Cancelled Transation issue

[Pynid]

I went to give my friend a gift card, but saw it was pending after about few hours and didn't know if this was an issue or not, so I cancelled the transaction. However, I didn't read it properly and did not cancel it with my payment provider first, so now the digital gift card is no longer in my purchase history and I have no proof of buying it. And neither me or my friend got the money, so I am now just missing $10. Has anyone else had this problem? If so, could you tell me how to fix it and get my money back. Thanks!

[Pscht]

Originally posted by SaltyMilk:

did not cancel it with my payment provider first

Be glad. That would have meant you could never use it on Steam again.

[Pynid]

?

[Lilim]

Originally posted by SaltyMilk:

?

Never cancel it with your payment provider first.

Just wait for your money to return.

[osisjsjnse]

Why did you cancel the transaction, and what do you mean you don't have any proof of purchase history? Whenever you buy something on Steam, you receive an email of the purchase, or a payment record on your card.

[Pynid]

I mean that it doesnt show up on my recent purchases. It has also been about four days since im I cancelled and still havnt got a refund?

[Lilim]

Originally posted by SaltyMilk:

It has also been about four days since im I cancelled and still havnt got a refund?

Did the money actually leave your bank account? Maybe the transaction wasn't made in the first place because you canceled it.

You can also check your Steam wallet. Maybe that's where the refund went.

[Pynid]

I had cancelled it after I got charged and the money is neither in my steam wallet or my bank account.

[Teksura]

You didn't offer any kind of timefrme, so I'm going to make an educated guess here.

You made the purchase, and didn't wait very long at all. You saw that the payment was still processing and decided to cancel it instead of waiting for it to finish. Then you saw that the refund didn't process instantly and are freaking out.


OP, it sounds like your problem is you have no idea how banks work and how long it takes for a transfer to go process.


For anyone who wants to actually know how banks transfer money, here are some good explanations that will help you understand why it takes a week or 2 to get your refund:


https://gendal.me/2013/11/24/a-simple-explanation-of-how-money-moves-around-the-banking-system/
https://www.currencycloud.com/en-us/news/blog/how-money-moves/
https://www.quora.com/How-does-money-transfer-between-banks-and-different-countries-work



To put it as simple as possible for those unwilling to click the link and read pages and pages of this:

When you deposit money in your bank, that bank owes you money. When you transfer money to a different bank (such as through a purchase), that other bank doesn't want to owe that amount of money to whoever you pay unless they are owed the same amount as well. This works well when the 2 banks hold accounts with each other, because they can modify the balance in those accounts to cover it. But sometimes they have to go through a third, fourth, or fifth bank just to connect the two of them if they don't have accounts with each other.



Is it possible to send an instant transfer? Yes, but that system has a fee attached to it (because someone owns that system) and it's usually better to wait until a certain time when you have a whole bunch of transactions so you can just worry about the net difference between them between the 2 banks. This allows hundreds or even thousands of transactions to become 1.

And that's why it can take "up to 7 days" for the funds to actually get to where they are going. It is simply easier and more economical to deal with small transactions en masse. If we were to imagine a human being saying it it might go something like this: "Over the last week, we owe you $X and you owe us $Y so to cover this we will credit the difference of $Z to your account with us and then you will owe all this money to these accounts, and we'll owe all this money to the ones on that list you're giving us."

In those cases where you request a refund shortly after making the purchase, you may see the funds appear within 24 hours. This is because the money never actually left your account, but rather the bank put it on hold until they did that transfer, but then the refund request came in so they simply released the funds back to you.



Now, all of that said, Steam refunds to wallet do touch the banking system to some extent. When you buy from Valve, Valve then owes money to the publishers and developers of the game. Remember how it's more economical to do these small transactions en masse? Same thing. They most likely sit on it and at the end of the week (or whatever) they go to the bank and say "Please send this much to these accounts", just like the banks and many other retailers do. If they haven't done that yet, it's easy for them to deal with because it's still (kinda) internal. They just count 1 less sale for that developer when it comes time to pay them.

But what happens if the money is already moving to the developer? well, that is where I can't say for sure. But I can say it sure sounds like it complicates matters a bit. And if you actually followed my post, you'll know it was REALLY complicated to begin with. And this was the SIMPLE version.

[Pynid]

Okay thanks for the help