Playbook, restaurant
The card machine took it, so the card machine has to explain it
This is not the meal that was wrong. This is money that has already moved: a deposit taken in October, a prepaid seat at a supper club, a card that seems to have been charged twice on the way out, a service charge somebody wants back afterwards. None of it is answerable by reading a document, because all of it turns on a transaction record that lives with whoever reconciles the terminal, and the guest is usually looking at a statement while they type.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for refund requests holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The commonest refund question in this trade is not a refund at all but a pre authorisation held against a card at the point of booking, which looks identical to a charge on a banking app and drops off on its own timescale.
- Duplicate charges genuinely happen at a card terminal in a busy service, so a guest reporting one is often right, and the answer has to be a route to somebody who can check the day's takings rather than a defence of the payment process.
- Money taken in advance in this trade is usually a deposit that comes off the bill rather than a payment for anything, so the guest asking for it back is really asking whether the booking terms have been triggered, which is a different question wearing the same words.
- Prepaid events such as a tasting menu evening or a supper club are sold like tickets, and the terms on those are almost always stricter than the terms on an ordinary table, which is a distinction guests do not know exists.
How it arrives
- can i get my deposit back
- we were charged twice on the card machine
- i paid for a tasting menu seat and cannot come
- can you take the service charge off
- how do i get money back for the voucher
- the card payment went through for the wrong amount
What has to be indexed for this to work
| What each kind of money you take actually is | Deposit, pre authorisation, prepaid ticket and gift voucher behave differently and are refunded differently. Write one line for each saying what it is, when it is taken and what it comes off, because a guest who understands it is a deposit stops asking to be refunded for a meal they still intend to eat. |
|---|---|
| The conditions under which money comes back | For each of those, the point at which it is returnable, the point at which it is not, and whether it can be moved to another date instead. Transferring rather than refunding is the outcome most guests would accept and almost nobody is offered. |
| Who reconciles the card terminal and how to reach them | The address for anything involving an amount on a statement, and what the guest should have ready: the date, the approximate time, the last four digits and the figure they are looking at. Without those, nobody can find the transaction in a day of takings. |
| How long a returned payment takes to appear | The realistic number of working days from your side, said plainly. Most of the follow up messages on a refund arrive because nobody told the guest when to expect it, and they are chasing on day two of a process that takes longer. |
The reply
I cannot look at any payment or move money, so this needs somebody who can see the terminal records. Two things worth knowing first. If the amount appeared when you booked rather than when you ate, it is likely to be the deposit held against the table, which comes off your bill on the night rather than being an extra charge [1]. If it looks like the same amount twice on the same evening, that does need checking against the day's takings. Either way, send the date, roughly what time, the last four digits of the card and the amount you can see, and it goes to the person who reconciles the machine [2].
It disposes of the most likely explanation before escalating, because a good proportion of these are a deposit the guest has forgotten and clearing that up costs nobody an email. It then takes the duplicate seriously rather than defending the terminal, since duplicates are real. The four details asked for are exactly what is needed to find one transaction in a full service, and asking for them once saves a round trip.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any message about an amount on a card statement, a deposit the guest wants returned, or a prepaid seat they cannot use.
I have no access to payments and cannot refund or check anything from here. Leave me your name, an email, the date, the amount and the last four digits of the card, and it will go to whoever handles the takings so they can look at the actual transaction.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a refund has been issued or will be issued, because nothing has been processed and the guest will stop watching for it and then chase in a fortnight.
- Never state that a charge is definitely a pre authorisation, since only the terminal record shows what it was and a confident wrong answer sends the guest to their bank instead of to you.
- Never agree to remove a service charge after the event, as that is a decision for whoever settled the bill and it is being asked about a payment already reconciled.
- Never quote a timescale for money to reappear that is faster than the one you actually see, because the follow up message arrives on the day you named.
Questions
- Can it check whether we charged somebody twice?
- No. It has no view of any payment system and never will from this side. What it can usefully do is recognise the question, explain the deposit case, and collect the four details that let somebody find the transaction without three emails.
- Is it worth publishing the deposit terms this plainly?
- Yes, because most of these messages are not disputes. They are guests who saw an amount they did not expect. One clear paragraph about what a deposit is and when it comes off removes a large share of them before anybody has to reply.
- What about gift vouchers somebody wants cashed in?
- Write your position down and let it be quoted. Vouchers are almost never refundable for money, guests fairly often ask, and having the answer published means the assistant states a policy rather than a manager writing an awkward reply.
Keep reading
- Everything for a restaurantHours, last orders, deposits and dietary options are safe ground. Confirming a dish is free of an allergen never is.
- Handling refund requests in generalA refund question is really about eligibility and timing. What to index, what the reply may promise, and where it has to reach a person.
- The person asking has to get this past a finance departmentA card slip is not a VAT invoice. What a company diner needs on it, and why the service line has to be shown separately.
- Nobody is by the phone, and it is not only because you are closedThe phone goes unanswered mid service and again on the dark day. What is safe to answer at midnight, and what has to wait for a person.
- Deciding whether this is the right place for the occasionDress code, how long you get the table, whether a toddler works at eight, and whether three courses are compulsory on a set menu.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.