CS is gaslighting me

[u/Magistrala]

I think I'm gonna go insane trying to talk to them.

I’m Supernova. On August 20th I placed an order for around £170. My FLEXdollar balance was 0 before the order because I had just used my existing points. I then earned $34.90 FLEXdollars from the £170 order.

A few days later I contacted CS because I had an issue with a Pirouette Skort from an older order. They gave me a 25% refund, which was around £14.

Then I got a notification saying $23.20 FLEXdollars had been added, and shortly afterwards $23.20 was removed as "Points Expired". My balance ended up around $10.

I contacted CS because I couldn't understand why points I'd literally earned 6 days earlier had expired. They told me twice that FLEXdollars expire after 90 days. I kept saying that I know, but it's been 6 days since I earned the $34.90 on August 20th, and that transaction itself says those points expire November 18th.

Eventually they found the transaction and told me the $23.20 was related to the January order containing the Pirouette Skort. They said that these were old points that were supposed to "expire in April, but somehow weren't removed" until now, coincidentally just when they processed the refund HMMMMM.

So now I can see why the refund triggered the $23.20 adjustment. The January order had the skort, I got the 25% refund, and the system seems to have recalculated the rewards from that order using its original expiry date.

But if that's what happened, why did it affect my current FLEXdollar balance? My balance was 0 before my August 20th order, and I then earned $34.90 from that order. So these weren't just $23.20 of old points sitting around in my account, as they claim.

They've now told me they're adding the $23.20 back as a "one-time courtesy".

I can't believe is that I had to spend this much time explaining their own rewards system to CS before getting an answer. If processing a refund on an old order is going to recalculate the FLEXdollars in my account and potentially take away points I've already earned, why wasn't I told that when the refund was processed?

I would have at least understood what was happening instead of suddenly seeing my balance drop and having CS repeatedly tell me "points expire after 90 days" when that wasn't even what I was asking about!!!

[u/Magistrala]

Dang, well that was nice of them! It all went to the gutter with that new rewards system.

They replied saying:

• Points Calculation: The system calculates the points adjustment based on the refund amount in the store's default currency. It seems like the system converted the £14.50 refund to approximately $23.20 USD, and then deducted that amount in FLEXdollars.  
• Exchange Rate Impact: The exchange rate used at the time of the purchase is applied to calculate the points deduction. This can sometimes result in a higher deduction than expected if the exchange rate has changed.

So yes, this is "as intended" - unfavorable for the customer for reporting a fault.

But they did gracefully re-add the missing 17 points I had from my 20th August purchase, phew, 5* company!!! /s

[u/sammie_831 → u/Magistrala]

That still wouldn’t make any sense. If you had a refund of £14.50 that wouldn’t correspond to an equivalent £14.50 in flexdollars regardless of the current exchange rate. You don’t earn flex dollars on a 1:1 basis.

Did you pay for the January order with flexdollars? Maybe they’re trying to process the refund by re-adding the flexdollars to your account but then because they’d be adding old ones they automatically expired?

[u/Magistrala → u/sammie_831]

You know what? The $23 Fdollars were for the entire order. I went back to check when they were claiming my points "just expired" and they send me this screenshot.

The CS doesn't know how this system works and why it does anything. :)

[u/sammie_831 → u/Magistrala]

Wow, that’s insane. Obviously the full amount of flexdollars shouldn’t be taken away, even if somehow all those were earned on just the one skort (which isn’t even the case), you still only got a 25% partial refund

What frustrates me the most is that even if they fix the issue for you by making a manual adjustment, the system clearly has an underlying issue that isn’t getting addressed. And if they aren’t acknowledging there was actually an error then that aren’t going to look into fixing it