Shipping things overseas can take a long time if you don’t pay for expedited services.

What would you do if you used a shipping company that offered a guaranteed delivery in 48 hours, but when they failed to delivery, they wouldn’t give you a refund?

That is what happened to the customer in this story, so after they refused to give the refund, he filed a dispute with the credit card company and got all his money back.

Check it out.

“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.

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.

This 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.

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.

They should handle this themselves.

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!

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.

Um, yes, that is exactly what he deserves.

“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.

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 and told me

If you say so.

“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!”

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.

Do they not realize he already got the charge back?

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.

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.

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

He should have taken that 10% refund as a bonus.

Let’s see what the people in the comments say about this.

Yup, this makes sense to me.

I agree with this commenter.

This business owner says chargebacks always go to the customer.

Here is someone who recommends more people file disputes.

This person says good job for not getting greedy.

This whole situation is a mess.

But they broke their promise, so there wasn’t really anything else to do.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.