Sarah Raven

... I emailed and demanded a refund. It's been almost a month and I still don't have a refund. They did agree to one fairly quickly, but actually getting the money out of them has been a nightmare and every new response from them takes five working days to arrive. They are now saying they have refunded the original gift voucher, but I don't want to buy anything else from them (especially as most of the refund will be swallowed up by P&P) and have had to email them back again to ask for the money as I won't be buying from them again. I've checked their T&Cs and it doesn't say anywhere that if you purchase with a giftcard, you'll be held hostage over any returns. 

Expecting them to exchange a gift voucher for cash is a no hoper. You paid with a gift voucher, so that's how you'll be refunded. If they refunded you cash they would in effect have "lost" the original gift voucher sale, i.e. if you had £40 gift voucher and they refunded you £20 cash, they have lost a £20 sale, in effect ending up only having sold £20 worth of vouchers, and they know you will not be spending that cash back with them.