Refunds to closed accounts

I’ve started to get emails from Google about refunds for Stadia. This is a bit of a strange situation because these transactions were probably over a year ago. I’ve noticed one is to a closed credit card and several to my old expired Starling debit card.

Anyone have any experience of this? I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with it before. Google have said they will provide an alternative means of getting the funds if they can’t successfully refund the money so it’s possible that could happen yet.

They might ask you to provide a new payment method once the funds have bounced back.

If your Starling Account is still open those refunds should go through fine.

It bouncing back would be the better option as you can then select where the money is refunded to but I have feeling they’ll accept the refund knowing my luck :joy:

I have had two refunds from Apple in similar scenarios but in all cases I provided my bank account number, sort code and IBAN though for the first instance they asked me to provide my passport details including those weird numbers and characters at the bottom… I was asked to physically count the <<<<<< at the bottom.
For second time it was just sort code, A/C number and IBAN

From Google:

We’ve partnered with Payoneer to help facilitate refunds if any customers have transactions that we are not able to refund automatically. We’re reaching out to these customers via email to directly connect them with Payoneer.

1 Like

As long as the underlying account is still open, refunds to expired cards should still work.

I remember when Solo (which was like Switch’s answer to Visa Electron) was sunset the payment system was left on for a year or so after the final cards were converted to Maestro or Visa branded products purely to allow these refunds to continue.

Even when an account closes there is usually still a period where refunds will still go through and you should be able to retrieve those funds by contacting the bank. I had a situation last year where a Lenovo agreed to refund a laptop I had purchased from them in 2017 because they seemingly couldn’t fix it. The Amex card I had used to purchase was indeed eventually refunded after a lot of chasing, even though the account had been closed over a year earlier. Amex asked me to show them which transaction the refund related to (which involved requesting old statements) then agreed to send a cheque.

Obviously this varies a lot from issuer to issuer, I can well imagine that Amex keep things open longer than others.

I’m having some issues with these Stadia refunds, too. Some have hit my bank account, others have hit my credit card, but there are some that appear to have gone to a closed account. Also, some have gone back to my Google Rewards balance, but with a very short expiry date. I suspect some refunds may have gone to that balance and immediately expired due to the length of time since the original transaction. I have a support case open with Google.

Seeing a lot of horror stories in regards to these refunds. They should have asked if we needed to update our details.

A small amount of my play store credit was going to expire in a few weeks but I’ve just used it. The rest is fine.

I’ve had all my refunds now apart from the one sent to the closed account. Can’t wait for the fun of trying to get that back :joy: