How to Refund orders when original transaction is not found

When attempting to refund an order you may encounter an error message telling you that the checkout failed because the original transaction could not be found:

Error: Checkout Failed! - Couldn't rebate transaction xxxxxxxxxx-yyyyyyyyy - Original transaction not found.

What does this error message mean?

This error is most often caused when attempting to:

• Refund a payment that is over 180 days (6 months) old.
• Refund a payment that was made on a different merchant account to the one you are currently using.

Payment is over 180 days old

If the payment is over 180 days old, you may see a slightly different error message in place of the above, but it means the same thing:

Error: Checkout Failed! Couldn't rebate transaction xxxxxxxxxx-yyyyyyyyy - The original transaction is ### days old. Transactions older than 180 days cannot be rebated - please use the refund terminal instead.

You will see one of these messages because Global Payments does not allow refunds to be done automatically onto cards past this 180 day threshold.

Please note: The 180 day refund limit is not within Ticketsolve's control. Although we understand that this limit can be inconvenient, this is standard within the card processing industry and it is not within Ticketsolve's power to change.

Merchant details have changed

If the payment is not over 180 days old, the error may be caused because you have changed merchant details since the original transaction was made. Therefore, Global Payments cannot find the original transaction to refund in the current merchant account you are using. 

How to refund payments when the original transaction is not found

You will be unable to refund directly back to the card via the Ticketsolve system, so you will have to refund the customer manually. To refund by card, 

1. Contact the customer for their card details.

Now you can refund them in one of two ways:

• You can refund them in the "Terminal" section of Real Control, Global Payments online portal. If you don't have access to Real Control, you may need to email them to request it on [e-mail] or . . . 
• Key in the card details into a chip and pin unit.

Once you have refunded the customer, you need to record the refund in Ticketsolve.

2. Amend and create a refund on an order as you normally would.

3. In the Refund payment pop up select Manual credit card refund from the refund payment method dropdown to record the refund as completed on Ticketsolve.

Selecting this option allows you to tell Ticketsolve that the payment has been refunded manually outside of Ticketsolve, and so you are not asking the system to attempt an automatic card refund. 

If you do not have access to a Real Control or a chip and pin unit, alternative options would be to refund by bank transfer, cash or cheque.