Last month I paid a deposit by credit card over the phone to a local moving company for my upcoming move and they said in writing (on email) that the deposit would be refunded if I cancelled within 7 days. The next day my circumstances changed and I emailed and said I needed to cancel and would they please refund my deposit. They immediately wrote that they would refund my deposit. Over the next four weeks I kept calling and emailing them asking for my money and they kept saying they would send it shortly. Finally yesterday I escalated to the owner and he said "because you paid by credit card over the phone I have no way of refunding your money. So feel free to initiate a dispute of the charge with your credit card company, that's how you can get your money back". So today I initiated a dispute and am hopeful I'll finally get my deposit back. One question - was the owner lying? If so, what process could he go through to get me my deposit back? I'm guessing maybe it would involve him making a phone call to visa or something, which he considers to be too much work.
