So this all happened on 29 JUN 2018.
Amazon had this
gift card top-up offer: if you top-up £40 at a shop that supports PayPoint, you get £10 extra free. So my wife, my friend and I decided to avail ourselves of this offer at the nearby Co-op. Back home, we discovered that only one of the top-ups was successful. For the other two, we received the following email.
There has been an unsuccessful Amazon Top Up transaction
We incorrectly added funds to your Amazon.co.uk Gift Card balance as a result of an unsuccessful Amazon Top Up transaction. We understand that you were not charged for this transaction and have removed the incorrectly added funds.
Amount removed: -£40.00
Notice that it specifically states that "you were not charged", even though my credit card statement said, "You were charged". Several phone calls followed at this point in which I became the ball in a game of phone tennis.
CREDIT CARD COMPANY: "We can't cancel the transaction as we're pretty much useless."
AMAZON LIVE CHAT: "You need to get a refund from the shop."
CO-OP (Manager): "Ring PayPoint."
PAYPOINT: "This is an automated response and we'll ring you back tomorrow."
I rang the shop manager again and insisted she ring through to PayPoint, which she did, returning with instructions to ring Amazon to explain that the two missing £40 were something called "Ghost Voids", and to ask them to honour the receipt I had received from the shop. I tried Amazon Live Chat and the representative I was assigned quickly assured me he would solve my problem and eventually found
this book for me. I rang Amazon, and was put through to what I can only describe as a marijuana-smoking snail, a slow-talking, slow-understanding oddity who kept putting me on hold (presumable to take a few puffs) while he conducted an investigation, the first twenty minutes of which finally led him to the email I had been sent, which he read out to me with a sense of achievement. When I finally got him to admit he had no idea what a ghost void was, I hung up on him.
I rang the shop again, and the manager again rang PayPoint, and they again told her to tell me to ring Amazon, this time using the words "auto cancellation" instead of "ghost void", which they might understand better. I did so, and again they had no idea what this was and asked me to return to PayPoint.
I rang the shop a third time and just asked for a refund, and the manager agreed to this. She actually turned out to be a wonderful person who spent considerable time dealing with PayPoint, a company that seemed to be under the impression that when they messed up, they could ask the customer to sort it all out for them. I returned to the shop and was given a refund.
But of course I had already wasted three hours of my time getting that refund, and there was no way I was going to let that drop. So I rang PayPoint and put my number into their automated system for a ringback.
I'll put on the next instalment, where I begin playing tennis with PayPoint and Amazon, later.
