What's my liability here? Credit card refunded incorrectly.

Factual Questions
1

Many months ago, I bought something from a large online retailer. It took forever to arrive because they shipped it through some tiny shipper, and I spent a lot of time on the phone tracking it down. It finally arrived, with a manufacturer’s defect. More time on the phone, but they ultimately arranged a replacement and for return shipping.

And then it got worse. First the replacement took forever to come, resulting in me spending hours on the phone tracking it down. Then the one that was shipped back (via their choice of shipping methods, I did nothing but open the door and hand the item to their shipper) took forever to get back to them. So long, in fact, that their automated system to charge for things that were not returned kicked into place and they charged me for the item. Once again, I spent hours on the phone straightening the whole thing out, and haven’t thought about it since.

I just today went to look at the seldom-used credit card account that I had used to buy this item, and lo-and-behold, all those months ago, they refunded me twice for the incorrect payment their automated system took from my account. Well, sort of twice - the second amount isn’t the same as the first.

So, in short, here’s what happened:

  • I buy item, my credit card is charged $X.
  • I return defective item, new item arrives, I pay for new item, I’m happy.
  • Until 2 weeks later, when I receive an email telling me they haven’t received my return. I spend an hour on the phone while they track it down. They tell me their shipper has it, all is good, I don’t have to worry about a thing.
  • 30 days later, when I get email telling me I never returned the defective item, and they are charging my credit card $X. In effect, I’m charged for the defective item and the replacement item.
  • I call them, raise a stink, they reverse the charge. This took at least 2 hours on the phone over a couple days while they figure out where the hell it is and what the hell is going on.
  • Now, months later, I look at credit card bill, and it seems they reversed the charge once for the amount they mistakenly billed me, then again for about 2/3 of the amount.

So what’s my liability here? I’m not looking to keep the money - I more just want the whole issue to go away. I especially don’t want to spend hours on the phone again. In fact, I’m not going to - it’s their mistake, the whole thing was their mistake, and I’m sick of having to waste my time dealing with it.

I’m totally OK if at some point they realize their error and want their money back. I’ll give it to them gladly.

So if I just wait on this, will it come back to bite me?

And what happens if they don’t figure it out in a reasonable amount of time? Is there a statute of limitations for this kind of thing? I’m OK with letting it go for a while, but I don’t want an unpleasant surprise years from now if they take that long to figure things out.

2

No real answer but something similar happened to me once.

I bought a $1,000 rug from a catalogue (pre-internet.)
They sent the wrong rug. I called them, and we agreed that I would ship the rug back at their expense, then they would send me the correct one.
I sent the rug back.
They sent me the correct rug.
They credited my CC. I figured the charge would re-appear on my next statement.
It didn’t.

I kept the rug and, for months and months, expected the charge to reappear.
It never did; I never paid for it and will probably go to hell for this.

3

If you want to CYA, send them a letter with signature confirmation explaining their mistake and telling them they have X days to fix it - after that, you’ll protest any further action on your card.

But I’d bet your account is zeroed out and you won’t hear from them again unless you bring it to their attention.

4

It may have well been a customer service decision. Let it go, you have earned it.

5

Spending time on the telephone is not the way to go simply because there is no paper trail.

It can easily turn out to be a situation of “I said, they said.”

That gets you nowhere but grief.

Written communication (i.e., USPS certified mail, signature required, with return receipt) that are one page (no novels) says that you mean business and that you have documented your communication(s).

Also …

Businesses will drag their feet so that they can get around the 60 day time limit period for contesting a credit card charge.

Caveat Emptor.

6

I’d say the most factual answer you’re gonna get is that it’d be deemed more trouble than it was worth by the retailer if you brought it up again.

And really isn’t that kinda how you feel too? Why not just call them and see what happens.

7

I’d just let things stay as they are. If a request for a repayment of the over-refund is received, then just pay it. Just make sure that you haven’t spent the money that you may have to pay back. It’s not worth the effort to continue the issue when you’ve already been made whole (and more).

8

Don’t write anybody any letters. You’ve got their money (they don’t owe you any money). Just wait for them to make the next move.

It’s not that I’m advocating keeping money that doesn’t belong to you, it’s just the reality of dealing with large companies where, more often than not, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

If you contact them, here is what is likely to happen: Some customer service rep is going to initiate a manual charge to your credit card. Then somewhere three thousand miles away, somebody is going to run the quarterly account audit program and find that they gave you a double credit and initiate another charge to your credit card. Then you are back to where they owe you money and you have to spend hours on the phone trying to convince someone that a significantly more complicated series of events requires them to send you some money back.

