Refund not received: trace it, claim it, escalate it

A missing salary is noticed by the 2nd; a missing ₹712 is noticed by nobody, because nothing about your day depends on it. Five things keep the gap out of view.

Refunds are credits, and people read statements for debits. The eye goes to what left, not what arrived.

Refunds arrive late and apart. The payment sits in one month, the refund in the next, sometimes on a different statement altogether, so the two are never side by side. The name can differ too: a refund may carry the payment company's name rather than the brand's.

A short refund looks like a refund. If ₹1,549 arrives against a ₹1,749 return, a credit appeared, and that is usually where checking stops.

Store credit replaces cash by default. Many apps offer to put the money in their own wallet, and one quick tap on a cancellation screen turns a bank refund into a balance you can only spend there.

A late reversal hides its own compensation. When a failed payment comes back on day nine instead of day five, the money is back, so nobody asks about the ₹100 a day that was also owed.

RBI's circular on harmonisation of turnaround time and customer compensation for failed transactions, dated 20 September 2019 and in effect from 15 October 2019, sets one rule for every authorised payment system. A failed transaction is one not fully completed for a reason not attributable to you: a communication link failure, an ATM without cash, a session that timed out. It also covers credits that could not reach the beneficiary because of missing or wrong information, and delays in starting a reversal.

Four lines in it do most of the work. T is the day of the transaction, as a calendar date, so weekends and holidays count. The turnaround time is the outer limit, and banks are told to aim for quicker. Wherever compensation is involved, it is credited to your account suo moto, without waiting for a complaint or claim. And a customer who does not get the redress the framework defines can complain to the RBI Ombudsman. The term bank includes non-banks wherever they are authorised to operate, so wallets and prepaid cards are inside it. Only domestic transactions, where both sides are in India, are covered.

The arithmetic is short. Find the date of the debit, which is T. Find the date the reversal reached your account. Count the calendar days between them, subtract the turnaround time for the channel, and multiply what is left by ₹100. If the answer is above zero and no matching credit sits on your statement, the bank owes it to you, and the circular says it should already have paid.

Here are five illustrative delays, one per channel. None is dramatic. A transfer that came back on the fourth day, a website payment that reversed after a week: each is the kind of delay people shrug at, because the principal came back.

Take one illustrative household over three months. Nothing unusual happens: some returns, a cancelled flight, a cancelled hotel, a couple of failed payments, a double charge at a pharmacy. Eleven refunds are owed. Here is each one against what actually came back.

Across the quarter, ₹23,742 of refunds was owed, plus ₹400 of compensation on the ticket booking whose UPI payment failed and reversed on T+9, four days beyond its T+5. That is ₹24,142 in all. ₹17,384 came back as cash, 72.0 percent. ₹347 came back as store credit in a grocery app. ₹6,411 did not come back at all, 26.6 percent of what was owed, or 28.0 percent if store credit is counted as not returned.

Look at what worked. The ₹5,000 ATM failure, the ₹2,000 transfer to a friend and the ₹1,250 ticket payment are all failed transactions, ₹8,250 together, 34.7 percent of the refunds owed, and every rupee of principal came back. The rails with an RBI clock reversed on their own. What leaked was the merchant refunds: the electronics return, the hotel, the pharmacy and the short footwear refund make up 93.8 percent of the gap. The only piece of the gap with an RBI rule behind it is the ₹400, 6.2 percent.

A refund passes through up to three hands: the merchant, the merchant's payment company and bank, and your bank or card issuer. If it stalls, it stalls with one of them, and the reference number tells you which.

The order ID and the merchant's refund ID belong to the merchant. They prove a refund was promised and when. Ask the merchant for the refund date and, for a card refund, the ARN, the acquirer reference number. The merchant's bank creates it when the refund enters the card network, and your issuer can search for it. For a UPI refund, ask for the UPI transaction reference of the refund itself, the RRN, the retrieval reference number. Your UPI app shows this number on each transaction's detail screen, and it is what your bank searches.

The number also settles the argument. If the merchant can give you an ARN or a refund RRN, the money has left the merchant, and your bank or issuer is the next stop. If the merchant cannot, the refund has most likely not left it, whatever the email said, and the merchant is still the one to chase.

A refund generally goes back to the instrument you paid with. On a bank account, through UPI, a debit card or net banking, it lands as money you can spend the day it arrives. On a credit card it arrives as a credit against the balance, which is easier to miss, because it does not feel like money; it just makes a later bill smaller.

The timing problem is the statement date. Say a hotel charge of ₹3,200 is on a statement whose total is ₹28,400, and the hotel's refund has been promised but has not posted. The bill still asks for ₹28,400. Paying ₹25,200, on the reasoning that the refund is coming, leaves ₹3,200 unpaid. At an illustrative interest rate of 3.5 percent a month, that alone costs ₹112 for a month. On many cards a part payment also ends the interest-free period, and then interest runs on the whole balance: ₹994 for a month at the same illustrative rate. Your card's terms set the method.

Paying the full ₹28,400 costs nothing but cash flow. The ₹3,200 then appears as a credit on the next statement and reduces that bill. A refund is never worth a part payment.

The order depends on what kind of refund it is. A failed transaction is your bank's problem. A merchant refund is the merchant's problem until the merchant proves it has paid.

For a failed transaction, write to the bank or wallet that holds the debited account, in a way that leaves a record, and get a complaint number. RBI's Integrated Ombudsman Scheme, 2026, in force from 1 July 2026 and replacing the 2021 scheme, takes the complaint if the bank does not reply within 30 days, or within the time set by RBI, NPCI or card network guidelines if that is longer, or if you are not satisfied with the reply. File within 90 days of that timeline running out or of the bank's last reply, whichever is later. Filing is free, online at cms.rbi.org.in or by email to crpc@rbi.org.in, and needs the bank's complaint number, the transaction date and the reference number. RBI's contact centre on 14448 explains the process and status but cannot take a complaint.

The Ombudsman covers banks, certain NBFCs, non-bank prepaid instrument issuers and credit information companies. A merchant is none of these. For a merchant that has not refunded, the route is the National Consumer Helpline of the Department of Consumer Affairs, on 1915 toll-free, through its portal, its app or WhatsApp. For a card payment the merchant will not refund, your issuer's dispute process is the other route; the page on disputing unauthorised transactions covers how chargebacks run.

The gap in the example was not found by remembering. It was found by putting two lists side by side: what each brand took and what each brand gave back.

That is a view Unyfy builds, free. It reads the transaction emails your bank and card issuer send and, on Android, transactional SMS, so there is nothing to type in. Each brand you spend at gets its own line, with the payments to it and the refunds received from it, and a debit seen in both an SMS and an email is counted once. Refunds also show as their own source in the income view, so a month of returns followed by a month of no refund credits stands out. A brand you know you returned something to, with no refund beside it, is the line to check against the order ID.

Check any store credit inside the merchant's app, and raise the complaint with the merchant or your card issuer. The free tier keeps 6 months of history, enough for a quarter of refunds; Pro, at ₹99 a month, keeps 12 to 24 months.

Install Unyfy on Android, or on an iPhone use the web app at app.unyfy.co.in, which reads your bank's email alerts and statements.