Ordered some parts from this company. Was told that nothing could be shipped without a credit card since I did not have an account with them. Fine, used credit card. Just needed a one-time order of some oddball parts. No problem. Yet. One part in the order was wrong and it was returned to Regal and the correct part was purchased elsewhere. Almost thirty days after Regal received the returned items I got a credit slip in the mail. I took that to mean that a refund had been issued to the credit card account.
Sixty days later I finally called Regal to see why no credits were showing up on my credit card statement. It seems that an account had been created "for me" in order to "hold the credited funds". I was given a lame excuse about some customers prefer a credit on their account for later use. Most customers want to pay interest on several hundred dollars sitting in an account they don't even know they had while Regal has probably resold the part to someone else... Riiight! The guy did say a refund to the card would be issued "soon" and didn't give me a big hassle about it, though.
I did not want or need an account with this company or I would have opened one and bypassed using a credit card in the first place. I was told that Regal Corporation ALWAYS handles credit card refunds this way. I have done business with lots of companies and have NEVER had a credit card refund handled this way. Any credit card purchase that needed to be returned was automatically credited to the card after the merchandise was returned without me having to call to "request" it.
So for about sixty days, Regal had their part back in stock AND my money. Sweet deal! If I had not caught it (and many large companies with many departments might not) I guess Regal would have had their parts and my money sitting in the account I didn't know about forever. I paid interest on the amount for sixty days and maybe Regal drew interest on it for a couple of months.
This practice doesn't seem fair to either the customer or the credit card issuer.in fact, it seems like an attempt to defraud both. I am not sure about the legal implications. I suppose it would depend on the card processor agreement with Regal. The only winner in this case would be Regal itself unless one is very watchful.
The whole thing has given me an overall bad impression of Regal Corporation. I doubt I will be doing any more business with them in the future.
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