Let it be. If they contact you asking for their money back, send it to them. Letting the wheels of their internal bureaucracy churn at their own rate is going to be the simplest thing for everyone involved and the most likely path to a correct resolution.

Of course, check your account for strange activity monthly. You should be doing this with all of your credit cards anyway. There are so many people who post messages on other boards that say stuff like “I have a credit card I never used, so I never bothered to look at my monthly statements. Now I get a call from a collection agency saying I owe them $500! They say my statement from twelve months ago had a notice about an annual fee and they’ve been adding interest and late payment fees every month. What should I do?”

ETA: Like nivlac said!

9

Because I have no desire to spend even MORE time straightening out this mess. I’ve spent hours (no exaggeration) getting to this point; I’m not excited about spending more time doing something that solely benefits them, and was their mistake to begin with.

Yup, this is what I’m afraid of.

I’m definitely leaning towards just letting it go, with the assumption that if they do figure it out, I’ll happily give them the money back.

I guess what I was really wondering if there’s some statue of limitations that goes into effect so that in 6 years, they don’t come looking.

10

IMHO you have had enough trouble with this, I feel you have earned the right to drop the issue and walk away, you made more then reasonable requests and put in so much time on this. If you drop it when you are ahead so be it. If they wish to put the time in to pursue it that is on them to do.

11

Is this Amazon?
If so, open a ticket using ‘Help’ and referencing your order # and you can copy and paste the relevant parts of your above post.
Would take me about 90 seconds…

12

I agree that you’ve done enough due diligence. Your time is just as valuable as theirs.
You’re under no obligation to soend your time to fix a mistake made in your favor.

I bet if you were accidentally charged twice and didn’t notice it, that they wouldn’t spend time detecting their error and fixing it.

I’m sick of this caveat emptor crap. The law of the land should be caveat vendor!

13

It’s not Amazon, but a similar kind of large vendor.

I highly doubt their automated help would do anything other than get me a confused phone call, which would lead to more hours on the phone, and risk even more mistakes on my credit card. This issue is far beyond their normal business practices that can be fixed with an easy email.

14

Right, Amazon is the only vendor I would trust to help you properly on this.
With most other vendors, I’m sure you’re right.

15

I vote for drop it, but watch your cc statements. And don’t throw away any of your documentation/notes for at least a year.

16

OK, based on everyone’s advice, I’m gonna drop it. Yay!

But here’s a follow-on question:

Would the amount of money involved ever change that?

If so, where’s the line?

$50?
$250?
$500?
$1000?
$2000?
$5000?
$10K?
higher?

For me, the higher it goes, the more complicated it gets… on the one hand, it’d be great to pocket $10K (my situation is nowhere near that), on the other hand, I don’t much like the idea of them figuring it out in 5 years and having to come up with that amount to give back.

17

I work in customer service and have issued thousands of refunds in my time here, and there have been times when I accidentally over-refunded a customer, and was fully aware of my mistake right after I did it. Most of the time, the amount is negligible (at least from the perspective of a billion-dollar company), so I just let it go and let the customer keep the money. I wouldn’t bring it to their attention, though, since usually there wouldn’t be anything we could do about it.

I can’t remember ever re-charging a card to make up for an accidental refund, but I ever did, the amount would have been in the thousands of dollars, and there would have been immediate communication. Most of the time, though, re-charging the card without explicit permission from the client can open a much bigger can of worms than just taking the loss.

18

I got several hundred dollars once shopping online when a company credited me for a return but then did an exchange. I’ve also lost several hundred dollars shopping online so I figure it evens out. I just hope the salesman didn’t get into trouble if an accounting eventually caught it. I think this most resembles “unjust enrichment” which is a civil manner. I googled enough to find one example and the statute of limitations is 6 years in New Jersey.

Maybe a someone with more legal knowlege can answer, but I believe enrichment requires intent before it rises to a criminal level of theft. Say it’s theft if I take a widget out of it’s packaging and shove it in my pocket; it’s not theft if I have a cartload of stuff from Target and the cashier puts the widget in in a bag while forgetting to ring it up.

19

Yes, of course. Once it gets over $5000, there’s a issue, at least imho.

At a lower level, say a couple of hundred bucks, it’s not unreasonable to assume it’s a cust service credit.

20

You are right in saying, it is their mistake and of course it is their responsibility to clean-up their mess.

If you will just let go of the situation, without doing anything with the money, I think you will be just fine, even if they found out later.

They may even tell you politely, “we’re sorry for the inconvenience.”