Credit card refund - should interest accrued also be refunded?

fandango1

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I recently made use of a delivery service by operated by one of the major courier companies to send a parcel. The cost of sending the parcel was €11.50 and I used the company’s website to download the relevant delivery label.

When I received my visa bill I noticed that I was charged €11.50 3 times on the same date. I checked the company’s website and it showed that 3 labels were generated at the same time for the same delivery address. One of them was used to send the parcel and the other 2 labels show a status of expired.
I contacted the courier company and outlined the situation to them. The customer service agent accepted that it seemed to be a genuine error and said that he would send the details to his supervisor to get a refund for 2 labels (€23) credited to my visa account. I paid the balance of my visa bill before the due date.

When my subsequent visa bill arrived it showed that my previous bill had been underpaid by €23 and that interest of €54.54 had been applied as a result.

I contacted the courier company again and asked that they refund the original €23 as soon as possible and also to cover the interest accrued as a result of them not refunding the money at the earlier date. Their initial response was to agree to refund the €23 but advised that they would not cover the interest. When I asked why not, the response was that “we do not credit these”.

I have escalated this query to a more senior manager with the company and am awaiting a reply.

Just wondering what people’s thoughts are on this? Do you think the company should credit the interest amount or do you think I’m being unreasonable asking for it to be credited?

Thanks
fandango1
 
No I don't think they should be expected to pay the interest, did you make them aware beforehand that you were going to underpay your visa bill by the amount you expected them to credit your account and did you make them aware of your payment date?
 
@dereko1969: to be fair I didn't mention either of those facts to them. My initial phone call to them was over 2 weeks prior to my payment date so my assumption was that the refund would be applied in sufficient time to meet the date.
 
You could maybe ask the credit card provider to refund the interest which became due because to the mixup.
 
Unless the courier company gave you a repayment date,I don't see that you have a hope.You could have just paid the 23 yourself and now(or soon) be in credit by 23.
 
You could maybe ask the credit card provider to refund the interest which became due because to the mixup.

I agree that you should ask, but you should not expect.

The CC company did nothing wrong.

In these cases, you must pay your bill in full to avoid interest.

Depending on the card company, you will probably be charged interest next month as well, so holding back payment may cost you €100.

Brendan
 
What rate is your credit card that you are charged €54.54 for borrowing €23 for one month?!?
 
You pay interest on all purchases made in the month if you don't clear your bill in full on time.
 
You pay interest on all purchases made in the month if you don't clear your bill in full on time.

Wow never realised that! Dangerous!

Still, even though the company may have messed up, I personally think it's expecting too much to be compensated nearly two and a half times the original mistake because of this. Clearly the OP made a lot of purchases in that month and had the means to pay those off, so (again in my personal opinion), could and should really have paid this off too in the meantime and/or monitored the card balance for the refund coming in, rather than assumed it would come in on time.

Just my 2 cents...
 
You pay interest on all purchases made in the month if you don't clear your bill in full on time.

Just to develop this one a bit further:

I pay my CC by DD
two months ago I queried a 150 euro transaction, which the CC company put into dispute before the DD for that month was posted.

The effect was to reduce the DD by 150, however the full bill was 3300 and as the 3300 was not paid they hit me for 55 in interest as per what Vandriver wrote.

They refunded it, but only as a concession.
This seems to defeat the purpose of disputing an amount before the full bill is paid.

Am not happy with this so who might I whinge to?
 
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