Ever had a frustrating experience with a delivery service? This one’s a classic.

Imagine paying for express delivery, only to get a lecture instead of a refund when it doesn’t arrive on time.

Check out how one man’s fight for a refund led to an unexpected twist in this story.

“Do a chargeback then! You won’t get a refund!” Ok, I will…

A couple of years ago, I ordered an express parcel delivery from the UK to the USA via one of these third-party parcel shipping companies.

For those who are unfamiliar, they are a ‘middle man’ and they hold huge accounts with UPS, DHL, FedEx, etc.

They then offer cheaper parcel rates and pass some of this discount onto the customer.

Sounds like a great deal, right?

So I ordered an Express 48 hour delivery with one of these delivery companies for my two parcels to the USA.

This cost me around £100 for the two boxes and from experience using this delivery company in the past, they have a delivery guarantee.

That offers me a full refund of all carriage charges if any part of the shipment is not delivered within 48 hours.

A few days later, I was told by my customer that the boxes had arrived two days late.

Uh-oh, here comes the trouble.

Not a problem – I checked the tracking number and it had been held up at the UK-based air freight terminal which entitled me to a full refund of the carriage charges.

I then contacted the delivery company, but I was told that although I was fully entitled to a full refund, I’d have to speak to the third-party shipping company.

I contacted them by phone and I was told that they don’t issue refunds for delayed parcels.

I explained that this was a guaranteed service and the delivery company said that I was entitled to a refund.

At this point, I was passed onto a manager by the call center operative without even asking!

This is where things start to heat up.

The manager was very obnoxious and wasn’t bothered that my parcel had been delayed.

In his opinion, I shouldn’t expect it to get there on time when I had paid such a low price.

“So you want a full refund just because your parcel is DELAYED?!”

Yes, I do because that is what was in the terms and conditions.

“But you didn’t buy the extra insurance!”

No, I didn’t because the delivery already included £1,000 of insurance anyway.

“……. Well, we don’t do refunds for delayed parcels, and especially if you haven’t paid for the insurance”

At this point I was getting pretty annoyed because he was making up this idea of buying insurance to cover for delays – the insurance only covered total loss and damage anyway.

Now he’s just making things up.

So I explained that if I didn’t receive a refund, I would simply initiate a chargeback on my credit card for the payment.

At this point, he raised his voice.

“Fine! Try to do a chargeback then! We will fight it and you won’t get a refund! Yeah, your parcel was late but that doesn’t mean you get a free delivery!”

Challenge accepted.

I ended the call and got straight on the phone to my credit card company.

They went through a rigorous process with me and asked for a copy of the original invoice, the terms and conditions, etc.

Within 24 hours, they’d refunded the full amount back to my card and sent me a letter giving me the reasons they found the chargeback in my favor.

It also explained that the merchant (the shipping company) had 30 days to contest the chargeback.

However, 30 days came and went and the money was still showing as refunded.

6 weeks later, I received an email from their customer service team telling me that they were willing to give me a partial refund of 10% to compensate me for the delay.

A bit too late for that, isn’t it?

Obviously, somebody hadn’t realized that I’d initiated a chargeback and now it was too late!

So I replied and politely explained that I was told by the manager (stating his name) to initiate a chargeback because their company doesn’t issue refunds even when their terms and conditions say they do.

Therefore, as far as I was concerned, the matter was now closed as my credit card company had given them 30 days to reply to the chargeback and they had not replied; therefore the chargeback was granted.

Talk about sweet justice.

Not only did I never hear anything back from them, but I haven’t used this company since.

Wow, that manager’s bluff sure backfired spectacularly.

The folks on Reddit had a lot to say about this one.

This one is giving him a pat on the back for being selfless.

This person thinks everyone should take up this mentality.

And this Redditor had an even better solution:

Looks like the shipping company needs to brush up on their customer service skills.

Among other things.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.