a plastic box to sit on my dashboard doing nothing… :thinking:

After a week of back and forth on this, this afternoon I suddenly remembered I bought it on Flex and so put a S75 claim on it. As soon as I submitted the claim, I had an email from them saying they’ve given me a full refund and it’ll take up to 10 days to show on my account.

So, just out of interest - was that purely a coincidence? Or did the s75 dispute mean that they do just automatically give a refund?

On Monday, when the person I’ve been trying to resolve this with presumably gets back into work, can they do anything to block this now? Should I just ignore any further comms from them or tell them I’ve submitted this?

(this is my first time submitting this sort of dispute!)

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My experience with Flex is that you get an immediate refund but the seller then has a certain period to challenge it (and if they are successful the money will be taken out of your Flex balance again).

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At the moment, this isn’t a refund showing in Flex (yet). This is an email from the Car Tablet company saying they’re giving me a refund (which is why I’m wondering if it was just a coincidence and I would’ve had the email from them anyway if I’d waited 5 mins longer!).

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Maintain the s75 process and let Mastercard handle it. They don’t want the fees for chargebacks.

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This. Flex or not (which I know will work the same way as any credit card I just don’t see it as such personally) the merchant will likely not want to mess about and will have taken the “easy path” and likely just offer the refund. Good luck!

PS - Don’t feel the need to “justify” the mistake, that could’ve happened to anyone. I stupidly fell for a third party service for an upcoming trip to Canada thinking it was the official site - a quick chat to Lloyds and a chargeback raised and a refund soon came my way.

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I lodged my first S75 claim with Flex a couple of days ago.

I didn’t get an immediate refund, but they did accept the claim almost immediately, and now the status is “contacting merchant”, which it says will take a few days but it’s not very clear, as it says they are contacting the merchant but it also says that the merchant normally refunds within a few days but if they don’t, they will contact them…. so are they contacting the merchant or not?

I’ll wait it out. I have always used Nationwide CC and have had 1 or 2 S75 claims with them, they always handled it brilliantly, hoping the same for Monzo.

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Update on my S75 chargeback: It’s been approved and the money is back in my account!

For those interested in more details:
I bought a few keys for an online service from a 3rd party website. They are a major seller and I have bought keys from them many times over the past 10 years (I must have bought over 10-15 keys in the past), never a problem. This time, the keys didn’t work.
No biggie I thought, the website boasts a guarantee to refund in case of non-working keys. However, they ended up wasting my time through something like 20 emails, where they asked me to try all sorts of things to make the keys work. At some point, it became obvious they were just wasting time, claiming the keys work etc. They even provided a screenshot showing they work from their end, but I kept complying with all their instructions, and provided my own screenshots, laid out exactly as they requested.

I warned them a couple of times that I was going to initiate a chargeback and gave them a deadline. They kept wasting time, so I went through Monzo. The claim was accepted based on the evidence I provided (they didn’t ask me to upload screenshots, but there was one confusing question in the process - I had to create a PDF to basically answer that the question did not make sense).

The Monzo app has a timeline tracking each step of the process from there on. You can ‘change or cancel’ the claim too if you want. After the seller ‘replied’ to Monzo’s request, Monzo took a week or so to process everything, and today the decision came in my favour. As the Flex payment had already been paid back, the money went into my current account.

All in all, I am very pleased with the process and with Monzo’s agreement with my claim, and it gives me more confidence in using Flex for more purchases.

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