Refund charges

freebee23

Hi all,
Need some advice regarding charges that I was billed for and were taken out from a refund I received from a company based in Spain.
I had booked and paid a deposit for a week long holiday, the deposit was for €70.56 euro. Due to flight cancellations at the airport over the Ash Cloud issue I had to cancel our holiday and I emailed the company detailing the reason behind the cancellation. I received a response to contact them during office hours to arrange a refund.
I did this and was informed that even though I paid my deposit using visa, as the payment was processed over 30 days prior to informing them of the cancellation they could only do a refund via bank transfer. I thought this strange but complied and gave them my account details.
Today I got a letter from my bank detailing the refund along with nearly €10 euro in charges which came from my refund amount bringing the net refund down quite considerably.
I WAS NOT INFORMED THAT THERE WERE ANY FEES INVOLVED when I gave them my bank details.
Do I have any recourse.

Cheers,
Freebee23

jor el

It all depends on their refund policy, but normally you would have no recourse for charges applied in cancelling something like this. You're lucky to be getting anything back at all, as they don't have to.

freebee23

jor el wrote: »

It all depends on their refund policy, but normally you would have no recourse for charges applied in cancelling something like this. You're lucky to be getting anything back at all, as they don't have to.

Thats fair enough but the company told me if I had booked within a one month period prior to cancelling they could have offered me a full refund via Visa.
My issue is not with the validity of receiving/not receiving a refund but with their procedures in processing refunds and with them not informing me of any fees that would be involved.
If I had have known that fees were involved I would have stuck to my guns over the method of reimbursement - Pay by Visa, refund by Visa. (Not a single mention regarding fees was given to me on both my calls to the same person in their accounts department as I had to ring back with IBAN numbers and sort code details as I did not have these to hand during the first phone call).
I have emailed them off a post since my first mentioning it here so hopefully will get some resolution.

Cheers,
Freebee23

AlwaysAmber

Were the charges deducted by the bank or the company giving the refund?
If they were deducted by the bank, it's possible the company didn't know that the charge would be so high.

EUR10 does seem high though for a bank transfer within the Euro zone.

wmpdd3

I think BOI charge about €10 for iban, but AIB only charged me €4, both amounts were about €200. It does look as if these charges are from your bank as apposed to the company refunding the money.

GerardKeating

wmpdd3 wrote: »

I think BOI charge about €10 for iban, but AIB only charged me €4, both amounts were about €200. It does look as if these charges are from your bank as apposed to the company refunding the money.

Banks are required to change the same in domestic and Euro zone transfers, so €10 for a transfer sounds a bit wrong...