Zara.com review: Credit card refund service

I made a purchase in France at 74 Champs Elysees Zara on 5 April 2024. Two payments were taken from my Mastercard, ending 9661 for 86.95 Euros.

There were two transactions at different times, the final one at 16:28. The first transaction was made at a Self Service Terminal which I thought was completed successfully, although I forgot to take the receipt. I left the store and when I returned to my hotel, two items still had the security tag attached. I returned to the store, the security tag set off an alarm which ended up with me trying to explain what had happened. I was told by the Store Manager that I had not paid for the items and there was no record of the first transaction from the Self Service Terminal, so I had to pay for the items again. I have the second receipt. I have received my credit card payment which clearly shows the two transactions. The Store Manager told me I had to contact Zara to request a refund of the first transaction made at the Self Service Terminal. I cannot believe the store had no method of validating what transactions took place on one of their self service terminals.

I have since made contact with Zara via their channels and spend nearly a whole day on a Whatsapp Chat/phone with their customer service team which I believe are located in Nairobi. The outcome of conversations with them was nothing. They asked me for my bank account card numbers to pay me the refund and ''compensation''. None of this could be processed as the amounts indicated were actually refused by my banks as a debit! I have given up now as I couldn't deal with the stress of being told to continually try different apps to process the ''refund/compensation'', e.g. World Remit and Remitly? I am sure they are genuine apps however I was no longer comfortable with the team asking me to send card details and no longer wish to communicate with the Zara ''customer service team''.