Often1

That is the fundamental nature of the disagreement. You say that a chargeback is "extreme." It is not.

If a Marriott property wants a 60-day loan from me, I am happy to consider it. But, not at 0% further discounted by the value of my time.

clarkef

I don't disagree. However, a chargeback is appropriate the moment that a merchant ceases acting in good faith. Once the merchant agrees that a refund is due, the merchant should process it immediately. That is the aforementioned "last step". There is nothing to discuss further, nothing to resolve. The steps you outlined effectively has the customer begging the merchant for his money, i.e. please sir, can I have my money back; the money which you acknowledge that you owe me? Why should the customer have to do that? If a merchant does not promptly process the chargeback, it is playing games, good faith has ceased and a chargeback is appropriate.

Further, from a legal perspective, the most likely scenario in this specific instance is that the merchant is experiencing financial difficulties, making it all the more urgent for the customer to expedite obtaining the refund. Should the merchant cease operating, the refund becomes one of many debts to be resolved in bankruptcy court or other insolvency proceedings and it is unlikely that the customer will ever recover the refund.

Jon Maiman

For the poster I referred to it had been a few weeks since the refund request. They didn't indicate if they had cancelled the reservation via the web, called the property, etc. but implied they had only made one contact. In my mind, the property hadn't breached good faith yet. It may have been an honest mistake. Ideally the poster should have followed up more quickly after the refund didn't come through to check on it. After checking, if the property was unresponsive, then it is reasonable to assume good faith had been breached.

I do agree once good faith is breached a chargeback is reasonable. I have been fortunate and never had trouble getting a refund so far. For other issues, I have had %100 success rate so far using The Lurkers as an escalation point. I can understand some folks skipping that step and going direct to a chargeback after good faith is breached.

Finally, I do agree the possibility of a merchant being in financial distress during the current times is very real. Hence one should proceed quickly with requesting a refund. The attempt to get it resolved via normal process including time to allow a refund to show up on a credit card should be approx. one week. If you believe a property is already on the brink of going bankrupt, than by all means get to the head of the line and do the chargeback. Otherwise, one week shouldn't really affect the outcome.

Distilling it down it comes down to when is a merchant breaching good faith? While there are some objective measures of that, the timing is somewhat subjective. I treat businesses the same way I would like them to treat my business. We do have an obligation to provide the product and/or services of the promised quality at the quoted price in a timely fashion. Sometimes unintended issues occur along the way and as a business we need to make good on them. To do so we have to be given a chance to rectify the problem. Anyway, I suspect there will continue to be disagreement on when good faith is breached and more extreme measures are required.

--Jon

Mr. BoH

Thanks all. The original deposit was 6+ months ago, so I expect chargeback to be more difficult - in the past, I have found most CC issuers look at time elapsed since original charge, not since cancellation. This is one of the limitations inherent in chargebacks for cancellation situations. I also generally agree that chargebacks should be a last resort only when it becomes clear the merchant is not acting in good faith. In this situation, I initiated cancellation via web 3 weeks ago with no further followup (until yesterday). In the past, cancellations initiated via web have been automatically refunded within a week or two, so no real reason to follow up until it became clear that wasn't happening. I sent a note to my ambassador yesterday; they promptly replied to say they would look into it an make sure refund was processed. If they don't confirm that this happened in the next couple days, I will look at the chargeback route.

Often1

That seems quite fair.

A full refund of a prepaid room or deposit ought to be automated and does not require calculations or management-level review (once the rules are established). The consumer has done their piece by making the request. Thus, when it does not promptly show up, a chargeback is in order. My larger concern is that properties are not processing refunds because they are using consumer's cash to pay creditors such as utilities, loans and the like. This is where a chargeback brings the property's merchant acquirer into the picture and the merchant acquirer, not wanting to get bogged down in small-ish transactions, uses its heft to force the refunds quickly. Bear in mind that the greater the chargeback load, the higher the holdback percentage. That makes a cash-starved business even more cash-starved and thus incentivizes the property to issue refunds promptly.

It's all about getting paid ahead of the next person and, in my case, I want to get paid before the laundry service and the electric utility.

MSPeconomist

IMO (and this is not based on the OP's case or anything specific about the property) many merchants seem to string customers along and say that the refunds are being processed but will require X more additional days, where X is just slightly beyond the deadline for filing a chargeback. OLTAs do this particularly well, but it also applies to hotels and other merchants, especially those that are facing financial difficulties.

It's fair and good to give the hotel a chance to make the refund in reasonable time, but the customer needs to be very aware of chargeback deadlines and other technical requirements to avoid losing money in such situations.

clarkef

I've had 2 chargeback situations. One was for a defective CPAP where the merchant attempted to string me beyond the 90 days period. Fortunately, as an attorney, I was knowledgeable about the scam.

The more interesting one was this past March, I booked a fully paid, timeshare getaway with Interval World at the Westin Mission Hills. a few days later, California's various shelter-in-place order were issued and within a month the Westin was temporarily closed and would be closed during the time frame of my reservation. Interval refused to process a refund. They only offered a limited time credit against future travel. This was unacceptable and I initiated a chargeback which I was easily processed.

Mr. BoH

Just an update - I received a reply from the property and refund was processed/posted within 48 hours of my ambassador, so all is good. I did get the impression that processing the refund wasn't exactly in the works prior to reaching out though, so I am glad I did. This was for a vacation property, so it would not surprise me if they are intentionally dragging their feet on refunds unless pushed on it in order to preserve cashflow.

All's well that ends well, and +1 data point for giving Marriott/property a chance to work it out before pursuing chargeback. I ended up making another reservation for a future date, so it wound up being cashflow neutral for the property anyway.

Jon Maiman

Thanks for updating the thread with how it turned out. Glad to hear you got a good outcome and that it didn't require a chargeback to do so.

--Jon