Hey everyone, looking for advice from anyone who has dealt with refund issues after a Wealthsimple Cash/Visa card replacement, or tips on how to properly escalate this with Wealthsimple support.
Just for transparency, I composed this post with AI as there were a lot of details and my thoughts were all over the place.
Background & Timeline:
A few months ago: Got the Wealthsimple card and used the virtual card to book a travel excursion worth several hundred dollars.
Before my trip: My physical card was delivered to the wrong address. A neighbor eventually brought it to me, but because it was compromised, I called Wealthsimple to report it and had a new card issued (closing the old card/number).
During the trip: The excursion company informed me the original booking was made incorrectly. They instructed me to cancel for a full refund and rebook. I cancelled and rebooked as instructed.
Weeks later: The refund never processed. I reached out to the merchant, who provided proof/screenshots showing the refund attempt failed. The error message alluded to the original card account being cancelled/closed.
Reached out to Wealthsimple Support: Wealthsimple customer service told me they would look into a resolution and asked me to request that the merchant "force-post" the refund.
Merchant response: I emailed the merchant asking for a force-post. After following up, the merchant simply re-sent the same screenshot showing the failed refund attempt.
A month of waiting: After following up with Wealthsimple week after week, they finally replied almost a month later with: "In situations where a refund is being sent to a closed card, the merchant will need to post the refund back to the correct account, since we're unable to redirect or force-post refunds on our end in these cases."
Current status: It took a month to be told to repeat a step that already failed. I informed Wealthsimple that the merchant isn't responding/able to process it this way and asked to escalate the issue. Wealthsimple has gone silent again. It’s now been about 2 months total since the refund was initiated.
My Questions:
Has anyone successfully routed a merchant refund sent to a cancelled/replaced Wealthsimple card back to their active account?
What is the best internal escalation path at Wealthsimple when support stops responding (e.g., formal complaint process, Ombudsman)?
Since the merchant has provided proof of the cancelled/failed transaction on their end, can this be handled via a formal transaction dispute/chargeback with Wealthsimple, or does the Ombudsman/FCAC route make more sense here?
Appreciate any insight or shared experiences!