Aibu to think Dunelm are unreasonable?

[LadyGodHelpUs]

On Saturday I bought £217 worth of stuff from Dunelm. I paid £40 using a gift card given to me as a Christmas present. The rest I paid by card.

Today I returned £97 worth of things. They insisted that £40 had to go back on the gift card.

I wasn’t made aware of this or I would have carried out separate transactions. I didn’t sign anything and it didn’t mention this on the back of the receipt where it said refunds would be no problem within the set time period.

AIBU that this is unfair practice?

If that is what they quote, you'd expect them to honour it, yes. I don't know where it stands in terms of a legal contract. A proportion should have gone on the gift card and a proportion in cash.

I think they should have done it as a proportion back onto the gift card but it is normal practice .

Some posters have really misunderstood this. It can’t be money laundering if she’s not asked for the amount of the gift card to be refunded. OP wants some of the money over and above the amount she spent.

Anytime I’ve ever returned things part of gift card, the gift card ‘portion’ is taken as payment first and cash second, and it’s the cash portion that’s refunded. I’ve never had this happen to me and I would complain (and suggest, as PP have, that I just return everything and rebuy with my giftcard again).

And no, OP isn’t ‘lucky’ they accepted a refund at all. It’s in their T&Cs so she was aware before buying - if it wasn’t you might have a point but it is so it’s not a particularly compelling argument (I actually can’t think of any major stores that don’t offer 14 day returns for goods like homeware actually).

Why though? It doesn’t make sense. As long as the OP has spent £40 in Dunelm and kept those goods, she has spent the gift card. Anything more than that is her own money.

God knows why I’m so bothered about this though. I feel like I did about people saying “you’ve got another thing coming” - how can anyone not see this is wrong??!!!

I’m sure if you used the gift card first and paid the balance by card they have to refund to card first and whatever is outstanding, once they’ve credited card, goes back to gift card.
I worked for an online retail company and this is how it worked legally

I'm surprised actually that they didn't make you take it all back on a giftcard - I thought they only had to refund you cash if there was an actual problem with the item - changing your mind/deciding you didn't like how it looked in your house is treated with a gift card/exchange only in a lot of stores!

OP I would read the small print on their returns policy. Since you were returning because you didn’t like it rather than because it was unfit for sale, your standard consumer rights don’t apply, it will depend on their written policy and their terms may include a right to refund on gift cards.

Whatever those terms say, though, probably the easiest way to get them to give you cash is to return the rest of the goods, then rebuy just what you want with the gift card(s) and not shop there again.

Because they have one rule for everyone regardless of whether they've just used a gift card or whether they've used cash or card as well. What happened to OP is exactly what should have happened.

She spent £217 in total. £40 on a gift card and the remainder on a debit card.

So when she gets her refund, the first £40 goes back on a gift card, with the remainder going on to the debit card.

It's standard practise in every single shop I've ever worked in. There's no way for the till system to allocate the gift card money to a particular item, so it just comes off the entire total.

@Face2facet I don't know how to do a quote. But it clearly says they wouldn't exchange without a receipt and she had to ask the gift giver for one.

What law made that how it worked “legally” rather than just a matter of company policy?

This sort of thing gets me cross too. Just really shady business practices. I bought some things from John Lewis recently, paid the first £10 with a voucher, the other £90 with card. I took back something of value £15 and of course they put it back on the card - because the are not total rip off merchants.

It's always been the opposite where I work.

If you've spent a £50 gift card, the first £50 of your refund goes back onto a gift card, and the rest onto the card you originally paid the balance on.

Vouchers and gift cards are different things.

It's standard practise in every single shop I've ever worked in. There's no way for the till system to allocate the gift card money to a particular item, so it just comes off the entire total.

Payment method priority is certainly a thing - BUT - it would be reasonable for her to have been warned, so she could have done two separate transactions - one for the gift card purchases, one for the cash purchases. That's how the till could have allocated it, by doing it in 2 transactions.

No money laundering, no confusion when it comes to returning items, no gift card left for OP to forget about that starts declining in value after x months (dunno if Dunelm do that, but it's also 'standard practise' that is a bit off)

It’s already been explained- that is not a post by the OP. That’s someone else’s unrelated story!

Quite standard so now return the second rug
Balance of refund will be cash then re buy rug u want with gift card

You’re just explaining the policy here, that wasn’t the question. The question was how does such a policy avoid fraud.

We never explained all that at the till as it was all on the T&C's on the back of the gift card as well as the website.

It does say on Dunelm's website:

Please note that all refunds will be made back to the original tender type. For your protection, refunds to credit or debit cards will only be processed if the cardholder is present.

It doesn’t. The only effect of this policy is to force the OP to shop there again, even though they have spent well over the £40 original value. When a company has to force you to shop there, it tells you a lot about how they are run.

@DoNotGetADog yes I know it was a different person.
It was someone else saying Dunelm also annoyed them because they wouldn't exchange without a receipt so they had to ask the gift giver for it. Face2facet said that the person (not the OP - but the other person) had the receipt but I pointed out the person said they didn't have it originally.
I wasn't talking about the OP.

It could be a way of laundering money.

Jenny sales £250 worth of drugs. Jenny hides £250 in her house. Then the police raid her house. "Jenny, where did that £250 come from?"

So, instead, Jenny spends the £250 in dunelm. She doesn't wat anything from dunelm. Her plan is to take the stuff back, so when plod asked where the money came from "The refund from Dunelm!"

There will be a fair bit more layering than that, but thats how and why.

Lol 'totally wrong' ??

It's not wrong

And the majority of her payment was actually cash (well, credit card) not the gift card. What that doesn’t say is that they will prioritise refunding the gift card first in case of a refund.

Sounds like a sensible option.

Yes it does say that and for £177 of the purchase, the original payment method was debit card not a gift card!!